Song of The Week - Hollywood's Not America

Think I'll start posting a song that I like every week to share :)



Hollywood's Not America

Born Helena Jane
With a restless soul
She moved west to California
Became a centerfold

But once you change your name
Well the pieces fall
Now she hardly recognizes herself at all

And there’s never any rain, when you want it
A hollow little game, and you’ve won it
Looking for a thrill but you’ve done it all

So long, put your blue jeans back on girl
Go home
Remember Hollywood’s not America
So long put your blue jeans back on girl
Go home
Remember Hollywood’s not America
O yea

And everybody here's
from somewhere else
You can make a million dollars, but you might lose yourself
And you can take the heat will your heart grow cold
They say acting’s just pretending, but even that gets old

And there’s never any rain, when you want it
A hollow little game, and you’ve won it
Looking for a thrill but you’ve done it all

So long, put your blue jeans back on girl
Go home
Remember Hollywood’s not America
So long put your blue jeans back on girl
Go home
Remember Hollywood’s not America

And I know what you do when
I know that you
You can be anything you want to be

So long, put your blue jeans back on girl
Go home
Remember Hollywood’s not America
So long put your blue jeans back on girl
Go home
Remember Hollywood’s not America
Hollywood’s not America
It’s not America

美丽村

This song was written when I kind of down and didn't really know whatto do in my life in NTU. I guess the lyrics represent a feeling of wanting to escape. There really isn't much to say, was still sort of experimenting with my vocals here.

It didn't help that I was listening to a lot of Hotel California at that period of time. The lyrics are basically a rip-off of the song Hotel California and the show The Village.

Hah!

The song is on my Reverbnation.

Tommy Emmanuel - 我会永远支持你！

Tommy Emmanuel is my hero.

I discovered him browsing through the videos on this website called WoodSongs. You can download the free concerts here and here and here.

He is mainly a acoustic fingerstyle player, although he used to play electric. Frankly, I wouldn't have idolised him if he was just simply a great guitar player. It's the things that he says that makes him different from most other players I see. Check out this interview with Tommy. I believe I have watched this interview only about 250 times.

I would even go so far as to say that knowing about this man, hearing what he says has given my life direction.

He is the perfect embodiment of who I want to be when I reach 52 years old. Then I will die a happy old man.

He has come to Singapore two times to date, and I'll post more about this later on.

Antoine Dufour

I'll never cease to be amazed by guys like this.
Read in Roald Dahl's story, The Hitchhiker (the hitchhiker is actually a pickpocket (who calls himself a fingersmith)) - he says something like this :
The secret to life is to become very very good at something that is very very difficult to do.

Hmmm.. Looking at these guys.. I reckon that's kinda true.

Michael Hedges

I knew that he played awesome acoustic guitar in countless altered tunings...didn't know he was such a great performer as well...

Discovering Hendrix and Radiohead...

During this period of time, after I got my electric guitar, naturally I started looking for songs that I could play on the guitar. I started seeing this guy appearing on almost every guitar magazine I could get my hands on. (to the left, to the left...)

Who is this guy, I thought? And what makes him so great? Why is he holding the guitar upside down? I found that his name was Jimi Hendrix.

I started listening to his songs, and truthfully initially I didn't get it. I was a pop listener up till this point and naturally listened to the vocals first and foremost. What I didn't listen to was the way he played the guitar, and he was playing all those while he was singing.

It was only I started listening carefully to the guitar playing on songs like Little Wing, Voodoo Chile and The Wind Cries Mary that I realised... man that is some guitar playing. It was kind of different from the chinese songs appergios and strumming styles that I had been playing up till this point. It was cool.

So I started learning his songs. And also started buying lots of pedals which I all sold after discovering Guitar Rig.



Another band I discovered during this period was Radiohead. Before really discovering them, about the only song I heard from them was the song "Creep". Which is a brilliant song, except that the Radiohead members themselves hate that song. Anyway I started listening to the albums The Bends and OK Computer. These two albums have been in heavy rotation on my player ever since. It opened me up to world where songs could be unique and yet still have that essence of pop in it.

Another thing about Radiohead. I don't know how they do it, their fans are really die-hard. They support them no matter what they put out. After the success of OK Computer, Radiohead followed with a series of really experimental albums, which frankly I didn't care for, except maybe three or four songs. They have achieved Cult status among the music world, totally free to do any kind of music they like and they will always have the support. That is really something to be jealous of.

Recently they came out with a new album called "In Rainbows" in which their marketing campaign sort of gives the traditional record company with their A&R executives the middle finger. They put their songs on the net, and customers can download the songs at ANY price they wished. All because they can afford to, because they are Radiohead.

Way cool.

Pier Buys an Electric Guitar...

GOD is IN this guitar!

At this moment of time in Attitude Music School, I was exposed to the electric guitar. They had these beat-up TGM Les Pauls and Strats lying around. Kim and me would jam together in the jamming room and I would pretend to be a rock star.

During the holidays, when I wasn't studying in NTU, I would take up short vacation jobs here and there. From there, I saved up some $ for an electric. Did some research on the net and found this brand "Godin" , which was the same company that made my Seagull Guitar. I went to this place called Ranking Sports in Bras Basah, and they carried this guitar. I wasn't sure of how to choose an electric guitar and I played it clean all the time. It sounded nice to me. So I got it. It is a beautiful one, but as I learnt more electric guitar songs I realised that this wasn't a typical versatile electric - it's kinda geared towards jazz/blues playing.

So armed with this Godin LG SP90 I started playing in a band in Attitude Music School. At that time I think it had already changed name to Echo Music. Which was why the name of our band, the third one in the school, was called EM3. EM3 consisted of Latchmi the female singer, Lawrence the other guitar player , Er Quan the bassist and Kim the keyboard player. I was sort of the rhythm guitar/backup vocal.

The band grew stale quickly. We were promised avenues to perform by Djasli, the band instructor but we never really performed in public. It was always cancelled at the very last minute. Djasli is one of the best guitar players I have met in Singapore, and we did learn much about playing in a band from him.

After some time I left to play unplugged acoustic guitar with another group.

Pier Writes <<最好>> , Enter XKJ

<<最好>> was written in 2003, the night I asked my girl-friend to be erm, my girl-friend. I can't really write a song if I am not feeling anything. To me songs are about memories. And this was my memory of that moment of ecstasy. You can tell by the childishness of the lyrics. If it sounds kinda like a Jason-Mraz rip-off, that's because it is. I was listening to Jason Mraz's stellar first album at that time.

So after I wrote it, I submitted it to a local song-writing competition called <<心情容器>> and it got into the semis. Like an idiot I went to this local chinese pop pub called Mu Chuan and sang the song. Needless to say, my performance was sub-par compared to the other seasoned people.

Then came along another song-writing competition called <<飞跃时空>>. I submitted this same song again, just trying my luck. Amazingly it was chosen for the semis again. I was kinda afraid (remember I am an introvert) to stand alone on such a big stage, so I decided to get some of my friends into trouble.

Thus our band Xiao Kong Jian (XKJ) was born. It consisted of 2 guitarists (Mun and me) and 1 bass player (Kim). No drummer? Yep we didn't have one. No drummer friends.

So by some stroke of luck, we were chosen for the finals at DBS Auditorium. That was something for me, considering that it was one of my first songs.

In the finals, I sang out of tune , probably because I over-practiced and left my throat sore. Didn't win anything, but whatever we did with this song serves as an unforgettable memory. It was also a time when I was truly enjoying myself with music.

Except when my father told me on the way home that 你唱歌没水准。

That was really a bummer. Coz up till that point I thought I was a not bad singer. Reality bites.

ps. You can hear the actual version of <<最好>> that I sent for the competition in my ReverbNation page.

Attitude Music School

Me, Mun, Kim and Kevin

During army, being bored during the weekends with nothing to do, I decided to take up guitar lessons at a local school in chinatown called Attitude Music.

There I met Chris, the resident vocal teacher, who is a pretty nice person , though he seems to have only 640kb ram.

My first guitar teacher was a guy called 永邦 , who left after one lesson. A guy called Roy came to take over from him, and he was a skinny guy who wore his handphone around his neck with tattoo on his arms, I think. But he was a great guitar player. I think he still plays in local pubs, not sure where though.

Turned out later that 永邦 was working on his album in Taiwan and he soon came out with an album. Think he came out with two more before he disappeared from the scene. I think he went to do backstage stuff like song writing and production.

The highlight of my stay in Attitude Music School was I met his skinny scrawny looking guy called Kim. So we started jamming together, and Kim introduced me to Mun. Kim and Mun have turned out to be my best friends in music. (My other good friends don't really play)
They in turn intro-ed me to Kevin, who has a nice soothing RnB voice for the ladiessssss...

Luther Music and my 大老婆

All this is getting really self-indulgent.

So Corporal Pier in Army in the year 2001 was drawing a monthly salary of 320 bucks per month. So stop complaining all you new pussy soldiers who can't even carry your alibaba bag on your shoulder! Be a man and stop dragging around those auntie pseudo-duffer bags... it sickens me.

Corporal Pier heard strange things about the jungles in Brunei. People getting crushed by trees which were struck down by lightning. People dying of heat exhaustion. People falling down and becoming crippled.

So I decided, before I die, I gotta get a guitar which I really liked. Since then, I have been using this excuse to buy new guitars.

From the net, I came across this brand that all the netizens said were bang for the buck - Seagull Guitars. I searched for the local distributor and saw Luther Music listed as one of them. At that time, Luther Music was situated in IMM. Took me quite long to locate the humble little shop. I went into the shop and nodded at the chubby little man (sorry luther) who I later realised could play power keyboards. I took the seagull guitar off the wall and started playing the intro to the song "It Might Be You". So Luther came round the corner and said to me "Go on, continue playing!"

Wow. No one told me to continue playing before. All I heard up till this point was "Stop playing!" , "Mai4 Cha4 La4~, #@$@#" and "Brother, very noisy!!!"

So I did. And between two guitars there, I couldn't decide. So once again, I followed the instinct of all men - looks. I chose the nicer looking one of the two.

And I went home with my 大老婆， shown here :


Now a thing about Luther - he may not have the best prices in the business, but his customer service is constantly awesome. When you buy something from him, you know you are in good hands because if it doesn't work as advertised or there is some problem with it, Luther will sort it out for you. I have been a customer of his since then. He is the man if you need recording equipment.

First Trip to Davis Guitar

So during JC, I went with Yixian to this guitar shop called Davis Guitar (every guitar player in Singapore knows where this is, coz they sell the cheapest strings) and bought an acoustic guitar with the brand name Grand (I think they still sell it). I knew nuts about choosing acoustic guitars (and I suspect Yixian knew nuts too) and bought that guitar purely on looks, and the fact that I could plug it in and become a PRO overnight.

Well, it made me many hokkien beng friends cause they all wanted to sing Rang Ren Qing Ge and Nuo Wei Shen Ling (songs by a chinese rock singer Wu Bai who was super hot at that time).

I sold that guitar after army.

Didn't really like the sound of it unplugged, sounded kind of tinny.

TJC Guitar Club

I have always been attracted to music.
It's just the mom sent me for computer classes instead of music classes. Which is just as well, it isn't easy to make a comfortable living out of music in Singapore anyway. And I don't really believe in the whole struggling musician thing.

So it was a natural thing that I ended up in the TJC Guitar Club. Before that, I didn't really know any friends who played instruments. The teacher was Mr Tomas, and he really amazed the shit out of me at that time. He still does. Today he has his own company at http://www.tomas-music.com/ . This guy can really play man. And if you are able to spare huge bucks for wonderful classical guitars, he is the man.

However, it was this fellow TJcian, Yixian that really made me want to play guitar. He could play Emil Chou songs and accompany himself. After playing the boring classical repertoire in the guitar club, we would play and sing along to super bala chinese favourites like 让我欢喜让我忧 ，你这么舍得我难过.So I would hang round him and ask him every thing about guitar.

Zhihui, another guitar club member, was another guy who inspired me to play. I think he probably inspired the "angmoh" side of me by introducing me to guitar-friendly eagles songs. I think till now the songs I write all kinda folk/country sounding. Probably because of him.

So being an introvert, I would lock myself in my room with my 80-dollar yamaha classical and play till the wee hours of the morning. After a few months I tried writing my own song. I remember the chords were derived from a chinese song called Lian Ai Zhen Hou Qun. I can still remember the song's melody, so it must have been not bad, huh?

So after 1 year of playing being a closet guitar player / songwriter wanna-be, I had a chance to perform at the annual TJC Guitar Nite. At that time, Xiong Tian Ping was pretty famous. Now he's just fat. Anyway, I massacred his lovely song "Huo Cai Tian Tang" at that show, but surprisingly some people liked it (these are my friends man !!).