Movies and Music

To say I'm influenced by film and music would be an understatement. Everyone has an obsession -- mine happens to be collecting every CD and movie in sight. The movie craze started for me, as it probably started for most people my age, back in 1977 with Star Wars. My mom took my brother Ping and I to the local Cine 1-6 at Northway Mall, Albany, and for the price of $1.50 each (damn I feel old), my life changed. I ended up seeing it eight times in the theaters, twice with my grandmother (how's that for family bonding?). Later that same year, at a Loews Theater in Montreal, my mom once again dragged me out to see a movie despite my whiny protestations (I just wanted to sit in a bathtub all night), and I ended up watching The Spy Who Loved Me. I spent the rest of the night humming the James Bond Theme and driving all those around me bonkers.

 My introduction to music had more ups and downs. Like every good Asian kid, I was instructed to learn the violin from an early age, and I did so for ten years (1975-1985). I was a pint-sized kindergartener when I started, so I was handed a "half-size" violin which I'm sure must have looked quite darling. The first tune I learned: "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." I became relatively proficient at the instrument (made it up to second-chair violin in the school orchestra, and took part in some state competitions), but my heart was never really in it. Like all other superficial grade school kids, I wanted to take up the sax, but my overbite did me in before I could get started. Being in the school band was cool -- being in the school orchestra spelled geek.

Related Links:
Lipstick Conspiracy
Glasstown
Roman Evening
Butch Berry Band
(includes my friend Robert)
Madison Smartt Bell
(Famed Johns Hopkins writer/professor and mean blues player)
Madison's Big Show
(mp3s)

My musical tastes were eclectic in those days -- I collected James Bond movie soundtracks and Beethoven symphonies. at one point in sixth grade we were asked to write down our three favorite songs, and I came up with "1. Beethoven Symphony No. 5; 2. Olivia Newton-John's "Physical"; and 3. Beethoven Symphony No. 8. The fact I had a crush on Ms. Newton-John at the time (remember Xanadu?) shouldn't alter anyone's perceptions.

The next step was pop music. I was among the few who didn't own Michael Jackson's Thriller back in '83, but on a school ski trip, a friend slipped me a cassette of Synchronicity, and it was onward and upward from there. People often ask me about my favorite album -- it depends what day of the week you ask me. My favorite perennial artists include the Beatles (natch), Miles Davis, the Cocteau Twins, the Police, Avro Part, the Replacements, Simple Minds, DeBussy ... but really, the list could go on and on. I'm pretty open-minded. I'll take anything except heavy metal and neo-country music (but give me alt-country any time).
I eventually formed a rock band with my brother Ping (keyboards) and my friends Jason (drums) and Tim (guitar). In a move of unusual prescience, I recorded most of our jams, preserving them on cassette for all eternity (well, our lifetimes anyway). We never really settled on a title for our group -- we started with High Society, then tried out Menands for a while, and finally semi-settled on The Self-Digested Yakherders (Jason and Tim's idea, I swear). In any case, we did manage to string together some gigs -- Chinese New Year parties, Filipino community group shindigs, that kind of thing -- and even went through a few changes in personnel. I also sharpened my jazz chops playing for my high school jazz ensemble at this time -- sad to say, I'm really rusty at reading music right now. I basically ignored the musician side of my life through college (even as my CD collection increased exponentially), but in grad school I ended up playing with a few of my Johns Hopkins classmates and one of our professors, the writer Madison Smartt Bell, who contributed a mean blues guitar and two six-packs at every jam session (one for us, one for him). Since then I've been with a few bands, most notably with the San Francisco group Glasstown, but sadly, as of this writing, the band is split up as singer/songwriter/provocateur Adam Klein is off on a Peace Corps "sabbatical" in Bangladesh. Currently, I'm serving as "fifth Beatle" for San Francisco's only transgender rock band, Lipstick Conspiracy -- the gals want me to slap on a wig for one of their gigs someday, but I'm not budging.

Another turning point came in the summer of '92, when my brother started raving about this anime (Japanese animation) thing. I had fond memories of the Star Blazers and The Battle of the Planets TV shows from my youth, although I had never become obsessed Robotech and Transformers in high school like so many of my friends did. Nevertheless, Ping was raving about this series Bubblegum Crisis, I watched the first six episodes, and I never looked back. As my collection of anime reviews should attest, I'm still very much into them. There's a certain naiveté, innocence, and yes, cheesiness that anime gets away with, but for me that's part of the appeal -- not to mention the inventive animation methods, the complex narratives, the surprisingly subtle characterizations. And just to show you how all these things are interconnected, I became a nut for anime soundtracks for quite a while, which led me to Japanese pop (or J-pop), which led me back to Western popular music. A star fall, a phone call, it joins all, as Sting would pontificate.

In this section you'll find a scattering of reviews, music clips, and anecdotes about movies, music, and the other pop arts in my life. Feel free to laugh at my singing abilities (or lack thereof), challenge me on my anime views, and have a good time.

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Copyright © 2003. All materials in this section are the property of the author, and can only be quoted or reproduced with his permission.