les paul.
there perhaps exist few names as distinctly iconic as this one. like a stradivarius or a steinway, the name emblazons a stark image in people's minds of an instrument synonymous with beauty.
my first real electric guitar, one that belonged to me. it was an epiphone les paul, a copy. it's far from identical to the ones that gibson make, but it satisfied my hunger of finally owning that iconic instrument.
without the man behind that guitar, there perhaps wouldn't have been modern music. he was a true visionary who had the audacity to fashion a guitar out of a solid piece of wood. at the time people ridiculed him. but little did they know that it was the beginning of a revolution.
yet after decades of "improvements" and "evolutions", the electric guitar we are familiar with today are exactly the same in it's fundamental design as the one that les paul had dreamed up more than half a century ago. it wouldn't be brash to say that the les paul is the ford model t of the electric guitar world, except the original gibson les paul model is still one of the best selling guitars of all time. it is a timeless design that captured the imagination of generations.
jimmy page, paul mccartney, pete townsend, slash, ace frehley, frank zappa. it was a sound that shaped the course of blues and rock music and the newer waves that emerged thereafter.
he was a true pioneer and an amazing showman.
rest in peace LP.
+listening to: while my guitar gently weeps by the beatles
Thursday, August 13
| the true guitar hero |  |
Tuesday, August 11
Monday, August 10
| Rocky IV (part 2 of 2) | |
continued from part 1...
As much as the opening sequence jolted my mind right into the action with a little surprise, the plot was nothing to exclaim about. It is a rehash of the same old story; everyone knows. But we keep going back to see Rocky for one very simple reason: in him, we see bits and pieces of ourselves.
The old Rocky that we identified so strongly with was still prevalent throughout, but the difference with this fourth feature lied in the subtlety of how that was brought out. In the first part of the film, unlike what I had come expect, we do not see the rash, hot-tempered Rocky of old immediately. Rather he was portrayed as being much more conservative, not nearly as flamboyant. Perhaps the filmmakers wanted to depict his maturation with the passing of time since the last film. Besides Rocky, the other characters remained similar to how they were portrayed previously, with the only exception being Apollo Creed.
What we see here is a sort of role-reversal between Rocky and Creed, with each taking up the character traits of the other, shown in the previous films (but you had to have watched the previous ones to notice). I thought this was quite a refreshing change, definitely different from the other more straight-forward portrayal of the main characters in previous engagements.
What really fascinated me, however, was the whole idea of this film revolving around the new character introduced—Ivan Drago, a boxer from the USSR attempting to break onto the US boxing scene. This “conflict” between Rocky and Drago transcends its face value as merely being a boxing match between two fighters. If you were to consider the cultural climate around the time the film was made (circa 1980s), you can clearly see where the exaggerated and negative portrayal of the Soviet Union came from.
It was still the era before the cold war ended in the 1990s, and public anti-sentiments against the Soviet Union had not seemed to ease up, even though towards the late 1980s, the Soviet government already appeared to show certain characteristics common with a liberal democratic political system.
Though understandable, it was nonetheless quite comical to a casual viewer like myself to see the somewhat jingoistic display of US might on screen. Apollo Creed showing up to the fight on elaborately decorated props, wearing a star-spangled banner robe and matching boxing shorts, with James Brown singing “Living in America” in the background—it was heavy-handed on the part of the writers, but what is Hollywood without the dramatization, and the manipulation of people’s psyche?
Having said all that, it still boiled down to what I had expected, or perhaps what many others had expected before they saw the film and what we got out of it afterwards. It was unpolished at certain spots, but it is precisely that raw and down to earth quality that we crave about. I expected a good time, and definitely got out a hell of a good time.
Rocky did beat Drago in the end. Who would have known? It wasn’t just about Rocky bashing the living daylight out of the bigger guy in the other corner of the ring, it’s about how we secretly wished it was we who were doing exactly the same thing in our own big bad boxing ring called life.
*play theme music, picture Rocky running up the flight of stairs to the city hall, both arms held up high in triumphant manner*
+listening to: blooze by peter frampton
Sunday, August 9
| rear view mirror | |
going with dad on a road trip is an interesting experience. well it's not exactly a proper road trip, but still it took an entire day, and it was properly exhausting.
i was surprised when dad asked me to go along with him to visit some of his childhood friends. i've never heard him mention anything about it, i didn't think he had any childhood friends. guess i was wrong. sunday morning is a bad time to go anywhere. the horrible traffic plus a couple of wrong turns even with the assitance of a gps meant our journey had been an hour longer than planned.
away from the bustling elevated highways, onto winding country roads and miles of blue sky. as you wind down the windows, the music that the air makes as it goes past your ear, whoosh... and then you stick your arm out to try to catch it. that feeling is indescribable.
you can't help notice that suddenly everything has slowed to a crawl. pedestrians strolled at their own leisurely pace, people on bicycles seemed content as long as they were still moving. it's a subtle yet distinct way of realizing that you have arrived. sam sui, the road sign read.
many people have heard of the legacy of the sam sui women. well, this is the birth place of that legacy. there's nothing flash about this place: it's unobtrusive, austere. it begs you to go by without ever taking notice. it could have passed off as any other town if not for the road sign.
dad was one of the only people from his town who made it to a university. most of his childhood friends are business owners now. construction, building materials, machinery, and the list goes on. you could detect the slight hint of awkwardness when we first sat at the lunch table. there were periods of silence that felt a little uncomfortable for everyone.
i guess that is what happens when you haven't met in over ten years. you need a little time to get reacquainted with your old friends. as the day went on, everyone warmed up to one another. and by mid afternoon, you couldn't put a lid on the chatterbox even if you wanted to.
a visit to a brick factory owned by one of dad's friends. who knew that brick making takes such precision? from the percentages of the mixtures to the weight and dimensions of the finished product, everything had to be calculated to perfection. it was not something that could be simply achieved by manual labor: the machines made clear that point with those earth-shattering noises they made.
dinner couldn't have come sooner. everyone reminisced about the good ol' times. i didn't really understand what they said, but you could tell from their expressions that those were bittersweet experiences. all that was in my mind were the images of women in red bandannas working at construction sites. they are nowhere to be seen today. yet as i looked at the people sitting at the table, those wrinkles at the corners of their eyes and the callouses on their hands made it all too obvious that life hadn't been all smooth sailing. these are still the same honest and hardworking people from generations before.
and then there were the goodbyes. people lingered as the day faded. nobody knew when they'd meet one another again because of their demanding schedules. it was a monumental task just to get everyone together.
dad didn't say a word as we sped away, his gaze fixated on the images in the rear view mirror.
+listening to: home by dream theater
Saturday, August 8
| Rocky IV (part 1 of 2) | |
“The eye of the tiger, the eye of the tiger…” who could have forgotten that iconic phrase in Rocky III?
To claim that the Rocky series is one of the best sports stories of all time is an understatement as far as films go—and that is if you overlook the fact that I have only had the chance to experience the previous three installments.
A quick glance of the Wikipedia page was all that I needed to reassure myself that this movie would be as exhilarating as the previous ones. Perhaps the most noticeable fact is that Rocky IV is the most commercially successful feature in the whole series (including the recent Rocky Balboa).
That is no reason to rejoice though: box office performance does not necessarily constitute a consistently high level of quality for the film, vice versa. What it probably translates to is mass appeal— the values, perspectives or even the story itself conforms to the mentality of the average cinema-goers. Rocky in itself is a concept, an abstraction of one of the most ubiquitous (and hackneyed) scenarios - that the underdog miraculously pulls off a stunning victory against the powers that be.
Knowing fully what this genre has to offer, I was certainly not expecting a gut-wrenching melodrama, nor a hysterical comedy. Rocky is a classic albeit formulaic David versus Goliath story, and being familiar with Sylvester Stallone’s style, I was expecting more of the same “balls-to-the-walls” (excuse the French) performance right down to the thick Italian accent and that distinctive devil-may-care attitude. After all he WAS the Italian Stallion.
The credits after the opening sequence laid it all out on the table clear as day: that same pulsating theme music, clearly designed to evoke that familiar emotion, plays as prominently as ever, unadulterated, identical to the one played in the original Rocky, made almost 10 years prior. I imagined myself being fully prepared for this scene, but I was shocked how I was still caught a little off-guard, and how effective this technique of making use of the same music is in bring the audience right back into the story.
...to be continued
+listening to: 3x5 by john mayer
Wednesday, August 5
Tuesday, August 4
Sunday, August 2
| the accordion player | |
"...the picture of an accordian made his heart skip a beat.
it's been a such a long time that those flashes in his memories are no longer clear as day. he frantically looked around the house. nothing. it was nowhere to be found.
on his 7th birthday his mom brought him to the department store to pick out his own birthday present. it was probably the best day in his life as far as he was concerned. mom had never let him do that.
the toys. it was like a world made of dreams. he didn't know what to pick only because he wanted to bring everything back with him.
and then at the corner of his eye something caught him by surprise - an austere looking little box-like thing with what seemed like a piano keyboard. it was fascinating. he'd never seen anything like it. the veneer on its sides looked so intricate. someone must have put in a lot of loving efforts into its construction, he thought.
and then he saw something else not far from the intriguing mystery box. it was a handheld video game console, a gameboy. he knew very well because he'd seen a well-off friend bring it to school. it was an object of envy.
mom knew him well. she'd said he could have the gameboy if he promised not to ask for a birthday present the next year. brimming with joy, he couldn't contain his excitement, grinning from ear to ear.
yet for some unknown reason he didn't say yes immediately. he deliberated. because he'd remembered that the mystery box from before cost about the same as a gameboy. he knew that mom would let him have either.
life is all a big mystery in itself. as it turned out, he went home with the mystery box. and he learnt that it was called an accordion and that you could make all kinds of sounds with it. music.
on the way home he remembered regretting his decision. he thought over and over about how stupid he was. he tried to ask mom if he could come back next year for the gameboy. but mom made sure that he understood the meaning of a promise. he sulked.
the accordion sat in its quiet little corner of the room untouched for days. he didn't even want to look at it because it reminded him of what he could have gotten. and the thought that he could have been the envy among his friends made him even angrier.
then one day weeks later. he remembered that the accordion also came with a cassette deck. another first for him. he'd never owned a music cassette up to that point. he was curious. and he thought it was probably the only thing worthwhile that came out of that debacle. it was by a serbian accordion player named vlad popovich.
in it popped into the cassette player. his trigger-happy little finger gave a good push to the bright old orange "play" button. he was flabbergasted.
in the ensuing years he learned to appreciate and loved playing the accordion. his instrument changed with his growing size, but the image of that very first accordion would always be fresh on his mind."
i'll end off here and leave you to figure out who the protagonist of the story is.
+listening to: the great explorer by frank gambale
