The Star Online: Entertainment: Music

Posted: 09 Sep 2012 12:49 AM PDT

Martin Vengadesan takes leave, not just of his senses, but of a decade-long column.

AND so another chapter closes ...

In over 250 columns over the past 10 years, I have gotten up on this print soapbox every alternate Sunday and strutted my stuff. Not quite the way I pictured it as a teen, when delusions of grandeur saw me imagining myself declining Grammy awards on account of the United States' imperialist policies. But one way or another, music has always been a huge part of my life and always will be.

If you've spent any time at all perusing this column, you'll note that I've been obsessed with music for as long as I can remember. Not just the music, but the people behind it and the stories they had to tell, and the methods of transporting it to me beyond space and time, creating a sort of immortal connection.

And yes, I've been a snob. Miles Davis' Miles In The Sky, Hector Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, Led Zeppelin's Stairway To Heaven, those are true works of art in a way that the Thong Song or Gangnam Style will never be.

Thanks to what already seems like an overlong career as a music journalist, I've been lucky enough to meet many of my musical idols. I've chatted with Jimi Hendrix's sister Janie and B.B. King, been thanked by Deep Purple bassist Roger Glover. Passed some recordings to Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson. Fell on the floor dramatically when I got an email from Uriah Heep's keyboardist Ken Hensley, and I'll never quite forget hanging out of a minibus in Kampung Pandan minutes after a surreal half an hour with Carlos Santana. Along the way, I also got scolded by Phil Collins and Richard Marx.

It's been painful to watch many of my idols ride off into the sunset. The last 10 years have seen us lose global figures like Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston, as well as a host of fellows I used to pretend to be, like Deep Purple keyboardist Jon Lord, hard rock god Ronnie James Dio and the Pink Floyd duo of Richard Wright and Syd Barrett. Somehow, their music made their lives so immediate to me. I still remember picking up the paper as a seven-year-old and reading about John Lennon's death. I may not have understood it, but I never forgot that it was Mark David Chapman who killed him for no good reason at all.

I remember when I first mooted the idea of this column, my boss (now The Star's Managing Editor) June Wong, asked me if I was sure I had enough material to maintain a column over an extended period of time. So, I had to deliver the first three to convince her and kicked off in Sept 8, 2002 with an article about the damaged genius Roky Erickson, following it with pieces about the mystery death song Gloomy Sunday and the eccentric Screaming Lord Sutch.

Since then, the column has survived a number of changes ... "moving house" from StarMag to Variety and then to Star2 on Sunday. It seems like much more has changed than just the location of the column. The music business today is unrecognisable. After the models of the gramophone, LP, reel, cartridge, cassette and CDs, it's moved on to digitised versions on iPods and ringtones.

There was no Youtube, no wikipedia when I started this column. When I was getting heavily into music culture, I had to compile scrapbooks or articles and reviews (thanks, by the way, to our great journalists R.S. Murthi and Sujesh Pavithran). Even liner notes were to be hungrily devoured, as were random titbits the deejays used to throw our way. Often, it would take me many years to track down a single song or album. Nowadays, an obscure artist's entire discography is readily available for download, along with tons of information. That's not a bad thing at all, for music and knowledge are meant to be shared, not hoarded.

I, too, have evolved (more like devolved really) over the years. A simple glance at my byline photo will tell you I've been losing hair and gaining weight with cruel inevitability. I can't remember the last time I dreamt of being a rock star myself.

It would be nice to believe I have always held you in thrall, but I can't escape the feeling that the quality of my average column has declined over the last 24 months. It seems like I've shared so much that I've been running out of things to say of late. I know I keep repeating myself and more than once, I've enthusiastically commenced a column only to come to a grinding halt upon discovering that I wrote about the same damned thing three years earlier!

Many people have been gracious enough to write in and tell me how much they enjoy what I do. And thanks to this, I've realised that the vast majority of my readers are males in the 50-65 age group. I've joked often enough about trying to attract a younger and somewhat more female audience, but seriously, I'd like to thank everyone who got something out of these rambles.

For my part I'd like to thank anyone who ever introduced me to music. Friends, band members, strangers, uncles and cousins, and most of all, my father, Datuk R. Vengadesan, who not only introduced me to artistes from John Denver to ABBA, but also spent quite a bit of cash financing my "habit" back in the 1980s.

Music is the soundtrack to my life, so much more than a hobby. It's been more like a driving force and the most earnest form of communication I've known in a world full of lies.

After a decade, I do feel a bit worn out, and for now, I think I've said my piece ... but don't you believe it!

> For 10 years, music lover and history buff Martin Vengadesan combined his two passions in this fortnightly column.

Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

Ahad, 9 September 2012

The Star Online: Entertainment: Music

The Star Online: Entertainment: Music

0 ulasan:

Catat Ulasan