8:29 a.m. - 2003-04-10
Ah Niu and his mtvs.
Ah Gu Ah Niu
moo~
this malaysian chinese guy i think he's a good person.
i like his songs.
there's songs about love, about pollution, about anglocised identity, about this old man pushing his cart through the streets puzzled about the modern city...so on.
i have a vcd of his mtvs.
some of them were shot by jeff lai.
his mtvs are quite stylo...
not your andy lau slick rain and naked body full of melodrama emotion.
Ah niu is him in t-shirt, bermudas and slippers singing with a guitar or running through the padi fields.
or dancing in the middle of the night at the mamak stall in malaysia, eating pratas and drinking teh tarik.
even though his mtvs are low-fi and full of kitsch like him superimposed against the blue sky with the tell-tale blue flare of tv effects, you must appreciate the sincerity of the actors in sunglasses and pre-SARS era masks, and then they all stoic, zombie like...
and then Ah Niu sings poigantly...(poignant pregnant) the chorus:
"the blue sky above my head,
i can't seem to see it
no matter how hard i try."
well. not a direct translation, but the idea is there i hope. its about pollution..so on.
.....
i like his voice.
chinese tinged with hokkien/cantonese slang...a bit sad but full of the sincerity of a country youth.
why do i like to romanticise the country?
becos sometimes i feel like i am one... even though i never grew up in a kampung, hated army outfield exercises, and generally my body seems more suited for the vacumm cleanliness of the wafer labs...
but when i was young, i really liked the outdoors..
