1.0 in the beginning
i once considered myself a hardworking
musician. in high school, i played four
instruments.
i took piano lessons from the age of four until i left for
college.
for most of my youth, piano was my main hobby. in the fifth
grade i started playing clarinet in the school band and remained a
clarinetist
in the school band until college. in the seventh grade, i took
up a second instrument in band, the bassoon. after trying alto
clarinet and bass clarinet for a while, i knew i wanted to play a second
instrument, something more different. i took lessons for a
while but mostly just kept fingering charts nearby. i played
bassoon in concert band and the san jose youth symphony orchestra, while
i played clarinet in marching band. i really loved
band.
i loved going to all the high school football and basketball
games.
in high school, i also started playing guitar. mostly, i
played
for the weekly church youth fellowship, but i preferred louder, harder
music. i played with my friends jack and elbert in a
short-lived
trio called 1600. by my senior year, i drifted towards the
modern version of the garage band and started a deejaying company with
my friends ken and nelson. in my youth, i immersed myself in
music.
1.1 the piano
admiring how my sister could play so well,
i asked my parents to let me take piano lessons when i was
four.
they let me start taking private lessons, and i didn't stop until i got
to college. every year, i would take the california music
teacher's
association's certificate of merit exam. i reached the
advanced
level just before coming to college. i also participated in
the annual national piano teacher's guild auditions. i had
to learn lots of music theory and technical things. i am very
glad i learned these things as a youth. i know lots of great
pianists who learned piano when they were older, but i know that they
don't
have music as ingrained into their minds as the musicians who started
training
seriously as youngsters. in any case, i don't really play much
piano anymore. but i am eternally thankful for the woman who
taught me piano for most of my piano-playing years, ms. frieda
murphy.
1.2 the pop music of my early years
i started listening to rock music sometime
in the third grade. i liked listening to top 40 stuff like
michael jackson and prince. by the fourth grade, i had
precociously
entered the bubblegum world of teeny-bopper music. i started
really liking the music of depeche mode as soon as their "people are
people"
single started getting airplay in the u.s. because of my sister's
influence,
i was drifting towards the post-new wave, modern rock
movement.
i proudly wore the depeche mode black celebration tee-shirt my sister
bought
for me from their tour in 1986. but in the seventh grade, peer
pressure had me listening to san jose's hot 97.7 fm (the now disfunct
khqt).
my peers were listening to salt n' pepa's "push it" and sir mix-a-lot as
they nervously stood around the dance floor afraid to dance with
girls.
even though some kids were into guns n' roses and motley crue, i didn't
get into that stuff during those years. from listening to hot
97.7, i became fascinated with mixing dance music. i didn't
understand how they did it, but i tried to imitate it by dubbing music
from tape to tape, splicing songs intros with several bars of other songs
and then playing with the rewind and pause buttons to make scratching
noises.
in the eighth grade, my musical tastes started reverting to modern rock
and mod, and i continued to make my remixes using depeche mode, new order,
and omd. in the early years of high school, my skateboarding
lifestyle exposed me to punk rock and grunge culture. i liked
groups like the descendents (all), firehose, black flag, sonic youth, and
some other sst label groups found on santa cruz skateboards promotional
videos. in my junior year, when i left the world of
skateboarding
for the world of suburban asian high schoolers, i spun around my cycle
of musical tastes back into mod, modern rock, and a little bit of techno
dance music. i started going to lots of dances as i was now
the president of the local taiwanese youth club that held lots of
dances.
deejays played lots of erasure, new order, depeche mode, red flag, omd,
cure, and pet shop boys in addition to vanilla ice, m.c. hammer, m.c. shy
d, sir mix-a-lot and other hip hop and rap artists who were bringing their
both into the american mainstream and into the ears of asian-american
youths
who would eventually make their subculture migrate from mod to hip
hop.
i was in two worlds, playing rock music on my guitar and starting my
deejay
business with house, mod, and hip hop.
| favourite group (opinion) | favourite song | ||
| #1 | The Cure | #1 | "just like heaven" by the cure |
| #2 | Depeche Mode | #2 | "bizarre love triangle" by new order |
| #3 | The Smiths / Morrissey | #3 | "oh l'amour" by erasure |
| #4 | New Order | #4 | "somebody" by depeche mode |
| #5 | Erasure | #5 | "the one i love" by rem |
| #6 | Pet Shop Boys | #6 | "true" by spandau ballet |
| #7 | REM | #7 | "to the sky" by the cure |
| #8 | U2 | #8 | "how soon is now?" by the smiths |
| #9 | Nine Inch Nails | #9 | "but not tonight" by depeche mode |
| #10 | Nirvana | #10 | "march of the pigs" by nine inch nails |
| #11 | Shonen Knife | #11 | "with or without you" by u2 |
| #12 | The Juliana Hatfield Three | #12 | "the promise" by when in rome |
| #13 | frente! | #13 | "accidentally kelly street" by frente! |
| #14 | The Jenny Thing | #14 | "shake the disease" by depeche mode |
| #15 | The Boo Radleys | #15 | "regret" by new order |
| #16 | toad the wet sprocket | #16 | "if i can't change your mind" by sugar |
| #17 | 10,000 Maniacs | #17 | "friday i'm in love" |
| #18 | Suede | #18 | "always" by erasure |
| #19 | Primus | #19 | "our frank" by morrissey |
| #20 | O.M.D. | #20 | "a question of lust" by depeche mode |
| #21 | The Red Hot Chili Peppers |
1.3 1600
at least one of my partners in this endeavour sometimes wishes to forget this incident. in our sophomore year (1991), jack chen, elbert lee, and i formed our rock trio 1600 to play at a taiwanese new year's party in hayward. we wanted our fifteen minutes of fame, and we wanted it right away. originally, we were supposed to participate in some light-hearted lip-sync contest, but i was too serious about music to stop at lip-synching; i demanded that we at least record our own music for the contest. we recorded our famous cover of the cure's hit "just like heaven." as the date approached, we were the only ones signed up for the contest, but we insisted on making our big debut. since the contest no longer was a contest, we decided to just put on our own live show. i borrowed an electric guitar (a really nice ibanez) and a mini 9-volt amp, from my skateboarding friend joey nelson, to replace my cheap, little classical guitar.
the night of our big show arrived. elbert made a really kewl banner for us, with "1600" painted boldly in orange flames. we were really excited, but then we ran into a big complication; the jerk deejays wouldn't let us have our few minutes before the dance. we were really pissed off at these big bullies who kicked us out of the room. i was really furious and i cussed them out. for the first time, jack saw me lose my temper. eventually, the president of the youth club got the deejays to give us a few minutes in the middle of the dance. we didn't want to be put so much in the spotlight by going at the primetime, but we wanted to get whatever we could, so we took the offer. the music stopped and we played in the dark room. maybe someone put a flashlight on us, i can't remember. we started the show with our "just like heaven" cover. we were really nervous. some of the older kids were already making cynical comments and laughing. in any case, we had so many eyes watching us. i think i might have turned my back on the audience while playing, something i read this skateboard punk rocker used to do. we played "just like heaven" and we played r.e.m.'s "to the one i love." i vaguely remember playing social distortion's "ball and chain," but i'm not too sure that we did. that might have been while we were practicing earlier that evening. i remember the tuning pegs of the ibanez electric guitar had turned the strings out of tune when i set it down. i was really embarassed while playing the solo in the r.e.m. song. whatever happened, it eventually ended. i don't know what people really thought of our show. i remember one quote, dan chen told jack, "you guys have balls." i remember one of the biggest smirking cynicists, john moon, saying, "good job," but i barely said thanks not sure how much of his comment was sincere. i remember this girl asked me to dance later that night, but i thought maybe it was out of pity since i'd embarassed myself so much. i dunno...
[coming soon: some sort of picture of 1600]
the monday after, we had to come to school and face friends who had travelled to hayward to go to the dance. elbert was feeling better about the whole thing, actually kind of happy. i think, immediately after the show, he was really in a bad mood about it, but he had changed his mind. on the contrary, jack had switched to thinking really negatively about the experience. he kept saying, and still says, that he wants to forget about the whole thing. but i dunno, i think we all cherish the memories like an episode of the wonder years , just like an episode of the wonder years. two years later, jack, our friend songmee, and i returned to the taiwanese new year's party's stage to perform a short show. jack and i were supposed to play a song i wrote dubbed "drool," but in nervousness i turned the whole thing into a big nirvana-esque feedback show instead of singing. (it was the grunge era after all, and lots of the kids actually liked it.) then jack and songmee did their cover of the 10,000 maniacs cover of that "to sir with love" song. it was pretty kewl. and there were no jerk deejays to kick us out because i was with the deejays this time around.
by my senior year, i found myself in my own world, a world full of music. every second, every where, i heard music in my head, bits and pieces from band, symphony, piano lessons, church worship, church choir, and dance music filled my head all at once. i didn't know what silence sounded like. i wrote all about it in my scholarship and application essays.
2.0 off to college
but since coming to college, i have left
that world. i need to spend more time in my books.
i have seriously taken up taekwondo. the disciplined
atmosphere
often reminds me of marching band. they both have a
military-like,
rank-oriented, competitive environment, and i think i have benifitted from
participating in both.
2.1 college radio
moving into the dorm, i did not immediately bring up my mixer and cd players, and when i did, i never really set them up in my room but just kept them around for gigs. what i did bring right away was my electric guitar and amp. i wanted to be a berkeley rock star. i immediately got into the berkeley alternative music of the jenny thing. i hung out with alternarockers, went to lots of live shows in skanky clubs, and watched lots of free concerts in lower sproul plaza. i saw green day before anyone knew them. i watched with one foot planted on the stage. i really liked their music; i didn't know it as "punk rock" but likened their sound to the sex pistols and the ramones. i loved that three-chord music. but i also appreciated the non-three-chord music, the virtuoso music. i was learning all about classic rock and progressive rock from people i met in the dorm. i finally heard rush songs. i heard songs by queen and led zepellin too... eric clapton, the beatles, more led zepellin, jimi hendrix, pink floyd... i liked the idea of musical people playing music, not just energetic punks banging on guitars. (though, at the time, i liked that too.) i carried on my fascination with the cure from my high school days. i still liked all the mod groups i used to like: depeche mode, new order, erasure, the pet shop boys, et cetera. i liked the modern rock groups from my high school days: the cure, rem, et cetera. the nineties had brought more grunge music into the ears of the youth, the so-called generation xers. i bought the nirvana nevermind cd. i started accumulating lots of grunge music cds by little-known artists.
so many times, in my early college life, i wanted to start rock bands. i remember dreaming with my friend fahad habib. he said he'd save up money to buy a bass even though he had never played bass in his entire life. he had never played guitar; in fact, i don't think he's ever played a musical instrument. in my sophomore year, i often played guitar with my friend rosaylne shieh. she taught me the joni mitchell song "circle game," but she didn't know it as a joni mitchell song. she learned it from a friend, folkmusic style. i'll always know the song the way she taught it to me, not the way joni mitchell recorded it. i met up with an old childhood acquaintance, george chen, in berkeley and played guitar with him one night. since then, he's gone on to bigger and better music venues, playing frequent gigs with his band. but one night he came and recorded a tape of us trading between my electric and acoustic guitar, which we hooked through my mixer's pitch changer to turn it into an makeshift bass. we just improvised and bang on strings. he gave our duo the name chink. i still have the tape somewhere, and someday when george chen becomes a name that all the kids know, maybe i'll bring it back out.
2.2 benomix productions
the only music i still do is my deejaying. last year, i pressed one cd of short remixes. i passed out copies to my friends as new year's presents, and also handed some out to promote my business. i made the cd by remixing songs on my computer, not "real-time" mixing. for my live gigs, i use only cds nowadays, and i take loads of criticism from people in my audience who demand that deejays use vinyl records. my answer: you want deejays to go out and spend a thousand bucks to get two turntables and vinyls to look like they're too poor to afford cd players?! y'know the grunge era has ended and the economy's getting better. but what do i use to do my mixing? a really dope gemini mixer with a 24-second digital sampler. i recently got it as a birthday present from my buddies ken and nelson. i play my cds off of a nice home-system sony cd changer and an antique sanyo discman, one of the first made. the sanyo only read the disc when i lay it on its side. it's a really ghetto piece of crap! so in the end, i've paid nothing to look like i'm too poor to afford cd players... and i mix hella better than a lot of these richass, suburban kids with their brand spanking new t1200 mkiis. when you don't have the equipment you want, you learn to innovate and make do. i'm not satisfied with sounding like those yellow-page-ad "party deejays" with their weak fade-in / fade-out mixing, i make real mixes.
though i feel perfectly confident in my deejaying abilities regardless of my setup, i do want to continue to upgrade to nicer equipment. i am trying to buy a pair of pioneer cdj500-iis, the nicest deejay cd players around. i shall not be surprised when cdj500-iis replace the t1200 mkiis as the deejay industry standard... at least for house and techno music... i know that hip hop music revolves around the vinyl turntable and the scratch and stop effects it allows. at times i ponder buying some t1200s when i have the money. i also consider buying the cheaper imitation, the gemini pt2000s. but my mainstay will never be rap and hiphop, though i do a little of that stuff.
2.3 today: 17 october, 1997
i don't really play much guitar anymore. albert liu has borrowed my electric for over a year and a half now. he also has my amp and has repeatedly told me he would return them. anyway, i do trust that he will and i see him every now and then. i do not own a bassoon and have probably have not played one since coming back from the san jose youth symphony orchestra's tour of england and scotland. i do still own my old clarinet, which was not a really nice one, but it sufficed. for the most part, my instrument of choice has become my cd players and mixer.
in the past couple of years, i have drifted from being a fanatic of any music groups. i used to be such a cure fan, but i missed their grand appearance at live 105's bfd3 this year. i did see them at the san jose arena last year. i still do like the cure. i like a wider variety of music and fear i have fallen into the world of top 40 once again. i often tune my radio into z95.7(top 40 with extra house music), wild 94.9 (hip hop, house, rap, soul), alice 97.3 (mature alternative), and occasionally live 105.3 (some good alternative but mostly grunge trash nowadays). some know that i have a tendency to sometimes listen to "for lovers' only" on k101.3 (soft hits of the 80s and 90s). sometimes i'll tune into kmel 106.1 (harder rap and soul with a little house now and then). i buy mostly cds for my deejaying, but occasionaly buy a cd for pure listening pleasure.
on another note, drifting from mainstream music of most kinds, i have gotten to like the collegiate a cappela groups on the uc berkeley campus. my friend toby introduced me to this world when he joined the group decadence. now toby sings for the most prestigious uc group, the uc men's octet. well, mostly i like their a cappela versions of pop and techno songs, so i am not really drifting from the mainstream. but i have also gotten to like their jazz and traditional music.
this past week, i started downloading mp3 files from the net and rediscovered the smashing pumpkins while grabbing bootleg live tracks. i really like them though they come from the grunge genre which i have mostly abandoned. i think their style and billy corgan's organization of the group reminds me of the cure.... not to mention the fact that they occasionally cover a cure song here and there.
let me now lead you to a page where i'll continuously mention my current opinions about music: what songs i like, my favourite group of the week, what concert i'd wnat to go to, et cetera...