Rock 30 Singapore Concert
Singapore Indoor Stadium
Last Saturday
Iconic music label Rock Records turned 30 last year and it is marking the milestone by celebrating its singers and songs.
The festivities began with two shows at Taipei Arena in November last year and continued in Singapore over a 31/2-hour-long concert in front of a capacity audience of 8,000.
And yes, the Singapore gig was still exhilarating even though I had caught the five-hour version in Taiwan and the roster of artists had been downsized from 60-plus to 17 acts last Saturday night.
The performers included the honey-voiced Michelle Pan, pop-rocker Chang Chen-yue, R&B singer Shunza and Malaysian singer-songwriter Wu Jiahui.
Despite the absence of stars such as queen of ballads Fish Leong, singer-actor Richie Ren and grizzled singer-songwriter Bobby Chen Sheng, no one needed to feel that he was short-changed.
Saturday’s bash clearly illustrated what the label’s chairman, Mr Johnny Duann, told Life! has been a fundamental tenet for the company: “Rock loves music and Rock wants to make good music.”
The evening was chock-a-block with highlights from stars past and present and even those who did not make it for one reason or another had their hits presented and contributions acknowledged.
Take the Sandy Lam-Jonathan Lee duet When Love Has Turned Into A Thing Of The Past, which was beautifully performed by Wakin Chau and Winnie Hsin.
Hsin, who was best known for her bittersweet love songs in the mid-1990s, continued to wow audiences with a goosebump-inducing rendition of Enlightened.
While her star has waned in recent years, when she crooned “Admit it, you still have a lot of feelings for me”, it could very well have been reflecting the the mood of the crowd.
Wa Wa was another singer audiences have not seen for a while. The raspy-voiced singer gave us Crossing The Ocean To See You and the titular track from Heavy Rain (1991), one of the best Mandopop albums of the 1990s.
And was it possible that the one-time fresh-faced ingenue who dished out kiddy pop was now a sexily confident woman belting out Lemon Tree on stage? Time has been good to Tarcy Su indeed.
It was not just a nostalgia fest though as newer acts such as Alien Huang, Yisa Yu Kewei and home-grown artists The Freshman and Kelly Poon had their turn in the spotlight as well.
The diversity of Rock’s sound was also apparent as it ran the gamut from the exuberant hip-hop of MC HotDog to the catchy dance pop of Alex To to the made-for-getai Minnan numbers of Huang Fei.
There was truly something for everyone and everyone, it seemed, was there – from the folks in their 40s and 50s reliving musical memories of yesterday to the younger fans screaming for rock band Mayday and Alien Huang.
They came as couples, as groups of friends and as families. A few rows ahead of me, one mother and her young daughter rocked out enthusiastically to practically every number.
Some of the most thunderous applause of the evening went to evergreen balladeer Chau, Mandopop’s biggest band Mayday and rocker Wu Bai.
The genial Chau announced: “I am part of Rock and my name is Wakin Chau” and mused that “life is limited, but art is limitless”. He then dug deep into his catalogue to come up with Direction Of The Heart and I Truly Gave My Love To You.
Wu closed the evening with a blast of energetic rock with classics such as Wanderer’s Love Song, Lonely Tree, Lonely Bird and Love You For 10,000 Years.
The last number was a mass singalong of Happy Paradise – a finale twice thwarted in Taipei as they ran out of time. This track was first recorded by Rock’s stars back in 1986.
At this point, artists including Wu, Su and Mayday are no longer with the label. Yet, their affection for it is such that they happily turned up to celebrate its birthday.
When Mayday performed Content, taken from their last album at Rock, frontman Ashin proclaimed to the crowd: “I’ve realised I can never leave Rock in my lifetime, just like you.”
See you at the next milestone bash then.
(ST)