Rockstar

For those that don't know, one of the things that I've been doing while I'm here in Penang is to play in a band... I don't play any musical instruments, so I sing. We're just fooling around most of the time, so don't expect us to play at weddings and stuff like that.

One other thing that I do in the band is I write the songs with Eric (the lead guitarist). He's got about a million songs stuck in his head and we thought it would be fun to put them down on paper... so he composes the song, and I write the lyrics.

I shouldn't quit my day job.

We completed the first song right around when I turned 30... I guess it was one of those things that I wanted to do to 'celebrate' the end of my 20's. It's now in the process of being recorded 'professionally'... that's being done by an actual musician... partly because Eric and I can't afford to buy all the recording equipment. Plus, if we did, we wouldn't know how to use it.

You may wonder why we're recording the song. It's not because we want to be famous rock stars (though that hasn't been crossed off the list yet). It's so we would have proof to our grandkids that we were once young and we were cool!!

Our target is a 'short album'... just a couple of songs. When it's done, you guys are probably gonna hate me because I'll be promoting the 'album' and 'encourage' you guys to buy a copy.

Some of my friends have heard the rough recording of the first song and think it's good... but would anybody buy it, that's a different matter...

Well, as long as my grandkids say "grandpa!? is this you singing on the album? YOU ROCK!!", then I'm okay.

A few hours ago, we were in the jamming studio. We finished the second song. Now, you may have seen how a professional song writer would write a song... with sheet music. That's obviously not how we did it...

There’s just scribbles all over the place on a couple of pieces of paper. Scribbles are an improvement actually. Eric composes the whole song in his head. He doesn’t put anything on paper until it’s the final draft which is distributed among the band.

Whatever it is, I’m going to save these little memories of my ‘youth’… It must be fun to relive those moments for your family once you’re older. I remember how my dad would proudly smile when I asked about a picture of him winning a singing competition. He could even remember what song he sang.

And I remember how proud I was of having such a ‘cool dad’...

When you’re young, you need role models. And the first people you turn to are your parents. If they haven’t accomplished anything significant in life, then that’s probably what you’ll end up planning for… after all, when you’re young, your parents are ‘perfect’ in your eyes.

I would like my son to see me the same way that I saw my dad, my first role model… a person who conquered the ‘rat race’, loves his family dearly, and knows how to live life to the fullest.

Retro

When I was much younger, my dad would buy ‘best of’ CDs… such as Best of Tom Jones, Engelbert Humperdinck, ABBA, Boney M… and I would listen to these CDs and think to myself “these ‘classic’ songs are great”… the word ‘classic’ or ‘retro’ were used to describe those songs… and it was fine then… because I mainly listened to the ‘top 40’ hits on radio and occasionally put on a ‘retro’ CD…

Never did it occur to me that those ‘classics’ were actually ‘top 40’ when my dad was young… all I heard from my dad was how those songs were much better than the ‘garbage’ that I listened to… I just laughed it off, thinking my dad was just out of date…

Now however things have slowly started to change… the music I listened to is now considered ‘retro’… some songs, like Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana is even considered a ‘classic’!!

How the heck did that happen!?

A couple of months back, I was heading back to KL. So the band wouldn’t have a singer during that week’s jamming session… so one of the guys asked his friend to sing for that week… she looked through the song book and had not heard of most of the songs there… there were comments like “I think I’ve heard this song before… but who’s this Pearl Jam?” Obviously, she was much younger than me… what are we teaching in schools that kids don’t know who Pearl Jam is?

Now when they say ‘retro’, their talking about songs from my ‘youth’…

Then it hit me… I’m old… whenever they have a retro themed show on the radio, I find myself saying ‘aahhhhh, I know this song!! Haven’t heard it in a long time!’

Another thing is, I can’t seem to enjoy listening to songs that my nieces and nephews listen to… it’s just ‘garbage’…

OMG, I’m my dad!!! (That’s a scarier thought than the fact that I’m not young anymore).

I guess we can add ‘likes retro songs’ to the list of things that tell you you’re ‘not young anymore’…