Careless Interpretation : The Diary of A Music-Junkie

these last couple days, i have to say i really miss my friends. if not for the oasis thing that brought up old memories, then it’s some of the old songs that brings up nostalgia, the least case, it’s the fact that im just darn lonely here.

it makes me think, sometimes when you’ve got some nice things happens around you, sometimes you just took them for granted. you didnt realize that these kinds of things dont come everyday, in fact its really hard to realize it or repeat it again. i ask you now, can you repeat your high school times? i doubt not.

i miss the times when i just like driving around with my friends. going around the town..with our batik motifs shirt from highschool..roaming jakarta selatan (south of jakarta)..eating nasi goreng kambing di sunda kelapa…listen to some really good songs together……….

will that ever happen again???

yeah..i doubt so too

as unimportant and useless it is to regret the departure of the past, i dont care. i am not feeling very good at the moment..i miss my friends….no..exactly, i miss my friends and the past..

huehuehuehue

its such a lot of fun. imagine rushing out of the highschool in a saturday afternoon. rendezvous in the field. some came from IPS classes, some came from IPA classes. everybody had prepared their own spare clothes just in case you need it to spend the night over in someone’s place (thats usually my place). then, bulking ourself together in this tiny tiny toyota starlet to get ready for an adventure for the umpteenth times to the jakarta streets. accompanied by the perfect songs, the stomach full of our favorite foods and snacks, the city scenery..togetherness never felt better….

(sigh) i miss those times…

"i was sitting in the steering wheel as usual, hanum sits beside me, dharu, as usual, would navigate the street for me, arip would sit in the middle, talking with harlie and me, chatting about whatever stupid things might happened at the school today. sometimes aan would come along, and it will make the backs seats a hell of a lot tighter. somebody would sit on somebody’s lap..usually arip on aan or harlie. stop by at blok s or menteng to pick up our favorite tongseng or somay. then, off to mahakam to our ritual trip to aquarius since all of us were very musically literate so to say =). ended the trip when sun has already disappeared, dropped, most importantly, hanum in her place to let her change some clothes, since tonight we’re going to our Mardi Gras (disco at JAMZ) visit ritual. then off to my house where the rest came along. at my house we would dress up, have dinner. then pick up hanum’s then away for a whole night dancing at jamz. after party, we would scram up at hanum’s place to get some sleep and of course to get another dose of our particular choice of drink: coffee and vodka (officially named vodkop). when the morning came, we go back by me dropping everybody one by one at their places of wish, then i would go back home, sleep, finishing the sequence of our weekend "routinity" =)…phewwh what a day.."

at that story, one particular thing i really miss is having to look back while driving, finding all of my friends having a laugh, enjoying themselves on the trip.

i guess this writing is dedicated to my friends. to tell them how much i miss hanging out with them. i know what went by wont come again, but seeing all you guys together again would really helps to mend this longing-ness.

_________________________________________________________________________________

our songs:
- after the love has gone - earth wind & fire
- september - earth wind & fire
- it’s a shame - dramatics
- you’ll never find another love like mine - lou rawls
- makin happy - crystal waters
- it’s too late - quartz feat. dina carrol
- set adrift on memory bliss of you - pm dawn
- come with me - jesse green
- shine on silvermoon - marilyn mccoo and billy davis jr.
- copacabana - barry manilow
- you are the universe - the brand new heavies
- you - basil valdez
- new snow - flim & the bb’s
- sweet baby - george duke & stanley clarke jr.
- the past - ray parker jr.

me and hanum:
- stairway to heaven - led zeppelin

me and dharu:
- native newyorker - odyssey
- oh girl - the chi-lites

me and harlie:
- new snow - flim & the bb’s

me and arip:
- you don’t know me - brandy

look at Liam’s choice of dress. look at how he cuts his hair. look at the way he swaggers. look at those growing affinity for beard in his 1995 brit award appearance. look at those Lennon glasses that transform him to an unlikely intellectual, calm, mannered person. look at the way he walks. look at how he handles the mike. look at how he jibber jabber on stage. look at his quiet moments. look at his sharp menacing look….once…..in another world…he is who i’ll become.

that was the content of my mind, verbalized as closely as it happened, 7 years ago….

as controversial as it might be, sporting that look in the school, where every other kid were mostly digging the seattle sound fronted by Nirvana. or the atmosphere of the school that maybe werent quite ready for the appearance of a britpopper with its seemingly arrogant attitude, funny haircut, interesting way of walking, i took the look as well. it will even sound more controversial when you realize that british rock or pop, including Oasis, still more or less enforce the image of their ancestors which is Mod (sharply represented in looks by god-of-all-Mod, Paul Weller) which, as a Mod, sports a very MODish way of clothing, oppositing the majority of masses in my school championing the image of the god-of-grunge Cobain with his dirty clothes, his anti-prosper attitude, his kneel-to-the-poor-and-average-Joe-working-class behavior. its not that Oasis is not also a working class, but Oasis’s version of working class in Britain had been tainted by the concept forwarded by the Mods, who, approved as their distinct characteristic, tries to be mod even if youre flat broke. listen to R&B from records from over the Atlantic (America) even if your look only worth folk songs. looking hip even though you smell bad. driving a vespa scooter even if it means you have to stole one. this version of working class, psychologically, is a way to counter the depression that was at the epidemic scale at the time and turn it into some form of pride (check Velvet Goldmine the film, even though its glam rock but you’ll get a nice picture of dressed-up English lads at the 60’s, watch it it got Ewan McGregor in it. to go even further take any biography of a band, preferably the Who or Rolling Stones, that arises from the ashes of the 60’s depression).

these totally oppositing looks create a sort of two poles in high schools during the time. one that would dig Britpop, and the other that would dig Nirvana. since working class flavor of Nirvana (messy, dirty, and anarchy) is more suited to the demographic composition of jakarta, then you know who’s ass is down the line when you support the oppositing party. yep, me. even though i would not like to mention the detail, but there had been several occasion where some degrading had happened just because i took the oppositing sides, i dont wanna get into it, but it happened. and also because of exactly that, i decided to become always differ. championing always my OWN style and music, even till now. thanks largely to Liam Gallagher and the band.

i had Liam’s short haircut back then, people called me by the name of Aldi Indies (shit, why did i want to got into this at the first place??), got a band singing Oasis and britpop/rock songs, sings in the school’s birthday party with a plethora of unrecognized britpop songs (mostly from Shed Seven and Stone Roses), got a big bunch of Oasis merchandise including all records, books, picture books, t-shirts, posters, listening book, magazines, everything), walks in a peculiar Liam-like manner (some say i look as arrogant), got a badly battered Pepe Jeans bag with a BIG own-designed Oasis logo knitted by the the local tailor near my house, brought about my Oasis logo-sticked spanish guitar C series to school often, introduces myself whenever i got the chance as a big Oasis fan, if the person talked to hadn’t yet noticed, preached and influenced people on the theme of a new religion called Oasis-ism a LOT, smiling and laughing a lot while writing this.

it was that crazy i am into it.

believe it, its true

no, i didnt regret it

what truly drives me to keep going like that is the sheer excitement as Oasis continuous to grow as one of the biggest band in world (okay, Britain). their news, their new releases, their often appearace as an object of travesty in mtv along with their videography, all fueled me into thinking: yup this is my band, and they are cool, i wanna be as cool as that. regarding the outcome, well.. i did try didnt i? its better to try than those of you who done nothing (get a little bit irritated >=)) hehehehe. for some time, until college starts, Oasis WAS the undisputed cool band. its productivity especially and the quality of the songs were excelled during that period.

yesterday, as soon as i got the message from iren, i open my backfiles on oasis again. start playing their songs again. and it still good, it feels good, its still powerful as it ever was. now, Stay Young from the single "D’You Know What I Mean?" is blaring at the speakers. reminding me once again how a hard rock suppose to sound like. brings me back too far away of the beautiful and unforgetable days of my high school. ignite back the fire that had practicly died inside me for quite some time now. recalls me again why i have came to love this band so much. bursts back the fun-loving, rebellious, energetic youth inside me again. drives me since a long time to feel like jumping all over the place again in another one of my high school’s birthday party. THIS.. IS THE ANTHEM OF MY LIFE…

2 fingers for OASIS, just like they taught us to salute their fans…cheers OASIS!

Feed your head with all the things you need
When you’re hungry
Stay in bed and sleep all day as long as it’s Sunday
Cos they’ll put words into your mouth they’re making you feel so ashamed

Hey! stay young and invincible
Cos we know just what we are
And come what may we’re unstoppable
Cos we know just what we are

Cos we know just what we are…

If Liam Gallagher is the hard arse, middle finger pointing, menacing look sporting, hotel trashing chap, than you would probably expect that Noel Gallagher, the half part of him, would be his counterbalance right? Not.

engaging as brutally as his little brother, Noel is no different in explosivity, only that he explode it in a slightly different way, through his songs and arrangements of oasis songs. Raw and simply hard rock, simple but catchy lyrics, (which almost wholly underestimated by himself, announcing to the whole world that it doesnt - quote "meant a f**kin’ thing those lyrics") are some of Noel’s manifestation of his explosivity.

Regarding their other similarity, note how both of the brother’s way of communicating to the outside world, forget it, they’re just as equal as each other, downgrading anybody they could think of with mocks, jokes, and the f-word, which apparently doesnt sound really funny to the objects of the prank or to any over 35 year old for that matter..

and they fight each other as well. in fact this is what has made most of the news for Oasis circa their early days. the sibling rivalry, the "guvnor" and the "kid", and the rumors of band broke ups that occuring rather more oftenly than your typical massages in a month.

all of these facts just made me salute them even more. the tension never seem to flown away in Oasis, it occurs in the song, between the brothers, between the members, and you can feel it - no, see it - more black and white in their concert. but to realize that this tension that keeps the band together - and not only together but also productive - will leave you in awe.

now, how exactly, i must ask myself, did i able to find them so totally gripping and captivating? to answer that, let’s get the facts straight first. these boys came from a very poor background, a middle lower working class IN MANCHESTER, which is obviously the prime kitchen for industrial revolution back in 18th century. In that city, hold many tragedies and stories, those which form the city’s inimitable characteristics, and later as the perfect melting pot that produced bands which importance need not be questioned about, stone roses, morrissey, new order, etc. they even had a name for the movement of these bands goddamit, MADCHESTER. shame on you who haven’t noticed.. so this low economic background had provided a perfect base for their justification for, first, party as much as they can, born as a revenge for their unfulfilled lust when being poor, second, a downright careless attitude that formed out of the hardship they’d been having in their pre-Oasis life, and third a self- (and everyone-in-their-surrounding) destruction image that resultantly produces the exact adrenalines they needed for their idolation and awe among their followers, and that includes me.

(the display of these attitudes of theirs, however, are exactly the kind you would restrict your sons and daughters to dear ladies and gentlemen, just ask the british ministry of familyhood..it allegedly consumes the brain of the youth, teaches brutality, inflicting in themselves a gut feeling of just being mere obstrusive to society,.. way to go lads! =>)

their behavior of shove-it-up-my-ass…what it really does is it covers them from the necessity of having to lick anybody’s ass really and be not what they are (for example not swearing at people), providing them the liberty and carelessness to make music and their image as they wanted, not affraid of showing who they really are, even if that means mocking other bands, punching photographers, or trashing hotel rooms, and at the same time, party on, their style, living life, which surprisingly in fact turn to become excitement for any fans who see it. nothing in Oasis can be wrong..

check the music, cigarettes and alcohol, for example, talking carelessly about you being a loser who just cant get nothing right in your life, ending everything with just, again and again, booze and cigs, and under it, founded by layers of pure hard rock, kiss-my-arse music, which is the very essential of the flavour of rock they’ve been, if you may, promoting to the world. check the uncountable number of jerking off other bands, telling what a loser Blur was, telling what a depended-on-Oasis, a Pearl Jam gig was, telling what a joke the glam masking vocal-sporting guy Brian Molko in Placebo. they were just, put it simply, careless and havin’ the time of their life. kick somebody in the head if they say Oasis didn’t make good music to cover it all..

as a consequence, did they get jailed? did they lose their fans? did they lose the spotlight? NO. exactly the opposite. they and their fans have become one. an entity devoted solely to cherish the power of rock music, and especially to the other middle lower chaps in Britain, a pil of freedom that is their revenge to the cruelness and unfairness to the world. what could be better way to show the world that they CAN "do it" than having one of their own kids smashing the world all over the globe with their music.

to see how tens of thousands of our british counterparts jumps, and screams, and sings along Oasis in their concert lets a staggering, stirring feeling grew deep inside, sometimes left me with goosebumps. it’s their party. and theyre avin’ it Their Way, nothing could be more beautiful than that.

because maybe…

youre gonna be the one that saves me..

and after all

you’re my wonderwall…

to be continued…

hahahahahaha, just got a quick reminding today from a good friend of mine about… another good "friend" of mine.. the quick reminding, although as short as a message, enough to fuel me away so far as to a bittersweet nostalgia of the good ol times in high school. the reminder was iren, a junior during my high school days, the object of remembrance is oasis, the band, the inimitable symbol of cruel and arrogance of music as known by a kid by the name of Rinaldi Triasepta, who, apparently, had found them totally irresistible… thank you iren for reminding me..!

telling a story of my high school days wouldnt be enough without telling much or less about oasis, a band i was fanatically into at the time. introduction to oasis was conduited by mtv, which i have grow to hate to now, by their seemingly bizarre, loud, and disturbing first video called "some might say". it was not in fact their first video at all, and it will not in fact be the last i heard from them. strangely remembering those early times where i even had the chance to yell at the TV for showing their video too many times, i was really surprised to find myself adulaterated by their music afterwards.

the real oasis kick-in-the-arse (so the Britons say it: arse instead of ass) came with the ultra staggering video and song, the highest monument in the british pop empire, WONDERWALL. stirring at nature, fascinating at characters, WONDERWALL truly introduced me a whole new perspective and way in being cool.

COOL was arrogance, self-orienting, burberry shirt, beatles hair cut, and half stoned eyes. All personified in one video.

Things pretty much changed since then. the characters were my role model. the music was my soundtrack. the band was my life.. so much was OASIS’ influence during the time, i felt almost obligated to produce myself a writing (such as this) to devote to them entirely, to picturize how they pervade into my life and my way of thinking. and perhaps those will not end there, i might get their newly released album and spare myself the time to come to their newly publicized concert here in berlin.

if there was any word to describe Liam Gallagher at the time, it was COOL. no other deserve the same. it may have been used extensively or carelessly in the past for many different things, but Liam’s COOL was different. he was explosive-like COOL, a dynamite thats ready to blow everyone off the place. when he took on the mike, there is just simply nothing like him, the looks, the gesture, the energy, ROCK at their most VIOLENT..

it was so brutal you just stop and stare and get lifted.

if there is any wall between you and your problems that stops you from kicking them in, then Liam would be the source of power to broke it down. All you wanna do then is kick them all in, smashing them down with all your might, punching it till it sicks down and dies, thrustfully emptying out your feast for the destruction and vengeance thats lurking inside you all along. leaving you free as a free man can be and satisfied as satified as you’d never been for your entire life.. thats what you feel when you hear him sing.

his voice is the voice of rebellion and eruption. voice of carelessness of whatever might happened with all the rules and norms it violates. if there is anything, anything a high school kid needs to comprehend and go through that ruthless, insecure, soul-consuming situation he/she is facing in his everyday life, then Liam Gallagher would be it..

to be continued…

just finished dinner, served with a self made fried seelach fish, a pinch of indonesian chilli, and a hunger of a bear. outside is particularly dark, with big black cloud hanging above the blue sky, i bet cant wait to pour us out again for i dont know how many times.

i feel pretty calm now, better i guess to try to write more properly than usual. i made a promise to myself to try not to boast it too much over a particular cd, forgetting even the fact that i might adore the cd so much. as the temperature chilling, the sun fainting, and the stomach processing, we open our review chapter of the day.

i would like to bring you to a premiere purchase of my mole listening pearl artist, From A Distant Point of View by Geb.el. Geb.el is quite unfamiliar to me, only through several participating tracks on supperclub album did i know it. yet it has attracted my attention, for its distinct approach to lounge music in those supperclub tracks i guess. combining thievery corporation like rhythm section (an improvisational, minimalist broken drums, percussions and house) and ambience synthesizing, with the addition of leftfield vocal overdub or samplings, provide geb.el a fresh new approach to lounging.

its vocaling in entirety especially has afflicted a heavy impact on me. on home, Geb.el chose monolog sampling of a woman, eponymously talking about a home. the woman spoke as if shes reading a brand punchline for an advertising in the radio, pausing between sentences, emotionless but yet sensed stylish. the selection of sampling and, if needed, vocal take construct a bizarrely cool feeling to be inside the atmosphere of this music.

sometimes the samba would pop out in one of the song, for example twilight cruising. its light percussion, dubby, mellow playful synths would spell the spirit of style and sophistication, much to the delight of our need for a good replenishment of our aural interior decoration. on some of the tracks it would reflect its deep house side, but yet i doubt it would be proper to be called by the term deep house since its rather major leaning toward downtempo drum and bass.

alright, lets start

track 1, called love from the sun, breakbeat incorporated with lush deep house vocals, soft synthesizer sustaining a sense of mystical landscape, filled with jazzy acid solo keyboard much to the respect of an acid jazz virtuoso. lyrically, with the chorus whispering "we get a love from the sun", it is declining our seats to imagine a situation of beachside, summer-like atmosphere, proposing a sense of gratitude to the sun, for performing an important role for our holiday. Samba-ism percussion also taken into account in this show-of-force colaboration of downtempo harmony. delight.

Home, as said before, much return to the deep house territory. Starts with thumping, moderately tempo-ed intro like Got To Be You by Solar House, brings you back in earth ground ready to perform a house-y celebration of dance and music. Vocal sampling, underpushed by heavy funky bass lines, remarkably produces a internal hang-ed adrenaline building through the chorus. In the chorus, the mind fooled you again for expecting a boom, down to the floor chorus, instead a repetition of the verse bars occurs, insisting and reminding you carefully that this is not a house track, this is a lounge track.

track 3, called twilight cruising, back into the downbeat broken beat area. exciting drumming on this one, makes you swing back and forth unconsciously, but in a careful, elegant manner that is, since the highly intellectual jazz drumming and hihats, elegant keyboard playing and tone selection demands you to. in very early bars, before the drums came in, it was started with this hip breaking-pattern of keyboard looping, conjuring the image of 70’s retro samba, then it fades away and replaced with the nu jazz arrangements im talking about, which, due to its stylish quality, not an unfortunate thing at all of course. an improvising flute colours also this song, giving it a pinch of nature and tranquilism.

movin’ on, track 4, is more holded-up, discontinued, minimalist, breakbeat. clever, exciting, and, when the vocals come, warming. a effected robot-like two-liner vocal decorates the raw rhythms, discharcing a feel of an ethereal bizarre space-ship interior environment.

wait a long time (im not in love) is the fifth track. breakbeat house is in the house. the elements returns here, the four to the floor beats, overlayed with a second layer of off-center beat positioning and the somewhat sampled housey byron stingily vocal. the tech-feel of the house in appear here as the sampling gets repeated and filtered along the way through the song. didnt forget the funky bass line though, underlying the drums, pushing for the involuntary swaying of body elements. deep, housey track.

the next is a track titled with a question mark, literally i mean "?". a house 4 to the floor drumming pattern intro, perfect for a mixing up on a house dj set. then the kinky, playful snare gets around, then the filtered bass, then the cute bit of percussion. overall not so much of an excitement here.

the 8th track, of all the previous track, i would say is the most peculiar yet the most brilliant as well. imagine a track where you would feel you’re in the 19th century negro slum community down in the state of lousiana, living in this gloomy old house made of wood with no doors, the stinging mosquito everywhere, and the pouring sweat of everyone in the house just create a rotten smell, carefully reminding how much slave work they had done during the day. sad, distressed, separated, thats how you would feel listening to this track. and then slowly, as you began to grip consciousness back to 21st century world, transformed the respect to the composer creator Geb.el for having this menu on his album. totally out of the class, beyond the scale of any ordinary composer creativity, magnificent achievement in stretching the boundaries of electronic music who so oftenly associated with a joyous, happy-bringing, atmosphear.

check out the native negro woman overdub in this track, its just soo sad, so 80’s racism film. listen to the tone of a lament flute modulating mournfully far away in the horizon of the song, gripping to tell you for sure. then suddenly at the perfect beat of a bar, a sound of a blowing gun crashes, a typical male western caucasian dialect entered an arrogant monolog, saying "they only need this…", suggesting that he finished somebody with the gun. the a moment of pause and then again the beat comes again. spectacular!

the rhythming instrumentation of choice in this song is a raw african tribal drums, crashing steadily as the background as the flute takes over the main stage and this pretty horrifying keyboard one-toner once in every 8th bar.

ingenious.

moving away from the utter sadness but not far, Geb.el returns in the next song with blue. also a "blue" track for this album. a very downtempo in character, accompanied with an underlying double bass, a whispering vocal harmony of a choire of men singing just sylables of "uu" created a chillout and dismalling atmosphear at the same time. breaks in readily apparent but with really slow tempo. in the middle of the song, comes the solo one-note sustaining keyboard, before its really surprisingly, and delightfully, enters into the busy drums breakbeat and overlayed improvisation of mellow reverberated keyboard, creating almost a quite storm inside your brain. beside the fact that this song spans almost 10 minutes, it has so many different parts incoporated, each with its own combination between the choire vocal, the breakbeat vocal, the keyboard, and the bass line. in this song, Geb.el seems to pour out all his creativity and ideas into one track.

the final is moon over nightwaves, an extreme stretching of modulated deep keyboard playing, accompanied some rare times with a couple of tingling piano notes. quite tightgripping and nerve easing at the same time. a perfect coda post a latenight feast. class, brilliant, and elegant.

overall From A Distant Point of View by Geb.el (Limited Edition) is something quite of a catch. Fueled only by curiosity out of only 2 songs, i decided to take my bet on this bizarrely named artist, and won the bet. this is no listening to the novice of lounge territory, its deep, intelligent, dreamy if you may, cool and stylish sort of music. From A Distant Point of View truly exposes a view of deep and intimate relationship with electronic music as a medium of expression. one you can only find in the rarest places in the world of music.

if you want another taste of blue eyed soul rarely found nowadays in the shelf of your local music store, in the tradition of the charming bobby caldwell, get eric gadd. his flavour of slick production values, urban soul interspersed with jazzy almost acid sound, the emotions-style backing vocals, dance-oriented pop track ala George Michael, brought me up to another exciting discovery of my musical life. not, of course, that i did not aware of his early appearance on mtv with the now classic "Why Don’t You Why Don’t I" back in 1995. it was exactly, in fact, because of that video i had found the necessary devotion for me to keep searching for his works until today.

its 8.20, just finished sending my friend amesh a message for her birthday, which, in berlin time, supposed to arrive 4 hours later, but since jakarta is 5 hr faster, well you get what i mean.. berlin is cold again, well thats my wheather report for the day, its max 15. so its one of those shitty cold day. thank god i had my food ready. hey, she just reply (amesh), she said, i quote "aku terharuuuuu…How did u rememba? Br plg liputan dari bali ni….Huhuhu,it was great…Btw, ada byk gosip neh!" - 10 mei 2005 01:14. hehehe, im kinda glad, a bit surprise actually, i thought she’s not gonna reply because thats how usually amesh are. she sounded happy in the message, makes me, in a little bit, compare it to my situation. am i happy? i cant help but to remember what she said in a couple emails long ago, she said that deep inside my heart, even if i dont approve it, i know i needed someone to hang around with me to stare at the gorgeous sunset from my room together. that sentence..kinda shook me..and i dont deny it..

i just got this cd on ebay on a mm…. yeah reasonable price. its always a wonder to me how people would miss out on such an soul-lifically important album like this one, sometimes time after time makes me a bit proudful for, even in berlin, acknowledge more rare and cool music than anybody else. in fact i was the one and only bidder on that ebay auction for eric gadd.

this album is called floating, released on 1995. its tracklisting extends to a hefty 13 tracks. are they punchers? well well soon find out..

track 1 starts with a track called what once was. a track that sings about going back to an old relationship one had had once. the relationship apparently torned some times ago, and now the girl want the boy back, but eric made it really clearly in the lyrics

try to find a vacancy

then you come right back to me

yes the world is wild and free

so hurry come to me

experience come to reach

everything inside of me

i can’t understand you woman

why oh why must i

go back, can’t go back to

what once was

great lyrics as far as im concern, but you aint see nothing yet. rhythmically, a moderately tempo dance song. imagine george michael in his rendition of Stevie Wonder’s song As. a thumping floor drum and soul-age bass providing the elegant, funky atmosphere, the accompanying seductive backing vocal of Kelli Sae and Bitti Strachn, all perfects the circle for this supposedly adult contemporary chart breaker. (damn those label and mtv people who overlook this one, but hey i despise mtv anyway)

next, the ultra smooth, soulful people-killin’ Why Don’t You Why Don’t I. Counting down, this might be, my….(uncountable)…repeat of this song. Shit, theres so many moments i had spent with this song. and ever did i feel tired of it? nope till now. and i know this tunes back from ‘95.

what is it about this song? well, this is the reason i am here now, to give justice to it…

its smooth characteristics, like a mellow Simply Red meets a sentimental George Michael, burns the heart of any soul-crazed person including me. its floating string, its sweet jazzy grand piano improvisation, its terribly deep lyrical assasination and on top of it all, the quiet storm vocal all puts me down to the floor faster than a heartbeat, praising this guy’s ultimate geniosity. without trying to be religious, i asked myself how could God invent such beautiful form of art like this?

the third song, called There’s No One Like You, is a reincarnation of the Emotions. Yup, the great disco days female group with the hit song Best Of My Love has resurrected, now with the look and feel of a Swedish chap by the name of Eric Gadd. its funny how influence grows across boundaries of nation, from the hottest trio sister group ever surface the funk disco world in America to one of the coldest places in Europe, Sweden, on which Eric Gadd born and be nurtured by their sound. and that legacy not yet ready to go flat on even a bit, every bit of the Emotions, and in fact their whole league of the 70’s funk masterclass, is here and ready to torrent slashes of funk through the Eric Gadd’s sound system. the funk bass aphrodisiac that came long way from Best of My Love, the orchestral trumpet arrangements, the steady rhythmic-holding drumming, and lastly the beautiful back-soprano voices of the beautiful black retro ladies contribute almost equally, creating a longer lasting proove of the existence of contemporary apostles of the R&B and soul science, such as Eric Gadd.

the fourth track, also like the other track that never made it to the videos and charts, are of the same quality, equally infecting and seducing. another step toward total worship to eric gadd.  entitled Still your man, this song has heart throbbing lyrics :

what will you do

go back to zero see what you will find

the same mind and he’s got you on his mind

you are me and i am you and that’s a feeling oh so grand

to this lovin’ man (that’s who i am)..

sang the eloquently sentimental eric gadd. the beat flows like lisa stansfield "Woman", i almost thought, from time to time, lisa is going to sing too (it would be great though to get Lisa and Eric Gadd in the same stage together). hey, in fact the theme is the same, just that Lisa is speaking about a woman who sticks by her husbands side, and Eric is speaking about the other way around. a total coincidence or another soul-world inter-artist appreciation? great, hum-making, in-mind-staying track.

I Am The One, the fifth track is like George Michael x En Vogue, mystically ingrained the same funkness and female arrogance (maybe its, again, the backing vocal). Eric went to a little bit of rapping in this track, and fluently,.. such a breakthrough for a non-black, european, sweden guy, wouldnt you think?

From I Am The One, we come directly to For You, skipping There She Goes, since its moderately worth-mentioning in nature. For You, oppositely, is worth the jibberish. the Brand New Heavies signature is most apparent in this track, although in other tracks their spirit remains alive. i dont’ know why i brought up Brand New Heavies, and not perhaps, Earth Wind & Fire, i think its because i adore them, a simple as that =), and second, the single male vocal and the live band instrumentation of this track (less synthesizer-arranged) reminds me of Jan Kincaid of Brand New Heavies playing on Never Stop. The clearly emphasized jazz drum, the slappin’-all-over-the-place bass, the vocoder, chamber-ized vocal, and the occasional mid-song vocal solo, all as if bow down to the foretracks flavor of funk opened by Brand New Heavies.

A Miracle is another one of Lisa-Stansfield-embraced track, quality proven though. Bears the 90’s slick produced, R&B track characteristic. This track is followed by Matching, a similar in track in spirit, not less in quality.

Finally, we get to this mellow track that reminds me of JT Taylor or Jon Secada at their glorious days. A romantic sign is imprinted everywhere. The superbly catchy chorus like Boyz II Men or Take That makes me wonder how so that this track never did made it like their tracks. the lyrics, as seductive as JT Taylor’s Long Hot Summer Night, rhymes itself like the following

take off your clothes and let me have this night with you

all of your dreams come true and now its up to you

to make this night a night where love is filled with fire

dont try to stop me cause i came to verify

Oh ma gah, came to verify? what could be lyrically slicker than that? girls, better prepare, boys, youve got the amunition, attack now…..!

here’s the chorus

and as long as the mountains face the sea

i will depend on you

just as long as our love shines wild and free

i will remember you

i cant imagine what Gadd’s girlfriend did when he sang this to her.

a truly delight to the soul….

Track 12, Nothing Secret, an R&B flavor similar to Madonna’s style of instrumentation, with a keyboard synth and bass synth selection similar to Human Nature and Secret.

Track 13, the last one, a track very well deserved as a coda track in this beautiful album, literally brings you in context back. Entitled Floating On Love, a punching chorus track, no short the quality of I Will Always Depend On You. a powerful singing. a brilliant arrangements. a love song at its best seductivity and layback sense that will eases your day and floats your mind…

Before i closed this review, i need to stress out the Eric Gadd contribution to this album, not only did he sing, he write the WHOLE song and plays ALL instruments and programming beside the few guest musicians that occasionally fills grand piano, guitar, trumpet and percussion. all the basses, drum programming, extra synth sounds, that essentially made where soul and funk-ity are, were all his. these are proves that there are gems hidden in this awkward world of indutrialized music. it is Eric Gadd, whose, from this moment on, immensity in soul never to be questioned again. he sits comfortably up there, as far as im concern, with the soul contemporaries greats of George Michael, Lisa Stansfield, Simply Red, Maxwell, and Brand New Heavies. Buy this album, cherish his works..

Berlin’s temperature is hot at the very moment. spanning up to thirty degrees celcius, heating up the cone blocks that made the streets and the people walking above it. the sighted flanks of the buildings around leopold platz berlin reflects a glowing light-yellow color omnidirectionally including toward the interior of my room, brightened it accordingly in colours. even in this time, 7.35 pm, you could still feel the heat of atmosphere outside.

without trying to become too mellowdramatic about it, i try to write at this heated moments. trying to catch a ray of this city heat to put into written language and in the meanwhile pour out any thought i had been grueling about since afternoon.

lecturer of multicultural management, Dr. Andreas Novak, this afternoon explains that out of the four basic communication means, listening, speaking, reading, and writing, a research shows that most people during school were thought at most at writing, which in fact, the most used communication means in our everyday life is listening (which excells to 60% relative of the other communication means, meanwhile writing is only 9%). he concluded that schools must teach students more to listening, where we as human most frequently used.

interesting isn’t it? listening.. the simplest and most passive way of communication takes in fact the most of our time in doing communication. i wont argue with it of course, since listening is truly what i love most. it is the most celebrated perhaps of all senses. in it, sound tickles to vibrate the most treasurous impulses we will ever feel in this life. the impulses that just brings you somewhere else, out of this physical world you’re sitting in right this moment. letting you leave unconsciously the mega-binding corelation of time and space that not once in the whole history of this universe ever broke. transcend what so called soul, the being inside human being, to be lifted by the most supernatural forces to an ethereal heightness un-understandable to the un-artistic at heart, surfacing a sense long forgotten of a memory buried deep in the past, and re-constructing the past and our taken for granted memories into the main stage where we can once again be the actor. so free, so pretty, so enliving.. to listening in fact, i dedicate this whole blog…..

this afternoon, i am listening to it’s the first time by löis lane. it’s just i dont know why, this song gives me shivers. it is a perfect 80’s jazz pop song. Brought the same heart killing sentimentals like swing out sisters or spandau ballet or johnny hates jazz. the unbelieveably amazing chorus, the light flying-to-the-cloud female vocal harmonies, the swinging and four to the floor drums, and on top of it all a plaster of saxophone and keyboard interlacing each other forming the sense of the lightness, the innocence spirit of the 80’s.

i remember my old house, i remember the old living room, i remember the old paintcolor of my wall, i remember the hotness of the days, i remember the laughs, i remember the endless playing and running around, i remember my old sister coming home from her high school, i remember her silly 80’s haircut, i remember her putting these 80’s tunes in the radio, i remember the comfort, i remember the joy, i remember the indescribable feeling of how beautiful life was at my childhood…. to remember that you would pay for anything…

as the song starting to reach its end, i realize i have to get back to earth, to give this song the review it deserves. fronted by dutch sisters, monique klemann and suzanne klemann, written by their keyboardists and backing vocals evert abbing, the dutch people really got a gem on their hands on this one. lois lane is one the best dutch band you almost never heard. their known release to the indonesian radios are this song and "Wanna Be". only two of a number of their album releases.

despite how doubtful i am about this song’s survival into the 90’s world and even 21st century because of the distinctive jazz pop arrangements, i could not think of any more 80’s jazz pop sound than this. this track is truly the zeitgeist of the time. the definitive standard. the song you would sample to give your sons and daughters a glimpse of what music was like in the 80’s, at least for me, a soulful person who can’t quite receive the better of all those new waves things. them (Lois Lane), Swing Out Sisters, Sade, Workshy, Basia, and all those other soulful jazzy poppy female vocalists at the time are the trendsetters that will never leave history for its unimitable and unmatchable contribution of 80’s jazzy pop times. a times where i grew up and taste the beautifulness of soul and jazz and pop, where times seems to be at its most burdenless, at its most joyous, at its most heart-stopping to remember.

collect this record as a triggering token to remember those times….