Growing Pain (Afterword)

This has concluded my “Growing Pain” series and also my first dabble in blogging. Partly inspired by Chi’s wonderful concoction, Come Back To Love, the idea to compose this series has been a brainchild of mine for quite some times. However the actual course of creation had been in fits and starts and likely it will be a long while before I make another attempt again. Through this process I have come to appreciate even more the dedications of people like Chi have to keep their blogs going. I can’t count the number of times I have thought of giving up. My biggest concern had been the fact that I can write mostly in English only because I don’t know how to do Chinese text input (other than cut and paste of course). The question was would there be an audience – for those who would be interested in my subject matters, would they be interested in reading it in English? In the end I decide to see it through because each of them has been a fond memory of mine. Regardless how dim a footnote they might be, they deserve a small corner in the universe of World Wide Web. After all, 誰曾燃亮我的心始終一生在心內逗留.

Growing Pain (Part VII)

卻見我影身邊說 話我不孤單

Marketed under the obvious belief that the sum is greater than the parts, EMI released this compilation album named 新歌 Encore in 1983 probably just to fulfill contractual obligation. Headlined by such “chart topper” acts like 李龍基 and 葉麗儀, it featured galore of classic non-hits such as 無謂令我半天吊, 世界仔 with names that aptly completed the picture. Among all these insipid titles are two new songs, 過去．現在．將來 and 影子, by the comeback artist 特樂樂隊 that, if under better circumstances might have some potential.

Delegating 特樂樂隊 to the ensemble cast of a Z-grade compilation album belied their impact on Hong Kong pop music. Although 新歌 Encore marked the first time they had recorded materials in Cantonese, D’Topnotes, as they were known back then, has released many English records back in the 60s, when English pop ruled the rooster in Hong Kong, and they even reached certain amount of international success. In fear of dreading into area that is completely out of my element, I will refer those who are interested in D'Topnotes to Muzikland, someone more knowledgeable on the HK poineer pop artists

With its cheerful and upbeat melody that brought back memory of their 60s heyday, 過去．現在．將來 naturally enjoyed more airplay, and it was even plugged on 勁歌金曲. However, it is the melancholic lyrics of 影子 (particularly 縱見滿街也是人 亦覺得孤單) that stayed with me throughout the years. Never released in CD as far as I know, my version of 影子 was ripped from vinyl record and that is as good as it can get!

The comeback of 特樂樂隊 never rises above the occasional musical guest appearance on EYT, and 新歌 Encore remained their last foray into Cantopop. Obscure among the generation grew up on Cantopop, D’Topnotes, and particularly lead vocalist/bassist/keyboardist Christine Samson, still enjoyed some loyal followings today. A search on YouTube resulted in an unexpectedly numerous clips of their TV appearances. None more surprising than this rendition of Alan Tam’s 最愛的你, when Christine even sang a segment of Kurahashi Ruiko’s (倉橋ルイ子 ) Japanese original, Last Scene ni ai wo komete (ラストシーンに愛をこめて)

Growing Pain (Part VI)

凡事渴望永久的 何故不能長伴我

為何曾共我一起的 像時日總未逗留

Two of the most memorable classics in Hong Kong pop history in term of lyric writing, today 當天那真我 and 追憶 have endured the test of time to become the fan favorites. However, it is easy to forget that upon their release, neither one is considered the major plugs by the record company. Released in the album Elisa Chan 陳潔靈 in 1986, 當天那真我 was passed over by 誰令你心癡 in order to capitalize the unexpected chemistry between Elisa Chan and Leslie Cheung in their previous duet 只怕不再遇上. Included in 林子祥創作歌集 in late 84, to ride the wave of his own Christmas box office hit movie 《貓頭鷹與小飛象》, the theme song 誰能明白我 was the first plug of the album followed by the even bigger hit 每一個晚上, George Lam went on to host concerts in Hong Kong Coliseum for then record-setting thirteen straight nights – he was simply at the peak of his career. In fact 當天那真我 and 追憶 were so overshadowed that neither was plugged in 勁歌金曲 and their lasting popularity is purely through word-of-mouth and, above all, their timeless lyrics.

Both are penned by 林振強, 當天那真我 and 追憶 each has its own following but people seldom put them together. However, for me they are distant cousins of one another: both span from childhood to adolescence to adulthood, both are episodic, both consist of three anecdotes of life and both convey the sense of loss in growing up… With writing as good as these, there isn’t much I want to add lest it would distract from the lyrics. A quirky hobby of mine is translating my favorite Chinese lyrics into English but I have always been too embarrassed to show to people. However, just in case there will be non-Chinese speakers stumble onto this blog, I am putting my lamentable translation here just so that people can appreciate Richard Lam’s haunting lyrics. This is in my very small way a tribute to a very prolific (see 林振強作品列表 for complete list) and sorely-missed lyricist in Hong Kong pop history

當天那真我/ The Real Me of That Day

曲 : 綱倉一也

Music: Amikura Kazuya

詞 : 林振強

Lyric: Richard Lam

記起那天　*尚束孖辮那一天

Remember the day when I was still in my ponytail
我家中的那隻鳥兒無聲的死去
The bird at home had died without a sound

我叫嚷著　哭得心都碎
I wailed and cried my heart out

望著籠兒　頭兒垂不捨去
Staring at the empty cage, my head dropped and couldn’t let go

星　曾在晚空望我 問　問我淌淚為何　
The star has once given me his regard, asked me why I am crying

我　我說我甚難過 凡事渴望永久的　卻總要飄過仿似歌

I said I am so heartbroken. Why does everything I wish to last have to pass like a song?

我記起在青春中那一天
I remember one day in my youth

*有個不知天高的女孩隨風衝去
There was a naïve little girl followed the wind to chase after her dreams

要去獨力改變一切

Vowed to change the world single-handedly

並罵成年人無聊　諸多不對
And sneered at the adult world as banal and meaningless

歲月令許多不滿擱置在旁邊
Time has brushed aside many discontents

有太多妥協教夢兒無聲的粉碎
Too many dreams have been crushed by too many compromises

不很清楚當天那真我 在何年和何時偷偷死去
Never quite sure exactly when the real me of that day has secretly died

星　曾在晚空望我 問　問我淌淚為何　
The star has once given me his regard, asked me why I am crying

我　我說我甚難過 凡事渴望永久的　何故不能長伴我

I said I am so heartbroken. Why couldn’t anything I wish to last stay with me?

我記起在秋之中有一天
I remember a day in one autumn

你似風中的一片葉兒曾經飄過
You drifted into my life like a leave in the wind

你到現在都居於記憶裡

Till these days you still live in my memory

但為何時辰從來不可倒退
But why is that time would never turn back?

星　曾在晚空望我 問　問我淌淚為何
The star has once given me his regard, asked me why I am crying

我　我說我甚難過 凡事渴望永久的　何故不能長伴我

I said I am so heartbroken. Why couldn’t anything I wish to last stay with me?

星聽了　跟著變沉默

The star heard me, and then turned silent…

*When Anthony Lun covered this song in 1993, these are changed to 尚很矮小那一天 and 有個不知天高的少年隨風衝去 respectively in order to make it less gender-specific

追憶/ Reminiscence

曲 : 林子祥

Music: George Lam

詞 : 林振強

Lyrics: Richard Lam

編︰鍾定一

Arrangement: Danny Chung

童年在那泥路裡伸頸看　一對耍把戲藝人

Once in my childhood I stretched my neck on a muddy road to watch a pair of troupers

搖動木偶令到它打觔斗　使我開心拍著手

Maneuvering a puppet to tumble around which cheered me to clapping my hands

然而待戲班離去之後　我問

Yet after the troupe left I asked

為何木偶不留低一絲足印

Why did the puppet leave without a trace?

為何為何曾共我一起的像時日總未逗留

Why is everyone who was once with me like time that could never stay?

從前在那炎夏裡的暑假　跟我爸爸笑著行

Once in a summer I was having hearty chat with my father

沿途談談來日我的打算　首次跟他喝啖酒

Together we talked about my future plan and for the first time shared a sip of wine

然而自他離去之後　我問

Yet after he passed I asked

為何夏變得如冬一般灰暗

Why is summer grey and dark like winter?

為何為何曾共我一起的像時日總未逗留

Why is everyone who was once with me like time that could never stay?

從前共你　朦朧夜裡　躺於星塵背後

Once was with you, in a hazy night, lied under the starlight

難明白你　為何別去

Could never understand why you part

留下空空的一個地球

Leave me with just an empty Earth

＊徘徊悠悠長路裡　今天我知道始終要獨行

*Wandering in the long road of life I realized eventually I will have to walk on my own

閑來回頭望去追憶去　邊笑邊哭邊喝啖酒

Once in awhile I would stop to reminisce amidst the laughter, tears and sips of wine

然而就算哭仍暗私下慶幸

Yet even in tears I am still secretly grateful

時日在我心留低許多足印

For time had left a lot of footsteps in my heart

從前從前曾共我一起的仍然在心裡逗留

Whoever was once with me has still stayed within my heart to these days

重唱　＊ Repeat *

從前誰曾燃亮我的心始終一生在心內逗留

Whoever has once lighted up my life will continue to stay within my heart

Growing Pain (Part V)

你說這叫長大 我說多麼的費解

One year after she immaculately reinvented herself from Shirley Wong but another year away from becoming 王菲, Faye Wong could do no wrong in 1993. Following up to the success of 容易受傷的女人 with 執迷不悔 at the beginning of the year, Faye proved herself to be not just a flash in the pan. Handpicked by Wong Kar Wai later that year to star in his groundbreaking cult hit, 《重慶森林》 did to Faye what “A bout de soufflé” did to Jean Seberg in the sixties - as the figurehead of La Nouvelle Vague. In between Faye released 十萬個為什麼？in that late summer which confirmed she had caught up with, if not knocked out, reigning Hong Kong divas Sandy Lam and Sally Yeh.

What is significance about 十萬個為什麼？ is that it is a transitional phase in Faye’s singing career, from the straight R&B flavor to the more European influence. To bring the gap, producers Alvin Leong and Stanley Leung cooked up a theme of a child’s inquisitiveness in order the milk the most out of Faye’s ethereal voice. Surprisingly, even with a duel version (Chinese and English), what appeared to be the cornerstone of the album 長大 actually didn’t receive at much attention as the more showy 冷戰, 流非飛 or the mainstream ballad如風.

It might just as well because the melody of 長大 had left much to be desired. It is not helping matter that for a song about growing up, the lyric of 長大 is competent but not terribly remarkable and the lyric of the English version “Do We Really Care?” is so corny that it borders being pretentious. Still, by contrasting “天空永恆幻變　多麼奧妙” at childhood with “猜想以後　不改只有遠遠的星宿” at adulthood, 陳少琪 did at least manage to inject a sense of irony into the song.

Growing Pain (Part IV)

但昨天沒法等 像昨天的風箏

The release and subsequent success of Prudence Liew’s debut album 劉美君 had all the makings of a legend: Hailed from the newly established record company Current, it was David the small independent label versus the Goliath the big corporate publicity machine and, against all odds, won it. With amazing longevity that buoyed by each successive individual hit song, the album stayed on the upper echelon of the chart for over eight months and spawned not one but two extended remix EPs. It was pushed to the front of the queue for all the year-end award contention, only to come to a rather ugly end.

I could never shake off the memory of the pissed-off look on Prudence when she realized her 最後一夜 was shut out from the year-end top ten 勁歌金曲 (rumour had it that 最後一夜finished eleventh) even when her album has just scooped the Best Album award. Her disappointment is understandable because she never came close to that élite level again. However, it would be a shame if she felt she was slighted for the best album was definitely the worthier win between the two. In additions to the underdog victory, what made the success of the album so special is the fact all the songs are original except 最後一夜, a bold feat in the 80s and even bolder for a new artist. Even more remarkable is the variety of styles in each of the creation - 隔, 霓虹鳥, Mind Make Up and my favorite 亞熱帶少年, none of them fall into the mainstream genre of its time. Prudence might have emerged as the shooting star from her debut album but for me the production is the true champion here.

Prudence’s persona has always been someone who has been around the block, even as early as the knocked up teenager in 《江湖再見》, long before she established herself as a singer. Among the many goodies in her debut album, naturally it was songs like 午夜情 or 最後一夜 that got the public’s fancy the most. The more on the refreshing side 清晨 would never come to my attention had a classmate not introduced it to me. My classmate has become a first-time father last year. Twenty years has passed since this song was released, I doubt 清晨 will cross his mind very often these days but I wonder if he would take his new born son go kiting some days

Growing Pain (Part III)

愿你多珍惜 每分好感受

A forgotten chapter in Hong Kong pop music history.

From late 70s up to about 1983, one of the major forces that drove new blood to Hong Kong music industry was no doubt the folk movement. Caught on wave created by Taiwanese artists like 劉文正, 齊豫 and megahits 橄欖樹 and 蘭花草, teenagers across the city rushed to pick up guitar playing. RTHK joined in the fun and hosted the first ever 城市民歌公開創作比賽 in 1981. Exactly who the winners are has been lost in time but a few songs did emerge from the competition and became the favorite of many school music contests: every student was guaranteed to at least one treat of 問, 昨夜的渡輪上 or 為甚麼 each year and these songs remain the indispensible selection for the endless reincarnation of “Best Folk Songs Collection” even to these days.

Sadly the same cannot be said about the people who sang them. Their names are either never mentioned in any of the countless Hong Kong pop history look back brought up by the so-called 集體回憶 (collective memory), or other like 黃敏華 and 李麗蕊 whose folk root are completely omitted. With the exception of 林志美 (because of her cross-over success), few people would be remotely interested in the whereabouts of 李炳文, 區桂芬, 何國禧, 許炳森 or 陶贊新, the singer of this song:

Written by 孔憲雲 (anyone out there knows who he is?) with lyrics by 劉向明 and 陶贊新 himself, 童真 starts off with a very captivating piano trill, an introduction that never fail to make me drop everything and lost myself in reminiscing of a bygone past. As a singer, the voice of 陶贊新 is a little unpolished but somehow it fits perfectly with the naiveté of the song.

Obscure though he definitely was (the last I read about him is a 1983 interview with 好時代 when he was promoted as one of the six new artists in the EMI release 我哋既), 陶贊新 actually is still somewhat active in the music industry today – he penned the lyric for Joey Yung’s theme song of the movie Toy Story 2, 像昨天她喜歡我.

Growing Pain (Part II)

凡每個夢也要實現　管它有多麼遠

After achieving unprecedented success in Hong Kong music industry together in the 70s, Sam Hui parted way with Polydor amicably in 1983 and signed with a relatively new local label Contec Sound Media. Founded in 1982, Contec only had one artist up to that point, Paula Tsui, but her first record with them had received phenomenal promotion, including a never before TV commercial for an album release that featured her monster hit 隨想曲.

Contec was equally no expense spared their first collaboration with Sam Hui 新的開始. Released in late 1983, it was also the year music video has officially arrived as the new outlet for pop music. Banking on Sam Hui’s enormous popularity, Contec themselves, instead of letting TVB churn out run of the mill products, filmed a series of music videos for some of the songs in 新的開始 and booked an half an hour time slot in TVB to launch each of the videos.

Compared with the standard of its time, Contec’s music videos have much higher production budget and more sophisticated cinematography. For instance, part of 風中趕路人 was filmed in an empty MTR train. The filming of 氹氹轉 is a no-brainer, with its subject matter the boat ride in 荔園 comes as a second nature. The only problem was that the boats are only big enough for those whose age has yet reached double digit. So the public is thankfully spared from the image of Sam Hui cramping himself into that tiny raft. Instead the boat ride was filmed as a miniature toy with Sam’s figure superimposed onto it. As the song draws to its conclusion, the tempo of the video picks up and the image was shrunk and tiled over the screen, rivaling the extravagance of some Busby Berkeley musical. Such elaboration has rarely been attempted again in Hong Kong music- videodom. It is a shame that Contec’s music videos have never been available to public and are seldom seen again after their initial release.

In retrospect, Contec’s confidence on Sam Hui might have a little overstated because by then Sam was almost imperceptibly but surely slipping. The song 氹氹轉 was revered for the philosophical lyric “世事又好似船船 係最尾又變在前 前既也定會落後面 不必眼光太淺”, which enabled it to rise above a mere children song. It was also strangely prophetic – within less than six months after the video was broadcast, Alan Tam would have released two mega sellers, 霧之戀 and 愛的根源, and dethroned Sam as the numero uno in Hong Kong music scene.

One side note, net friend Terrence in his blog entry 《憶蓮》盒帶 [G-cassette] mentioned that The CBS original G-cassette had only been used in 憶蓮, 灰色 and 因你別離 three releases in Hong Kong music history. However, judging from the look of it, CBS seemed to steal the concept from Contec and packaged it as G-cassette themselves. What do you think?

Growing Pain (Part I)

圓圓面兒害羞像紅霞　只是笑不說話

If you ask people of my generation in Hong Kong what the most memorable children program on TV is, most would say 《小時候》, 《跳飛機》or even 《醒目仔時間》, few would bring up《小太陽》. Even for those who remember such a program, they would find themselves lost in words if asked to give a synopsis of the story, for they remember the program only because of its theme song, worse still they might say it is just like《小時候》.

That’s just too bad. It is true that both《小時候》and 《小太陽》were released roughly the same time, both were directed by the same person and both shared some of the same child actors in the cast. While《小時候》 was a RTHK program, 《小太陽》was actually produced by TVB (I have seen numerous references erroneously listed it as RTHK’s). More importantly, the former focused on the carefree and innocent anecdotes of childhood whereas 《小太陽》often placed a child in an imperfect but realistic world. Case in point is this memorable episode:

The specialized in dog women extraordinaire 余慕蓮 was given a rare opportunity to play a three-dimensional character – a single mother struggling to raise a family by hawking newspaper on the street. To make ends meet she pushed her daughter to bring some of the 龍虎門-like violent comic books to her primary school to sell it, much to the displeased of the child’s principal. Pressured from both school and home, the tension eventually became too much and the child ran away from home. Bringing only with her a beloved pet bird she wandered off to the controversial hot spot of last year, the Queen’s Pier. In a very symbolic gesture, the girl opened the cage and set the bird free. The image of the child looking at the bird as it took flight on the famed Victoria Habour was beautifully captured…Story like this will not be found in 《小時候》

According to this blog TVB歷年來電視劇集列表《小太陽》made its debut at TVB on July 7, 1976. Directed by 單慧珠, it shared the same kind of kitchen-sink realism with her other more famous works like 《忌廉溝鮮奶》, 《江湖再見》 or 《煙火人間》. A search on 單慧珠 from internet leads me to a 2003 article "單慧珠走過抑鬱" which briefly mentioned 《小太陽》:

“…《小時候》早已是兒童劇的經典，可謂後無來者；但《小太陽》亦相當「前衛」，劇情包括貧富懸殊、喪母、破碎家庭，調子意外地悲涼。”

Prove that there do have people out there who noticed the peculiarity of this “children program”. Today very few information can be found on 《小太陽》, no DVD/VCD has been or likely will be released, no listing in Wikipedia and no video clip on YouTube. It seems the entire series only exists as some relic of childhood memories, except this song by 路家敏.

My recollection of the theme from the program seems to be slightly different from this version. Chances are this is a re-recorded version. The fact that it comes from an album released three years after the series seems to support this. Maybe because of the TV series, I always sense an extra touch of sadness most people wouldn’t find in the lyric: “太陽倦了便回家 夜裏有些少驚怕”, particularly when you consider the previous line is ”我把心願交給它 (太陽)”. However, the ever ebullient lyricist 黃霑 (some sources say 鄭國江) cleverly completed the emotional arch with ”明晨月兒落旭日重來 依舊往上爬”.

The resilience of a child can never be underestimated indeed.