Unplugged!

1950s P Ramlee

The teachers thought he was mental. Living in his own world, humming to the tunes that emanate from his mind, they were sure he would end up as a nobody. Some even toyed with the idea of sending him off for a psychological assessment, and perhaps to a lesser taxing environment, unlike the grammar school that he is placed in. Collectively they thought he belonged to the loony bin. Surprise, surprise, 20 years on, he was composing music, making movies and winning international awards for his acting skills. The boy grew up to be the one and only, the legendary P Ramlee, a national treasure. 

An elderly auntie once told me that she and her husband had decided to leave their first home in Lorong Seratus Tahun in Penang. They were particularly disturbed by the loitering of boys along the roadside, strumming away their guitars and crooning into the deep of the night, crooning in their high pitched squeaky voices. They were not thrilled by their unkempt beehive hair, beatings of drums, either. They thought that the neighbourhood was not conducive to bringing up their children. 

Little did they know that their kids were listening to the same guys who their parents wrote off ten years down the road. By then, three of those roadside boys had become the Alleycats. Their beehive hairdo was then fashionably called ‘Afros’!

Of course, the Alleycats are the most successful of Malaysian bands with international recognition.

The world is a cruel place. People forever want to exert their dominance over the other as much as and whenever they can. They will not rest until and unless their position on top of the perch is secure. They would be wary of any behaviours by the other that is not mainstream. What if the others’ actions put them in the limelight, and their puissance is bowled out?

Alleycats

Every time I held my guitar, people would exit the room. They would say I should not act weird and stick to my daytime job. They assert that wearing too many hats would make me a Jack of all trades but master of None. They asked me what I was trying to achieve and was it my narcissistic tendencies that pushed me to venture into new frontiers considered self-indulgence?

Covid was God-sent. They left the room, citing my contact with the public that puts me a potential transmission source. That arrangement was just dandy. Nobody was there to be bothered by my disjointed and out-of-tune strumming. They did not disturb me, and my practising did not annoy them.

Fast forward. I could say I did not do too badly with my self tutoring. As is seen in the short snippet below, everyone is having a good time.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Another blast from our colourful past

Even before Alleycats came to the local music scene, there was a 15-year-old girl creating waves with her song, 'Kereta Lembu' which is kind of a classic now. She started singing at the age of 13 and carved a name for herself through Juara Kugiran in 1969. After cutting a few albums in the garage music genre and living a 7-year matrimonial life with Adnan Othman (a fellow musician who sang together) which produced a daughter, she left the country.

I am referring to the famous singer of Malay songs of the 70s, Helen Velu (Halina Abdul Wahid). I just happened to hear her song on the radio. It was a plagiarized version of LaBelle's Lady Marmalade called 'Senyuman dan Kerlingan".

She is now residing in LA and makes periodic returns to the motherland to perform.

Helen Velu 2007

 

Voulez-vous coucher avec moi (ce soir)?

("Do you want to sleep with me (tonight)?" )

The sweet purr of a lonesome cat...

Concluding the trilogy of 'What my children got me for my last birthday to get self indulgent and get off breathing down their necks' is a CD of Alleycats' 1987 album 'Aku Kerinduan' (I am missing someone).

I am sure nobody would go out to buy this particular CD. It was probably a 'buy 1 free 1' offer after they had bought 'Do Re Mi' (the DVD) and Adele's Live in King Albert's. But I am not complaining...

Alleycats - lineup which kept on changing again
and again over the years. Shan, the other sibling,
disappeared from the scene many years ago.
Starting jamming at their town house in Lorong
Seratus Tahun in Penang, where FG and WSD
crossed paths many years ago, they have reached
heights that no Malaysian band has reached.

Alleycats always invokes fond memories of meeting back stage in DTSP in USM during one of their many performances there. Back stage, they were just regular guys, no frills, no prima donnas, and the backstage was light and easy with back up mainly a family concern with the burly father and even mother there! Many years later, met them again at PJ Hilton's Chillies - Loga and David.

The songs in this album were written by people who are vaguely familiar. I remember reading about them in URTV magazines whilst waiting for my turn at the barber's in RRF! [People like Juwie (a cross dresser who disappeared from RTM after being banned), Habsah Hassan (a prolific songwriter, used to pair with Ahmad Nawab). M Nasir who use to write many of their songs is not here. Probably, he was busy with his own solo career then].

Songs from Alleycats definitely cannot be bad. This compilation of songs in A-minor, melancholic in nature form an excellent platform to a relaxing Sunday afternoon laze after a diaphragm splinting belly filling banana leaf meal. The melody would rock you just nicely like how a mother would rock her kid to sleep. That, is definitely an experience worth labelled 'PRICELESS'!

 

I gave it up for music & free electric band...

Just recently, the family of a now-deceased local legend and half of the longest standing Malaysian band Alleycats, Loga, was in the limelight for the wrong reasons. It was discovered after a fiery mishap in their modest rented house that his family members were in dire straits despite Loga's stature in the music scene.

Ahmad Nifsu

He made the same mistake shared by many legends of yesteryear. Like P.Ramlee's numerous strokes of ingenuity which were wholly copyrighted by Shaw Corporation until late, royalty from Alleycat's albums goes straight to the record companies. All there are left with are fond memories and 'terima kaseeeh' from fans.

Many Tamil screen legends were left in a similar predicament. V.K. Ramasamy, who had been in umpteen movies from the 50s all through the 80s, died a poor man depending on friends' goodwill to do the final rites. Then there was legendary Malay singer of the early 60s, R Azmi, who enjoyed singing so much that he would sing at wedding receptions for free and Ahmad Nifsu, the great director of the P. Ramlee era who became a pauper after the closure of Merdeka Studios in Singapore and lived life in a Japanese pillbox fort till his dying days.

We all have a short window of opportunity to consolidate ourselves. Failing to decide and seize this will see us and our dependents spiral down the stairway to heaven as time may bring in more and more baggage with it to deal with. It just gets harder and harder.......