Showing posts with label songs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label songs. Show all posts

23 October, 2009

Malam minggu



This black and white video is probably from the early 80's, probably recorded off an RTM broadcast. It features Sweet September, a group best known for their cheeky song "Nak Kahwin Duit Tak Ada". A tune not unfamiliar to avid listeners of 'retro' Malay radio stations such as Sinar and RMKL (now KL.FM).

What I like about this video is how simple it is. A stand microphone and what looks like a giant muruku serves as its only props, and the performance is recorded in what might as well be a stuffy underlit warehouse. Not much else in the way of camera effects, and no flashy dance moves. Just the songs, the performers; the basics.

A relic of our simpler, humbler past? You know, when we didn't have that much money to throw around?

12 November, 2006

some things just makes you wonder, or worse, worry about the state of today’s youths. Take for example these lyrics from the song “Waiting For The World To Change”, written and performed by John Mayer, taken from his latest album “Continuum”

me and all my friends
we're all misunderstood
they say we stand for nothing and
there's no way we ever could
now we see everything that's going wrong
with the world and those who lead it
we just feel like we don't have the means
to rise above and beat it

he goes on:

it's hard to beat the system
when we're standing at a distance
so we keep waiting
waiting on the world to change

and the chorus - here’s the clincher:

so we keep waiting
waiting on the world to change
we keep on waiting
waiting on the world to change

Something’s just not right here. ‘Waiting’? Just plain ‘waiting’? Waiting for what? Bulan jatuh ke riba? Sorry to say this, but if that’s your idea of a protest song, it’s quite a non-starter isn’t it? Or in parlance you may understand, it’s just lame, geddit?

Go listen to Bob Dylan or something.

To be fair, here’s what the man himself has to say about his song :

“With “Waiting on the World to Change”, Mayer shot for something even more ambitious - something like an attempt to explain his generation’s attitudes about politics. “It’s meant to shed a little light on inactivity and inaction,” he says, “because I don’t believe that inaction is disinterest, I think inaction is preservation – nobody wants to get involved in a debate in which the rules and the facts will change so that they’ll lose. So we end up with this other option, which is, I guess we’ll just have to wait for things to get better.”

what~ever.