Music laggard me

One of the downside of living in Thailand is being out of touch with the music scene. Ask me what is the current #1 song on the charts, and I will for certain not be able to tell you what it is.

It is a bummer that as we don’t quite listen to the local radio stations here simply because:

• Most of the stations are localised…meaning only Thai music
• And the few and far between English radio stations out here mostly play the annoying Hip-Hop music 95% of the time

I hate to admit this, but my knowledge of music has deteriorated very badly over the years, and considering that I am quite the music buff, I am very ashamed of myself of not being able to keep up! I still live in the music scene of the 70s, 80s, 90s and possibly till about 2005…but after that, I am completely, and absolutely clueless on good, listenable, radio-friendly new songs which hit the air-waves

Alright, alright. I know one can argue that with internet, I’ve got no excuses whatsoever. All I have to do is look it up and bingo! I’ll be able to find what I want. After all, isn’t that how a certain Beiber got discovered?

But that’s not my point. Besides the fact that I cannot stand that Bieber little thing and his silly songs and his hairdo, my point is that I do actually miss that unintentional journey of discovering good music. You know, like when you hear a melody over the good old radio, or if your friends introduced you a new number, and you go, “Oh! I like that song. What’s the title? Who sings it?” And then you immediately start looking for it. Perhaps I’m just old skool, but for me, it is not the same soulful journey like when you discover it by other means versus youtube.

For me, a song consumes your very soul from within and it is something you appreciate better when you listen to it rather than seeing it first. You feel it.

And you feel and you appreciate it through the auditory sensory it gives you even before you see the visual elements to it (aka via music video to satisfy a different sensory need). You know what I mean?

The good old radio used to be my window to the music world, but truly, that window in Thailand plays crap music, and I cannot bear to turn that on dial. Either that, the international music artists don’t really produce good music anymore. Or perhaps, they do produce great music as defined by the masses, but ain’t really the type of music which I can appreciate. Like Lady Gaga…I heard so much about her and her cause, and yet her songs did nothing for me.

Like my sentiments towards blardy Bieber, I don’t really give a crap about Gaga.

So here I am, an old, restless music-deficiency soul, clueless about the new music scene of this generation, would like to seek your help – if you hear any song that is not Hip Hop or Rap or Country music worth raving about, hover them my way and help me discover something new once in a while, will you.