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.