The Sound of Music
Walking down “Penny” lane with Ali Imran K.
When I was two (I’m pretty sure I was two because my younger sister Didah had not been born yet), I managed to temporarily drown myself in the kid’s pool of Feringghi Beach Hotel. I say temporary, because my father saved me in the nick of time and I even have the photograph to prove it. It’s funny how I can remember all these things, because apart from drowning in Penang and my father’s old record collection, my memory before five looked a lot like white noise.
He had quite the record collection, my dad. Strange to think how a man of such minimal words and emotions was once swept away by what he now describes as “a fool’s pleasure”. He never talks about it. My mom would occasionally indulge us, by virtue of her overwhelming feelings every time she hears The Carpenters’ “Close To You”. My father never did much by way of anything that is even remotely related to fun when he was a student. Coming from a very poor background, he had no choice but to make it, so he sacrificed a lot of youthful frivolity in exchange for solitary hard work. When all the other kids (my mother included) were dancing the night away in Dewan Tunku Chancellor of Universiti Malaya, he was elbow deep in books, formulas and sloughing away for his next exams which was still probably a good couple of months away. His only form of indulgence was his music and he had a habit of collecting them, like an arab sheikh would collect wives.
He had a DENON stereo, with a cassette and record player. Though we never exactly worked out the mechanics of the record player to ever play one successfully, my sisters and I spent many afternoons splayed in front of the player listening to whatever we could get our hands on. For a couple of months it was Cindy Lauper because it was the only pop-ish sounding music we had in the house at the time and to this day, I still have no idea how it ever got there in the first place. So by the time I started primary school, I knew the lyrics of “She Bop”, “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” and “Time after Time” by heart. It was my only party trick until I was 9. Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” was a big hit amongst my siblings as well and many hours were spent in front of the TV laboriously trying to mimic Jacko’s fancy footwork. This was pre-You Tube, pre-Internet, pre-MTV (in Malaysia at least), so we literally had to wait in front of the TV for whenever they would play the music video and try to get the moves as best as we can in the short few minutes it went on air.
By the mid 80s, my father’s interest in music was waning, favouring religious sermons more than pop. His “old friends”- The Beatles, Bee Gees, ABBA, Boney M, Elvis, Sharifah Aini, all sat idle on the bottom rack of his record player, collecting dust. I remember flipping through them one day and came across an Anita Sarawak record wearing what would probably be deemed as raunchy by today’s Malaysian standards. One record which we did manage to victoriously play was the soundtrack to the movie “Melody”. The record sleeve was a picture of a girl handing over an apple to a boy. You don’t see their heads though, because it was cropped just at the hands and the apple was right in the middle. It’s quite funny, now that I think about it, how a kid, midway through kindergarten was able to sing “In The Morning” and “Melody Fair”. If I had met myself then, I would’ve said to me “Your parents have good taste”, and for what it’s worth, they do, or at least they did. It was such a different world then, looking at the records and relating it to the discoloured photos of my parents in the late 70s, whilst they were in Glasgow. I can almost hear the tunes playing in the background like a soundtrack as images of my dad with his long hair and my mother in her ridiculously chunky clogs dances quietly in front of me.
The records were discarded off one day and we were none too bothered. This was at a time when New Kids OnThe Block or NKOTB as they were more famously known, were on the verge of pop success, so anyone with a bouffant, polyester shirt and bell bottoms were quickly snubbed. Had I known what sort of value those records carry today- the sentimentality of it all, I would’ve been the first to stop them from being considered as trash. I wonder what sort of sense NKOTB made to us in the early 90s because how could anyone in their right mind get excited over lyrics like “Step by Step, Gonna get to you girl”, or “Hangin’ Tough” when they were anything but, and “Please Don’t Go Girl”, crooned by the pre-pubescent Joe Mcintyre. He must have been about 12 at the time-what would he know about love?
It really is funny how I can remember all this because my sisters evidently don’t. They remember the record collection but their memory stops short beyond the double glass doors that encased the player. But I know, even as I look at my parents huddled together on the living room sofa after their morning prayer, reading the papers or some sort of religious paraphernalia, that their past was like a musical and I’d like to think that even when he’s not around anymore, my dad would allow me to remember him that way- a fan of good music.
He had quite the record collection, my dad. Strange to think how a man of such minimal words and emotions was once swept away by what he now describes as “a fool’s pleasure”. He never talks about it. My mom would occasionally indulge us, by virtue of her overwhelming feelings every time she hears The Carpenters’ “Close To You”. My father never did much by way of anything that is even remotely related to fun when he was a student. Coming from a very poor background, he had no choice but to make it, so he sacrificed a lot of youthful frivolity in exchange for solitary hard work. When all the other kids (my mother included) were dancing the night away in Dewan Tunku Chancellor of Universiti Malaya, he was elbow deep in books, formulas and sloughing away for his next exams which was still probably a good couple of months away. His only form of indulgence was his music and he had a habit of collecting them, like an arab sheikh would collect wives.
He had a DENON stereo, with a cassette and record player. Though we never exactly worked out the mechanics of the record player to ever play one successfully, my sisters and I spent many afternoons splayed in front of the player listening to whatever we could get our hands on. For a couple of months it was Cindy Lauper because it was the only pop-ish sounding music we had in the house at the time and to this day, I still have no idea how it ever got there in the first place. So by the time I started primary school, I knew the lyrics of “She Bop”, “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” and “Time after Time” by heart. It was my only party trick until I was 9. Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” was a big hit amongst my siblings as well and many hours were spent in front of the TV laboriously trying to mimic Jacko’s fancy footwork. This was pre-You Tube, pre-Internet, pre-MTV (in Malaysia at least), so we literally had to wait in front of the TV for whenever they would play the music video and try to get the moves as best as we can in the short few minutes it went on air.
By the mid 80s, my father’s interest in music was waning, favouring religious sermons more than pop. His “old friends”- The Beatles, Bee Gees, ABBA, Boney M, Elvis, Sharifah Aini, all sat idle on the bottom rack of his record player, collecting dust. I remember flipping through them one day and came across an Anita Sarawak record wearing what would probably be deemed as raunchy by today’s Malaysian standards. One record which we did manage to victoriously play was the soundtrack to the movie “Melody”. The record sleeve was a picture of a girl handing over an apple to a boy. You don’t see their heads though, because it was cropped just at the hands and the apple was right in the middle. It’s quite funny, now that I think about it, how a kid, midway through kindergarten was able to sing “In The Morning” and “Melody Fair”. If I had met myself then, I would’ve said to me “Your parents have good taste”, and for what it’s worth, they do, or at least they did. It was such a different world then, looking at the records and relating it to the discoloured photos of my parents in the late 70s, whilst they were in Glasgow. I can almost hear the tunes playing in the background like a soundtrack as images of my dad with his long hair and my mother in her ridiculously chunky clogs dances quietly in front of me.
The records were discarded off one day and we were none too bothered. This was at a time when New Kids OnThe Block or NKOTB as they were more famously known, were on the verge of pop success, so anyone with a bouffant, polyester shirt and bell bottoms were quickly snubbed. Had I known what sort of value those records carry today- the sentimentality of it all, I would’ve been the first to stop them from being considered as trash. I wonder what sort of sense NKOTB made to us in the early 90s because how could anyone in their right mind get excited over lyrics like “Step by Step, Gonna get to you girl”, or “Hangin’ Tough” when they were anything but, and “Please Don’t Go Girl”, crooned by the pre-pubescent Joe Mcintyre. He must have been about 12 at the time-what would he know about love?
It really is funny how I can remember all this because my sisters evidently don’t. They remember the record collection but their memory stops short beyond the double glass doors that encased the player. But I know, even as I look at my parents huddled together on the living room sofa after their morning prayer, reading the papers or some sort of religious paraphernalia, that their past was like a musical and I’d like to think that even when he’s not around anymore, my dad would allow me to remember him that way- a fan of good music.
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