Because man, you're the voice.
I appreciate that.
Thank you.
That's very kind of you.
No, really.
I mean it.
I mean it's, it's, it's, um, people say a lot of things about me and I've been doing
videos for a long time and you know, and, and I've got great compliments, but I tell
you man, having one of the best voices ever in the studio with me is something.
A lot of, a lot of what we do or what I do, I believe, uh, is, is comes down to confidence
and you only get confidence, uh, if you've been asked the question, do you, do you want
to speak well or do you want to sound good?
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
So, uh, broken English with a phony American accent is problematic.
Somehow, right?
Yup.
I completely agree.
So, so it's, it's, it's what, unless you've been trained, you don't really know which
of those two things have been identified as being your thing.
Right?
So you either want to speak well, uh, or you want to sound good.
If you want to do this for a living, you have to be both.
Yup.
Right?
And if, if you speak well and you sound good, then confidence comes, right?
And if, once you're confident, then you know this, this is you.
Man after my own heart.
You know, I teach this.
Right.
I've been teaching this for years, right?
And I teach voiceovers.
I've got regular students.
They come back to me every time for coaching.
And I see exactly the same thing almost.
Uh, completely agree.
And see, that's the reason why I feel today, right?
I mean, I don't know whether you agree or disagree, but way back when, and I've said
this, oh gosh, so many times, so often, I said to Timbo.
I've said this to, uh, I think Germit as well.
I said this to Joe Augustine and the standards of the past with the likes of Eric Lim, um,
Mike Ellery, right?
I mean, my goodness.
I mean, Ellery, come on.
Yeah.
And Eric Lim, the little man with that voice.
I grew up wanting to do this because of guys like them.
And then I've got you.
I want to, I want to jog your memory a little bit.
The last time we met decades ago, I don't know if you remember, um, it was in a studio
called Stunk.
Stunk?
Up, uh, in Amoy Street.
Amoy Street.
Yeah.
That's right.
I was there and met you for the very first time.
Uh, and Cloda was the producer.
Remember her?
Half Chinese, half British girl.
I do know the name, but are you sure it's Stunk?
Stunk, man.
Not, uh, not, uh, Yellow Box?
No, no, not Yellow Box.
Home Studio?
No, no.
Back then, uh, uh, it was Stunk for sure.
You're sure it was there?
Oh, very, very sure.
You worked there.
No, no, no.
I was there as a, as a VO artist.
And we were working on the same project.
I remember working with a Cloda, doing those, uh, doing, uh, infomercials.
Courts.
I was doing infomercials.
And we were doing it at, uh, um, Act, no, no, not Act.
Uh, oh my goodness.
Uh, what's it called?
Petal.
Remember Petal?
Aaron Ezekiel, Larry Lai.
No.
Those folks?
No, man.
Not that Larry Lai.
Okay.
The other guy named Larry Lai, Petal Productions.
I went to school with Aaron Ezekiel.
They had, uh, they had digs first at, uh, Beach Road.
And then they moved back, uh, moved to Craig Road in, uh, in Tanjung Pagar.
Tanjung Pagar.
Yeah.
I remember a Cloda there.
I was doing infomercials for her.
I don't think I saw a check after everybody, everybody caved and therefore evaporated.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But it was decent work.
Yeah.
But this was, that one, that one, when I met you.
What happened at Stunk?
What were we doing?
We were doing something, a commercial for Quartz.
Okay.
You know the Jim Rees Welcome to My World?
Yes.
Right.
And Anne Weirapass was there as well.
Anne!
Yeah.
Wow.
And I remember, I think, if memory serves me well, um, Robert Fernando was also there.
You were there.
Okay.
Right.
And, and me.
Right.
And it's just when I met you for the first time.
We were all working on the same one?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
On the same one.
Wow.
There were multiple voices for that particular commercial.
I see.
And we sang it.
Wow.
We did parts.
Why?
Individually.
Why can't I remember?
I remember it also.
I worked with Robert quite closely, uh, during the, uh, the songwriting competition days.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
I'm going to ask you about that soon too, man.
I've known Bob forever as well.
Yeah, yeah.
Great guy.
I know him as well.
Um, and after that, after that recording, I went across the street.
There was, behind Armois Street, it's the low-i-e street, right?
There was a little coffee shop.
Right.
This is not the show proper yet, right?
Uh, well, we, we always be recording, you know.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
All right.
Just, just so I can, I can identify a kind of a thread.
We're always recording.
Okay.
So don't worry about it.
Um, and, and, and you were crossing the street and you were so candid, you went, bye!
And then the next time I met you was when you were spinning in Branigan's.
You have to put a, you have to put a year on this.
Okay.
Branigan's, I don't know if you, you can remember the year, if I were to tell you who was with
you behind the decks and Chand Nadeisen was with you.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
I can't remember exactly when that was.
I think it's definitely, definitely somewhere in the 90s.
Definitely in the 90s.
It was still Branigan's, it was not even Bricks yet.
Right.
Yeah.
And you were spinning and I saw you do this.
You took a record.
Yeah.
You spun it.
Yeah.
And pinpoint accuracy.
Yeah.
It went in.
Yeah.
On the turns.
You know, I'll tell you something because you know, I can't quite place the 90s when
it comes to my memories about being in the business.
Okay.
So I may have been visiting because I don't think I had a gig at Branigan's.
Maybe I was jamming or visiting whoever was the resident at the time.
Maybe Chand was the resident.
Yeah.
Probably, probably because I don't remember having to go to Branigan's and not be late
and stuff like that.
You know, if I happen to be say with someone like, if we were doing maybe a training check
or something, we were just with Mike Mahendran.
So with Mike, we might have, you know, he may have, I might have had my day off or something.
And he might have said, listen, I'm going to go and check on the kids.
Right.
Why don't you come?
You know, something like that.
So we would all just kind of swan into Branigan's just to see how the resident was doing.
Okay.
Other than that, or maybe pay them or, you know.
On that note, yeah.
On that note, on that note, this is where I need to go back to the beginning.
And this is where I'm going to go.
Hi everyone.
Welcome to the Chris Hansen conversation.
And I'm so happy today.
So really, really excited because I've got with me.
People call me that, but I never believed it because I think this man should be conferred
that honor.
The voice of God in my studio.
And praise indeed.
Thanks for having me there, Chris.
Lots of people call me that, but I never accepted it because as far as I'm concerned, I don't
think so.
The voice of God with me in the studio is Mr. X.
You hear him every evening on Goal 905 on a show called Night Flight.
On the weekends, he's got Rock of Ages and he's here with me in ccpTV for my show.
And I'm very happy to have him here.
Welcome to the studio.
And we've been talking just before we, well, I made the official introduction and I just
want to start this way.
William Xavier started life, well, I'm not going to go back too far.
I'm just going to go to St. Joseph's institution.
You were an old boy, right?
What did you pursue after that?
College.
Okay.
Which one?
Which college?
Raffles Institution.
Yeah.
Whoa.
Yeah.
I'd gone across because of a course selection issue.
Yeah.
So my resume and my test results had gone back to the ministry, as I remember.
And so it wasn't a question of number of places available for my chosen course.
Throughout my entire school career, if you can call it that, it's always been a case
of me being part of an experimental group that was going to be the first batch on any
new or emerging syllabus.
Really?
Right.
Okay.
So my track was economics and commerce.
So they had not offered economics or commerce at A level prior to-
Really?
Yeah.
This is going way back now.
How long ago was this?
So it was the mid-70s.
So in the mid-70s, you mean Singapore at A levels had no economics.
Yeah.
I'll tell you something else that you'll find quite surprising as well, going even
further back with regard to the state of play when we were.
Remember, even if you're talking about the mid-70s, say 1975, which is when I was looking
for a college to go to, it would have been no more than 10 years of us being an independent
country.
Well, yeah.
Right?
That's right.
So a lot of what we take for granted or take as given these days, the state of play as
we know it now, primary, secondary, baccalaureate, all that stuff, this would have been unheard
of, we would not have been able to think of life or education or development in those
terms based on what is available today.
So I kid you not that to pursue commerce, which would have been a secondary school subject,
to pursue it and make it a kind of a major, one of your four A levels or whatever it was,
to offer commerce because A, there weren't the teachers to teach you.
To teach you, yeah.
There weren't that many students who were choosing it because it was new.
So there weren't enough of us who wanted to do commerce and hence economics.
And so it wasn't because I was unable to make the grade with regard to my first choice of
college because you know, SGI and schools like that would have been a feeder for the
Catholic junior college of the time.
A brand new Catholic junior college, I'll have you know.
See?
So either they couldn't get the teachers or they couldn't get enough of a cohort to offer
that at A level because once the exams are done, you're going to need examiners over
in Cambridge in order to go over the results.
So none of that was completely locked down.
And so through no fault of our own, they had decided not to pursue a commerce as an A level
subject in the school of my choice, which meant that our resumes and bios, test results
had to go back to the ministry and it wasn't a case of not being able to get in.
And therefore you had to settle for your second choice, you know, the other schools, you know,
to make up the numbers.
They thought it would have been unfair.
So based on the relevant results of the courses that would have been available based on the
results, I ended up in R.I.
Also it was pretty useful that while they were trying to put a championship winning
football team in the school, they came across my name, you know, all right, you know, combined
schools examination, combined schools qualifications.
Yeah, plays in defense.
Okay, it's pretty useful.
Does he have the grades?
Right?
Next comes the answer.
Does he have the grades?
And the rest, as they say, is pretty hysterical.
But you had the grades, you ended up in R.I., you did your A levels there.
Okay.
Just to rewind just a little bit.
When did you realize that you have this passion for being behind a microphone?
Was it during school years?
It was.
This is difficult to define in terms of passion.
I don't think anyone recognizes it as passion at that age.
Okay.
It was also a question of the background or the circumstances leading to this so-called
passion.
I don't recognize the term until you've been doing it a few years.
The question obviously was, were you going to be given the opportunity to either establish
or identify a passion?
Because as I always say on my shows, even to this day, it's good work if you can get
it.
And hence, you do tend to guard it jealously, not to keep pretenders out, but also to understand
why it is you are here and given the opportunity for the job.
The scope or the area in which you focus or try to have a passion for, that would be a
passion for the music rather than a passion for the job we do in connection with the music.
Okay.
So what you're saying now is that you had an opportunity, you discovered a passion after
a couple of years.
That, hey, I kind of like this, doing this, being behind a microphone.
But the true passion stemming, or this job, if we may call that, this profession stemmed
out of a love for music.
So it was the music that came first.
So let's talk about that.
The passion, as I recognize the term, is the connection between what you do and who you
are.
It's also the difference in my view, and I'm sorry, we're going to get philosophical here,
but to understand that there is a difference, there is a difference, Chris, between job
and work.
Okay.
You know?
What are you doing, dad?
I'm working.
What are you doing, dad?
I'm doing my job.
You see, I see there's a difference.
There's a huge gulf between those two questions.
Perhaps it might be easier to understand or to see how I make those connections if I go
back to my earliest recollection, my earliest vivid recollection, which would have been
Mr. X, age four.
Wow.
Yeah.
The youngest of two boys and my very musical parents.
My real vivid recollection would be me, age four, sitting, four-year-old kid, remember?
Sitting on what my dad would call the entertainment center in our house in Lorong Ampas, off Ballastier
Road near Kim Kiat Road.
In a radiogram about this big, the size of this table where a four-year-old could easily
get on.
Right.
So if I can describe how it was set up, you had a play or gramophone section with the
auto record changer.
Right, right.
So you put a stack of singles and they'll just like a jukebox.
You feed it in, yeah, jukebox.
They'll play themselves, right?
At the bottom of the gramophone section would be a small cupboard for storage of everything
from the singles to the 78 RPMs that this player could do.
I guess my dad being a military, probably had access to these so-called state of the
art, right?
Okay.
It would be one of those old British brands, brands like Kev or Grundig, I don't know what.
Grundig, oh wow.
Yeah.
So anyhow, so there would be the gram section.
There'd be a cupboard section where the 78s go.
And on this side, this half of the gram, radiogram, would be everything from shortwave to FM.
Wow.
On this side, on a huge knob and the needles that would cover several bands.
Yeah.
And I would be perched sitting on this, you know, with the music basically coming out
my behind, right?
Sorry, I'm sorry the image is a little disturbing.
This is age four.
I clearly remember this.
I don't remember much about it after, but age four, this was really a memory.
Okay.
Because I would be looking out.
Remember, I gave you my address, which was Lorong Ampass, right?
Ampass, yes.
My house was in a larger compound, which consisted of a Buddhist temple, several other sort of
ancillary buildings like set out in a row, like a row of terrace houses within kind of
a gated community, right?
And our house shared a fence, I remember it was 1963, shared a fence with Shaw Brothers
Studios.
So P. Ramlee was my neighbor, you could say, alias Congo, people like that.
They were the neighbors.
So Shaw Brothers had a studio there in Ballastier.
Yeah, Lorong Ampass.
I thought they've got one in East Coast Road as well.
Perhaps.
Near Jackie's Bowl.
Right.
So I guess we would have stayed there because it was a magnificent house, I thought.
And it was built with the fact that we had crunching floods before the flood alleviation
system that took care of all the low lying areas in that part of the country.
Ballastier, Booker T. Ma, Kim Kiat, notorious for floods, right?
And at the time, off the film lot on the other side, they shared a fence with what appeared
to be sort of scrubland before even the Torpayos of the world came up.
And they put a canal through it.
And they put a canal through it, a manmade canal rather than a tributary stream of some
other river, Wampo River, perhaps.
So while we were there, they were starting to build this sort of concrete sided canal.
Right.
I'm sorry, I'm taking a little time to explain the background.
We've got the time.
The lead up ramp to the story.
So the so-called wall sided canal became part of the film set.
There are films, black and white films of people like Wahid Sate alias Kogo people,
Asam Sudin, sort of paddling down this manmade canal with palm fronds on the side to make
it look natural.
So they use that as a set as well.
Special effects.
Yeah.
So this was my memory.
So I'd be sitting on the radiogram looking out the window to see what was going on at
the film set at the Loh Rong Ampass Studios.
And between me and the fence would be my six ducks.
So the duck pond.
It didn't take very much to entertain a four year old.
So I was quite happy.
But the one thing, the consistent or the constant thread that ran through it was that there
was always music playing.
I thank my parents all the time on the show.
And I say to them, I can't imagine a world that didn't have the soundtrack of my life
in it because it was part of my earliest known memory.
So you see how I'm developing the, to the extent that I realized that I could probably
still do my job if I didn't have any limbs.
But if I lost my hearing, it would definitely be over.
If I couldn't hear.
And Roger Cool, God rest his soul, blind DJ, you don't have deaf DJs.
It would be a challenge not to be unkind, but that's the realization as I see it.
And it's always a less than gentle reminder that you are not, I don't like to use the
word talented.
You're not doing this because you are talented.
Because you are doing this because you are fortunate.
And I suppose the confluence or the meeting point of all those influences said that I
must go back or I must reestablish my earliest known memory because that's what makes me
happy.
So to you, that's how we truly started was the influence of the music that you hear all
the time.
It's also a reminder or it takes me back to my earliest known memory, not just of all
the things that made up the memory and all the parts, ducks, radiogram, et cetera, et
cetera.
It's how I felt.
I was in heaven.
I was at my happiest because of my very, very earliest known happy memory.
I always go back to that.
If you don't feel today or at any time in your career, not because I thought that I
would end up in a job like this at age four.
That's why I don't say passion because I had no idea that that would happen.
I had no idea, I guess, at age four or 12 or 16 whether or not people actually did this
for a living.
At which point in your early years by your recollection that you decided that I'm going
to be doing something with music, let me be fair here, music first and then get behind
the microphone.
When did it all really start?
Remember I said it's good work if you can get it.
I always thought that I would be over the moon.
It would be my only job if I could get a job like this.
So far it's been true because I always thought I didn't have what it took to get this job.
I also realized that it wasn't necessarily your so-called talent, your rough diamond.
You only get to go to the next stage or get past the next filter if someone who is assessing
you thinks that there's a hope in hell that you might get that far.
Who was that someone?
I would say there were a number of people, but if I can hit the rewind button again,
this is again, sometimes I kid myself.
I know it's probably Kismet if you can call it that.
But Kismet is serendipity.
That's a happy coincidence that at age eight, while we're delving into things like history,
I think geography is also pretty important.
Let me explain.
I went to school or went to the school down the road from where MediaCorp is or at least
was until very recently, until the last seven or eight years.
So I went to St. Michael's, which is down the road at the end of Thompson Road.
I also happened to be fortunate enough to be classmates with a young man, my friend Terry,
whose dad actually worked at the corporation.
And so he was near his dad's office.
He was in my primary three class.
I would probably been with me throughout the entire primary school career.
I ended up in his school after he got transferred.
He made the leap from St. Michael's to Raffles Institution.
And then I caught up with him four years after four years at SGI.
So we were together again.
But at age eight, we were in Mrs. Shears' primary three class.
Mrs. Shears.
Yeah, Mrs. Colleen Shears.
And the two of us, both interchangeably first and second in the class at the exams, fortunate
us again.
Another part of the puzzle, which is we absolutely loved learning.
We absolutely loved learning.
And I was fortunate enough to have an older brother who was also in the school who had
primary three books when I was still in primary one.
And I had read all his textbooks because we were voracious readers.
During the seven or eight weeks of school holidays, we didn't go skiing in Gstaad in
Switzerland or scaling down the peaks at Chamonix.
We were reading each other's textbooks for next year.
So we had read everything cover to cover.
And obviously, if you listen to your mom and you listen to your dad who say, speak properly,
speak from here.
I can't hear you.
And when you're reading, why don't you read out loud?
So fast forward to primary three class, whenever it came down to comprehension passages.
Right.
Will?
Read.
Stand up and read.
Either me or my boy Terry, it'd be one of us.
Because we were kind of ahead.
And then producers at the behest of Terry's dad who worked at the corporation were always
looking to make things like documentaries or what was the latest in school syllabi,
would send cameras down to our school.
And then on many episodes I've seen of things on shows which are probably defunct and whose
copies maybe only reside in the National Library archives or something like that, it's happening
in Singapore.
To quote the name of a news magazine type show after the nine o'clock news.
I remember this quite well because I had been allowed to stay up to catch the episode that
featured my classroom.
The TV cameras had come to film the kids at school and then what was going on there for
an episode of it's happening in Singapore.
Okay.
And then on other occasions, it became quite a favorite resource, a great source of so-called
child talent whenever they needed someone for something.
So you started way back then.
Well, I wouldn't say started, but I'm saying that these were the circumstances under which
I had my brush, my brush with super stardom.
Okay.
So that was that.
So the fact that the happy confluence of these factors, the importance of speaking loudly
and well and from here, the fact that geography will also play the part.
It's not what you know, but who you know and who knows you.
And obviously the traditions of the schools I attended, which is what they keep saying
to us.
If I can get my boy into a mission school, he'd be set for, we don't know what.
We never hear the end of those sentences, but for some reason they want to get their
boys into these schools because of people like Mrs. Shears.
Right.
And the three women I admire most, not the father, son and Holy Ghost, but-
And we don't, I don't think the women-
Wife, mother and Mrs. Shears.
Right?
Fair?
Sure.
Right?
Now by that again, I had no, shall we, I'll go ahead and use the word ambition.
Right.
You know?
What am I good for?
I think I had to decide that at age eight, but I didn't know, I did not know that not
everybody did this.
But you liked it, didn't you?
I'm sure you must have liked it.
We were a class of 40 people.
Right.
Everybody else in the class liked it.
To this day, my classmates from the primary school, they get it.
You know what it was?
The fact that it also plugged into my earliest known memory, which was there was always music
around.
And I didn't realize that not every kid was the same.
We sang in class and on the school bus all the time.
This was some six year old, seven year old, eight and nine on the school bus doing Lulu
and Tom Jones.
Great one.
I mean, it was great, wasn't it?
We sang all the time with absolute, you know, what did it say about people in this business?
You know what?
He's so lucky.
I'll tell you why he's good for this because he's got no shame.
He's not shy.
Not shy.
Yeah.
Not shy.
Remember what I said about confidence?
Give me a set of Lulu lyrics.
I'll have a go.
I won't stick around to decide to hear what your verdict is, but boy, will I give it a
go.
You know what?
It doesn't matter that you don't like it.
Right.
Makes you happy.
Yeah.
Makes me happy.
Right.
And so again, full praise to my parents.
We'd walk on a Sunday night along the canal that was in our old estate where the pasar
malam was.
And pick up $4 vinyls even before cassettes.
And we sang and learned every song that was on both sides of the vinyl.
Everything that happened to be the either current or recently current hits of the day.
Everything we were hearing on the radio was now on vinyl because we either liked the Tom
Jones more than the Engelbert's.
And whether it was local talent, foreign talent, if they sang a song that you liked and you
could get it on vinyl, it'd be playing on repeat for as long as you were sitting on
the radio, Graham looking out the window and you passed your baby ducks to the film lot
next door.
This is the thing.
I thought this was my world and it was.
It happened to be my world.
Now whether you can parlay that into a career or a job, it did not matter to me because
whether I worked in the industry or not, I would always have this, right?
There'll always be music playing regardless.
And I knew that the people you saw on the telly or heard on the radio were revered figures.
They were probably from another planet.
We didn't know where they worked, what it took to do what they did.
It never was a question until the two letters appear in your mailbox.
So I'm coming to you to answer your question.
I'm sorry it's a roundabout way to answer your question.
It's cool.
It's a podcast, man.
Yeah.
But we're here now.
We're here now.
Yeah.
So it was always my intent.
My favorite other career because my dad served in uniform and so did my mom.
I wanted to be a cop.
I wanted to be a policeman.
I've told the story a number of times.
In fact, I put it out there.
In fact, I had asked to join the police because that would be the way to the scholarship and
to university.
And it was again, a throwback to something my parents taught me.
Once you found your thing, stick with it.
There will always be rough days, but there will always be reminders as to why you love
it so much.
Yeah.
Wow.
Profound, right?
Yeah.
But it was just said out the side of their mouth as they were dishing out the devil
curry.
Great folks, man.
So it was like that.
And you know what?
I took that to mean that your first job, try and spend as much time in your service as
possible.
Not to be sidetracked, not the way they do these days, to be sidetracked with hanging
out in the army, for example, until you could get your transfer, finish your national service
and then join the police.
I wanted to be a cop day one.
As soon as I was available for work, the university education would take care of itself because
when you got in there, it would be officer school, et cetera, et cetera.
And then if you're going to be there for life, they'll take care of you.
They'll send you off because I was very interested in criminal justice quite a lot back then.
Again, this musical background wasn't my job destiny, my career destiny.
I didn't think it was.
I didn't think, and part of the reason I didn't think that was is I don't want to be disappointed
that I couldn't get this job that I wasn't good enough to get the job.
Because even if I didn't work in this field, if I ended up being a cop, I wouldn't worry
about these things anymore because this is the fun part of my existence.
That would be my job.
You come back home, you play your music, and you still have that.
Music is my work.
Policeman is the job.
Job, music is the work.
Okay.
That is the life.
So whatever makes you happy.
This phrase came back many a time.
The nature of my involvement with the armed services, I don't really want to get into
detail about my job over there.
But sure you really did get into that.
This was soldiering, not policing.
Okay.
Because before my so-called login date or my enlistment date, and the people in my year
in college, we would be serving our national service like three weeks after our final exams.
In fact, you would be joining them in the same year that you left school because of
that batch.
Yeah.
Same as most of us.
So the A-level batch would go in two days after Christmas.
Bye, mom.
You know?
And dad will say, you'll be great.
You'll be fine.
That's a soldier.
You'll be fine.
Go and have fun.
You know?
Again, as long as you took it in that spirit, this would not faze you.
I had thoroughly enjoyed serving.
You know?
There was always mom and dad to come back to.
Okay.
There was always the music to come back to.
Right.
There was always the good times and the happiness to come back to, no matter what was going
on behind those gates.
So the enlistment date for the police course that I was looking for was in January, by
which time I'd already served three weeks in the army in green uniform.
And so on.
My first day, again, as circumstance would have it, a former student of my school was
my commander.
And I told him day one, I was hoping that you would write down in my interview book,
you know, about my aspirations is that if I could get a chance, if I can make it to
the January intake at the police academy, then perhaps I'd like to go.
If you could put in a word for me that I'm already in the service and if I got a chance
to go to the police academy, I would make a career of it because of what my dad had
told me.
And I would not have worried about whether I, not that I regret anything I do now, but
that's what happened.
And so I got it written down, but unfortunately I didn't get to go in January.
Somewhere along the way, these folks who had actually read my testimonials or the note
I had made about joining the police came to my camp just before passing out parade and
said, we see from your notes here that you were considered doing police work.
We don't have a blue uniform for you, but there's something that we do over here that
I think you might be interested in.
And if it was akin to something that you had always wanted to do, maybe we'll be able
to add to our numbers on a permanent basis.
Because back then, again, the first 20 years of our independence, we were still building.
We were still a developing country.
And so army regulars, a standing force was something to be envied.
And these people were looking to recruit, train and retain people in their chosen craft
as long as there was some kind of career path, something that you could tell them that all
the things that you want to do, you can still do, that sort of thing.
So I'll not expound on that, but that was my national service.
And because of the nature of the job and the skills we acquired, even shortly after my
run out date or my commitment full time had expired, I was back in.
I was recalled to do something with them.
Which you cannot tell.
I don't want to go into all of that, but while I was away, no more than four or five months,
six months maybe, six months after I had left, I was back in, already starting to serve my
so-called-
I am curious, man.
My NSmanship back when they called it them reservists.
So I was called back in and all the time that this was going on, the six months while I
was out, I was looking for stuff to do, whether it was going to take a gap year, finish another
year.
So back then again, the courses, you couldn't walk.
There was no such thing as signing up to do media and communication studies at the local
poly.
No such thing.
Not even at university.
Not even in my day.
Yeah.
Not even in university.
So there was no path.
And you know what?
I would not have been looking for it because I wanted to do criminal justice or criminology
in a uniform, right?
Right.
Because that was my job.
And so that was the missing piece as it were.
What are we going to pursue if those pieces don't fall into place as they have fallen
into place all my life?
This is going to be a major stumbling block for me.
Yeah.
You know?
Because my path had sent me down a kind of a blind alley as it were.
And so we were looking for something to do, actually do and view it as a job, not a ways
and means to do anything.
There was no pressure to so-called perform or deliver on something at age 20 at that
stage.
Before the applications had all gone out, there was the voice test on board Singapore
Airlines, which everybody has to perform, which I failed spectacularly.
You'll be happy to know.
As has been explained to me, hold on, hold on, Hanson, which has been explained to me
is have you looking at the notes so that they can look at you unobserved so that you're
not saying whatever it is or presenting yourself to people who are looking at you in the face.
And so they have you reading so that your concentration is on something else while they
assess you and see the right height.
Is he standing properly?
Does he say too long?
Why does he have a mustache?
That sort of thing, as has been explained to me, because I never give them a, I give
them very short shrift and I always berate them for having failed me in my voice test.
And so that was the confidence slowly ebbing away.
You see?
You can't get past the testers.
And so you console yourself, oh, I don't want to be a steward anyway.
That sort of thing, however naive that might have been.
And of course, as history tells us now, you know why this guy is not a steward and bringing
you your Bloody Mary?
Well, that's because he's too busy presenting the jazz show on our airline.
I'll say that again slowly.
The reason he is not bringing you your next Margarita is because he's too busy on the
jazz channel in your in-flight entertainment station because he's the presenter playing
you the latest Michael Bublé.
How did you get, did you, you did that, didn't you?
This is years, years after.
Oh, years after.
Yeah, years after.
I hadn't joined the industry yet.
Right, right.
Or this industry yet.
And so while I was away serving my country, these two letters arrived in my house.
Okay, here we go.
My latest application.
I had spotted alongside one of my classmates, college mates, an opening for media corp or
rather at the time, Singapore Broadcasting Corporation.
SBC.
They were hiring.
They were hiring presenters or what they called announcers back in the day.
Okay.
Don't get too technical about this, but that was the requirement.
And so I got the forms, got extra copies for my mate and we all applied.
Knowing full well, as I always thought, whether I was watching television or listening to
the radio, this is going to be a good job if you can get it.
This is not, this is not go easy to do, but you know what?
If I do secure the opportunity, I will never put myself through it again.
I will not attend another interview.
So that was going on.
The applications had gone through.
I was away serving my country.
Five weeks away, I returned on a Sunday morning.
I remember it well.
31st of May, 1981.
And I came through the door.
My dad said, these two came for you.
Two envelopes, one marked Singapore Airlines, one marked SBC.
And I said, which one do you think I should open?
If these are both good opportunities, which job?
Basically I was asking my dad, what job you think I should take?
And he says, do what that makes you happy.
You know what would make you happy.
I think I know.
And I think you know too, that Singapore Airlines envelope never got opened.
And I took this one and it said, basically, I don't remember the words now, but I still
have it somewhere in the house.
When can you start?
Wow.
You know, when can you start?
Start training of course.
You haven't got the job yet.
You know, you're one of the five or something like that.
I realized because I called my mate and she said, yeah, me too.
You know, I said, since I've just come back, I've already got the job.
I'll take four more days off and go on a Friday.
That was it.
Three steps to heaven, right?
Then recovered from my ordeal administrations over in the overseas and then showed up for
work one day, the 5th of June, 1981.
The rest as they say, Chris Hansen is hysterical.
So there we were.
It was the start.
Five, as I understood, they had filtered out all the time.
We had taken the voice test, the written test, and then eventually there was a board interview.
So we had cleared all those, had gone through all those three stages before they made a
decision whether it was going to be four or five or three or none of the 2000 plus who
had applied for the gig.
So many.
That's what I understood.
Like I said, good work if you can get it.
Back in those days, everything was administered through the public services commission.
So you had to check all the boxes, at least on the admin side, who you are, character,
criminal record, whatever, drug habit, et cetera.
Because everything was done hiring.
We were a government ministry.
We had only just become a stat board the year before.
Again, 10 years out from independence.
It was still government.
The public services commission were the people who did the hiring and they presented us.
These days, the HR department hires you and then presents you to your boss.
That's usually how it works these days.
Because they had already done the written thing.
You cleared all your other hurdles before HR has to decide whether they want to hire
you and whether you accept the terms.
It's pretty easy to accept a job like this because it wasn't a job.
It was my work.
And so that's a very easy decision to make because dad had always told me, do the thing
that makes you happy.
I don't have to deal with your sad face.
So long story short, here we are, essentially.
So having made the admin requirements and having been interviewed by everybody from
names you recognize, Lucy Leong, Thomas Jacob, Belinda Sunshine, Charlotte Lim, Greg Rosemont,
Dario, Peter Thomas, people like that who heard me through a microphone opposite the
glass on the other side and said, okay, maybe there's something there.
But you know it's going to be, we're going to teach you from the ground up, which I suppose
circling back to your earlier question, because learning properly and please don't speak until
we tell you that you are ready to speak.
And if we see signs along the way that he or she or it may be ready for whatever comes
next, we'll tell you.
And so I bless my trainers.
Because it was a fairly serious job, because you are essentially representatives of the
forces that be, or you work for the national broadcaster.
A certain thing is required.
Of course, we took no interest in what those might be.
But the fact was, I'm prepared to do the job that I'm fully confident in my training, that
if my trainers, my seniors who are currently doing the job tell me that I too can do the
job, I can take on whatever is thrown at me.
So that's not the problem, but it comes back to that confidence thing.
If I say you're ready, don't let me down now, here's your first show.
Something like that.
I also should point out that there was only one real station of record back in those days.
It was radio Singapore, and they were just flirting, beginning to flirt with FM stereo
service, which was mostly classical, but had a little bit of pop there in the daytime hours.
There'd be things you would probably consider to be quaint and ancient about playing four
notes on the xyla phone before you read the commercial.
You guys were really playing the four notes on the xyla phone?
That was done.
By the time I got there, they'd stopped doing that.
But it was a thing.
It was a thing.
So that was that.
People couldn't understand it.
Amazing.
In order to line up your stereo speakers, which not everybody had, by the way, there
would be an actual stereo line up test.
I think it would be the 1K tone to line up your levels, and then demonstrate stereo.
Something to the order of, I'm standing here with a metronome.
You should hear me through your left speaker.
I'm now walking across the room, and here I am.
You can hear the ticking of the metronome.
I should be coming out of your right speaker.
Congratulations, you're ready for stereo.
Something like that.
So that was the way it worked.
And so this was the fledgling FM stereo.
And the rest of us were working in Radio Singapore, which at the time being the only station
there, not even stereo, by the way.
We were all things to all people.
Again, the broadcasters code is never attempt to be all things to all people, but we were
playing to a very diverse audience, English speaking.
And it was our job, our mission to do those things, which any responsible broadcaster
is expected to do, to inform, educate if you can.
There's another I, it's an abbreviation for something I'm not sure about.
There's the other E, which is E-I-E-I-O, right?
Entertain, inform, et cetera, educate.
And others, we were others, people who played music.
That's not the priority.
Remember?
10 years into independence, we were developing, the priorities were news.
What are the development stories?
And so we were the musical interludes in between newscasts.
So the priority was just the news.
And the music was just a by the way.
Right.
Yeah.
That was the music and then there was news and all the other things playing to diverse
audiences as well.
We taught educated and informed children.
We did children's shows.
Coming back to that in a while.
And the fact that there were science and technology type shows.
We even played classical music.
We actually recorded the SSO and played them back on a Monday night after I'd done two
or three hours of Thomas Dolby and Duran Duran and the fledgling Spana Ballet.
Because there was no guidelines.
You're in charge of the music between 5.30 and 8.
Send us the list and get to it.
Remember?
The news is coming and when the news is over, make sure you press play so that we can all
listen to the SSO, which we recorded last Friday at the Victoria Concert Hall.
So it was that thing.
It was a completely omnibus programming.
Yeah.
Nothing was formatted in me.
That's right.
Yeah.
So that was the way it appeared.
Now the reason I think part of the thing that got me over the edge in terms of my hiring
was the fact that I had done this before.
Something like this had been done before.
Again, back to primary three, Mrs. Shears' class.
Because of our geographical co-location, producers had come to the school three years into independence.
Remember?
We want to educate people in English, spoken and written.
This is going to be our salvation.
Speaking proper English and writing it and studying in English, things taught in English.
And this was largely the domain of the better schools, people who got the message, who knew
what was going to be important and best known for being able to deliver on the mission.
So the producers showed up again.
And remember Terry, whose dad works in...
So they had come looking for kids who maybe they would be useful to be part of a children's
literacy project, getting children reading and picking up a library card.
So courtesy of the then National Library Board or whatever they called themselves back then,
we're looking for a couple of kids who can help us with that.
Obviously the magic words which I adore her and thank her for to this day, Mrs. Shears
said these two.
Wow.
Take them.
So three years into independence, there was no such thing as the ECA.
We had no idea what that meant.
So while other people became scouts and played football, we became readers.
That was kind of our ECA.
So the task was on Saturday morning, don't come here, go there.
Go to the library and go home with an arm full of books, as many as you like.
Read them cover to cover.
And obviously Mrs. Shears would have sort of specified us saying we were the folks who
could take on the task, acquit themselves admirably and not lose time studying the other
subjects because there was room on their schedule to be able to take this on.
Because it became extracurricular activities and it involved doing things that had to do
without curricular activity anyway.
We were just doing more of it.
And on a Tuesday afternoon, I recall it, a gray van of some sort would show up at the
school and pick us up and take us into the studios in the basement of Caldecott.
And we would read these books, children's books on tape to be played in serialized form
on children's programs.
Right.
So it was like a story, storytelling in parts.
Yeah.
The mermaid and the hourglass.
So here's chapter two and so on and so on, read by Will Xavier, et cetera.
So that was the thing.
I suspect that at least in terms of familiarity, without touting my own so-called skills, I
had none at the time, that the people, my producers, including my trainer, you know,
Little Rappaduri, God rest his soul, I know you.
You're that kid, right?
Mermaid, Momotaro and the peach, right?
That would be you, right?
Maybe a little familiarity.
He knows how this works.
Let's keep him.
Unless he fails spectacularly, if he can get through, he's got a little bit of training
there.
You know, there may not be that much that we need to sort of smoothen out.
The rough diamond is there.
That's what I think.
Never confirmed or otherwise to me.
But that's what I believed because it added to my confidence.
So that was the background.
So if you ask me, you know, when does all these things start?
My answer would be eight years old, right?
And it was just my first question, man.
That's right.
All right, go ahead now.
Question two.
Oh man, I've got a ton.
And it's been, you know, just one question.
And Mr. X went on for more than an hour.
Whoa.
Okay, I need the condensing now, you know.
And it was a great story, by the way.
I loved it.
Mostly true.
Of course, I don't doubt that.
But you know, X, I got to say this, man.
I mean, and I've said this to several people because this show is a tribute show and we
are honoring you.
And I did that also with Joe Augustine for this season.
It's a tribute to SG Music icons.
And it's not just, you know, exclusive to Musos.
Guys like you have brought music to this country as well.
And now we're on that topic of music.
The ABU Popular Song Contest.
Mm, 87.
Oh man.
The song you wrote?
Yes.
I Will Love You.
Back in Love Again.
Was it Back in Love Again?
Or was it I Will Love You?
Which Bob Fernando sang.
No, no.
The other one.
Wasn't it Ali?
No.
Oh, okay.
Bob Fernando.
Oh, Robert Fernando sang that song.
Yeah.
How did you get into that, man?
I mean, I know you just mentioned to me, four years old, and you were listening to music.
And then you started writing.
Yeah.
And I always wrote, always wrote, right through school, et cetera.
But that never took it to the next level.
Okay.
There was always songs running around in my head.
And you know, however conceited or self-centered it may sound, the confidence that we were
talking about, it's always been backed up with real ability, right?
Or quantifiable ability as certified by people who knew better.
In other words, I never said to myself, I was ready for anything unless I had it told
to me by someone who knew better.
You know?
It's your teacher.
It's your trainer.
Right.
It's your inspiration.
So there was no self-realization that you actually had all this.
I think that would have been somewhat conceited and arrogant, but because it hadn't been tested.
Why would it be conceited and arrogant, man?
In the sense that, you know what, if I don't win, I don't want to play.
Because I'll tell you what, as I said, I was going to say that however conceited or self-centered
it may sound, I always call it confidence in the sense that you heard something on the
radio, heard someone singing a song.
So, because you were singing all the time, you also kind of have subconscious appreciation
for the lyric and a sense of melody.
Now to put those things together and create something new.
It was always on the basis of whatever you heard on the radio, whatever someone was saying
on the radio, the way they introduced their records or the way the records were sold or
the way the songs were written or the way the songs were recorded.
It was always a question of whether you thought, I can do that.
Yeah, but didn't you think that way?
You thought that way, didn't you?
That's what I mean.
I never took on something that I didn't think I could do.
So it became somewhat organic.
And the reason I wrote the song was because I thought I could.
Sorry, I got the title wrong though.
Back in Love Again, Robert Fernando.
Back in Love Again.
I've known Bob forever.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah, great singer, man.
The James Ingram was singing for...
Absolutely.
NDP.
Absolutely.
NDP.
Yeah, it was the...
You miss NDP.
Yeah, yeah.
I said, and he's the one, right?
There was a time...
Yeah.
Right?
Well, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
That was Clement.
There was a time...
No, that's Robert, wasn't it?
Clement Chow.
This is going to end up on the cutting room floor.
Yeah, that's...
Yeah, no.
No, that's Clement Chow.
Clement Chow.
What did...
There was a time on Me, Singapore.
There was a time when people said that...
Yeah.
That's Clement Chow.
Clement Chow, yeah.
That's not Colony, Singapore.
Wait a second.
There was a time...
Oh, that's We, Singapore.
Yeah.
Ah, that's Robert.
Yeah, okay.
Because you look at his pitch, right?
Okay.
No one can get up there like Bob does.
Yeah.
No one can get up there like Bob does.
Yeah.
No one can get up there like Bob does.
Yeah.
Right?
So I remember he was practically yelling...
Yeah, that's We, Singapore.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay.
So anyway, I mean, whatever the story was, it was also, again, this confidence I was
telling you about.
Yeah.
I was dabbling in those things that I saw how orchestras were recorded.
I was set in on them.
See, the training was absolutely crucial and it was extremely comprehensive.
Right.
Because we were the only ones there.
Right.
So you want access to a piano?
It's over there in Studio B. You want access to a studio that can accommodate a choir or
an orchestra, 35 pieces?
It's over there.
You think I could use...
Of course you can use it.
You're a producer.
Just say you want to use it.
You see, so back then, the facilitation of everything that you chose to pursue was always
available.
Available.
You know?
The magic words that come out of your trainer's mouth is, you're ready.
Oh wow.
Three other words.
Go get them.
No, I was saying Mr. NDP.
You were Mr. NDP.
Yeah.
98 was my first full one.
In person.
Yeah.
In person.
I was on the field at Old National Stadium with Chandran, Dalia.
Okay.
That is it.
And Victor, God rest his soul.
Yeah.
Victor Koo.
And me.
And that was us hosting.
And back then, what I do now with calling in the aircraft, et cetera, was there was
no such assignment.
There was no one person who did that, made the introductions.
Yeah.
That became a hallmark.
Can I have a sample of that, man?
Here they come!
Someone tried to do it.
It wasn't you who didn't do that.
Someone else took over, right?
I cannot thank my colleagues.
Please make sure this ends up on the cutting room floor.
Not for me to say.
Because you know, the thing about that...
No, come on, man.
That's a Mr. X hallmark, man.
Come on.
It is patented more or less.
People don't want to hear it any other way.
Right.
There were years when I had switched to TV commentary.
Yeah.
I know that.
Yeah.
So somebody else had to take on the so-called stadium announcements.
Stadium announcements.
That's right.
Yeah.
And I think that's the story about the writing.
Right.
You know, like I said, however, I do apologize if it sounds as if self-centered and conceited
and self-serving.
The fact that there was a certain confidence that allowed me to say, you know, I could
be decent at this.
There's no other reason to submit a song until I could hear it in the form that if it was
on a record by a singer you didn't know, you could get this played on the radio.
If it wasn't good enough, I would not have entered the competition.
If I didn't think I could win it.
Right.
That was the thing.
Because I had a job.
I didn't need this.
Yeah.
But it was to sort of test myself or to put myself to be assessed by a more sophisticated
public.
And apparently by that time, of course, I had established myself as being kind of a
character on the scene and therefore also booked a singer who everybody knew, a writer
who also a lot of people knew, and an arrangement, a basic arrangement by someone who's worn
the golden horse.
You know?
Yeah.
So classmates of mine, again, who you know and who knows you.
Right.
So that is the songwriting aspect.
You didn't follow through with that anymore after that, right?
Yes and no.
Always overtaken by issues of the day and so forth.
For the record, we'd gone to KL and had a worthy showing but didn't win the thing.
We won the national competitions.
Like Eurovision, you win your local contest and then test yourself against the Australians.
The finals.
Yeah, the finals.
Absolute finals.
Yeah.
No, Kate Severano.
People, these are giants.
They've already got records and albums to be their name, right?
They become the standard bearers.
And of course, a style of arrangement and a kind of a musical sophistication, which
the idea of the Asian festival was to be able to bring others to that level until such time.
You know?
You can't end…
You're going to have a tough time trying to win Eurovision if the British entry happens
to be Cliff Richard or the Swedish entry happens to be ABBA.
ABBA.
Hard to beat.
Hard to compete.
It's been 40 plus years, hasn't it?
42.
42 years, man.
Long time.
You've seen change happen from the very get-go.
Wow.
That is their middle name.
Yeah.
Can you maybe just cite some examples of changes, man?
And what do you think of them?
Your opinion.
All right.
This might be difficult to explain, but change is almost…
Constant.
It is constant and happening all the time.
There are broad phases, right?
If you go back to the start, advancements in stereo, right?
Advancements in choice, advancements in technology.
And then as we are sitting here talking to microphones and looking into cameras, advancements
in choice and forms of media, right?
And to which, as a media company, we always have to either be to include or adapt, I believe,
and try to be as good as many things as possible.
I don't think that there will be one person who'll be good at everything, right?
Or else I think the nature of the beast is such that there is a democratization of the
media.
In other words, there is the national media, there is the traditional media, and then there's
the…
Digital media.
And of course, everyone who used to be a customer is now a competitor.
Everybody's a broadcaster.
Have your individual media if there's such a thing as that, right?
Yeah.
I mean, you're in one now.
You know what?
I also genuinely believe it's not either or.
I think there are winners and also rants in every field.
Let's use an example that we may not necessarily be involved with ourselves.
Let's say we are a football club and we leave out the EPL because we end up in a food fight.
Tribal, isn't it?
A bit tribal.
Dairy.
Yeah.
Let's say we were Scotland.
There are only two teams in Scotland, but apparently the SPL is full of other teams.
You only want to know about Celtic or Rangers.
So it's not as if the other teams, Hibernian and Partick Thistle and those teams in other
worlds, you can't even remember their names now.
If it wasn't for them, then you couldn't have these two.
You get what I mean?
And every now and again, if you said use the advertising industry, for example, or even
big tech, there will come a phase where it is all embracing and everybody adopts it.
Everybody wants a social media account.
But eventually the law of duality may start to rear its head and you're either Insta or
you are Twitter or X.
You wouldn't be MySpace or Snapchat, would you?
And those things deemed to be at the time the new big kid on the block, where are they
now?
So on every level, and I get the question, I think you may ask me later, is AI going
to replace you at some stage?
My answer to that would be, we'll have to see, but some may fall by the wayside.
Some may not find a way to compete.
Some will find, most will find a way to adapt.
So it's not either or.
Now that AI is here, thanks Mr. X, thanks for all the history.
You know what I'm saying?
And in the advertising industry, for example, there comes a time when there is a shakeout
and the big agencies these days are Google and Facebook.
The Saatchi and Saatchis of the world will just have to bite down on their gums and play
along.
You see, the reason why I'm asking, I mean, you're very right.
I mean, take a look at traditional advertising, right?
For those big boys in the past, Saatchi and Saatchi, O&M, if they didn't adapt to digital
early, then they really would be left behind.
And I think they are, personally, in my opinion.
And then you have those consumers, that is, that would say, listen, I rather, I already
have Spotify.
I can just download my music.
I don't need radio anymore.
Listening to, say, 938, for example, there's news, right?
But then again, I get on my device, I can get all kinds of news everywhere.
And so I stopped buying the broadsheets, you know?
I stopped listening to news on radio.
Why should I do that, you know?
So you have a lot of young people today, cans on them, you know, in commuting and public
transport, you know?
And you see cans on lots of them now.
Cans, not just earphones.
Beats.
Yeah, beats, man.
But it's more than beats.
Now, people are actually buying all kinds of great cans.
And they're listening to stuff.
But what are they listening to?
More often than not, I hate to say this, it's not radio.
So what do you think?
You've been around so long.
What do you think the future would be for radio?
You know?
I mean, in the past, if you recall the song, video killed the radio star, but it didn't.
MTV didn't kill radio.
Videotape didn't kill television.
Yeah, yeah, it didn't.
But now, you're really looking at people who don't listen to radio anymore.
I'm not listening to radio.
Don't get me the wrong way.
I just want to hear your opinion.
I think there are two ways to look at it.
I think they may both be valid.
One of which is the people who take on, those who love it will say, the more the merrier.
More choice is always a good thing.
Choice is empowering to the consumer.
You also want to compete to the point of playing up the thing that you are good at.
And sure, only the strong will survive, then be strong.
You know?
Right.
They will come around like vinyl.
Vinyl's back.
Who knew?
Right?
Because each of these, if you examine it critically, each of these represents something which the
others do not have.
You know?
And it's very hard to compete with free.
That's what I mean.
Because there's a cost attached to each one of them.
Even if you got the content for free, the platform isn't.
It may cost you a subscription.
And it was like streaming services was the end of traditional television.
Oh yeah?
Until they raised their prices.
You know?
Remember when the last frontier was blogs.
Yep.
Blogs?
Ask any teenager today.
They don't know what blogs are, man.
Do you ever have a blog?
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
My dad used to have one.
Yeah, my dad used to have a blog, yeah.
At the time though, could you think beyond the blog?
Could you think beyond your Instagram account?
So do you think radio in general, not just where you work in general, across maybe, okay,
don't talk about across the globe, let's talk about Singapore, will be able to evolve to
compete?
Absolutely.
Whether that appears to be self-serving or not, but I think there's an evolution which
cannot be, which will not happen overnight.
And people will realize this.
Before I start thinking about taking shots at the audience, the person who is being considered
to be a consumer of whatever it is you are offering, well, if you know how your intended
customer behaves or how he thinks or most importantly, what he wants and what he's prepared
to pay for, then I suppose you would have a pretty good reading as to how you shall
operate going forward if you choose to retain his eyes, ears or Instagram account, right?
Or earn his subscription, et cetera.
I think the wheels of evolution or the wheels of time won't stop turning at any point.
But if someone were to say to you, is whatever is coming going to be the end game?
It may be a game changer, but it won't be the end game because somebody's already thinking
of the new AI.
But we'll burn that bridge when we come to it, I suppose.
You know?
Okay.
I don't know whether there's a difference between failing to compete or obsolescence
or redundancy.
I'm sure that I think regardless of the evolving technology, those things are kind of going
to happen anyway.
I think personally, what could stop this in my opinion again is that the people behind
these things, the people in management, for example, get a little bit complacent.
You know, because I don't know.
I mean-
You won't be able to use this, bro.
Use what?
I can't knock the management.
No, I'm not asking you to.
This is me talking, not you.
I'm not asking you to respond to that.
I'm just giving you as part of our chit chat.
This is what I think.
As a consumer even.
I think that's fair.
So in my opinion, I think that there's not too many things evolving in our local entertainment
per se on both fronts, whether it's radio, whether it's TV.
Even if we were to say increase subscription on the streaming services that's widely available,
people pay.
People will pay because there's not a lot more that we have to pay.
And this is my opinion.
You don't have to partake.
Don't worry.
But then this is where I think this is a critical period in history with digital going so far
now that it is important for those who have been around traditionally to really step up.
This is what I think.
Yeah.
So anyways.
No, I think that's right.
I think that's right to the extent that we've seen it happen before.
Right?
But it's the business of those who think it is their job or their work to step up.
And those who step up will be fine.
I agree because more and more people out there, I mean the truth, the hard truth is more and
more people out there stop buying broadsheets.
More and more people out there stop even watching TV.
Even in my own home, my wife, my kid, they don't watch really TV.
They don't really watch TV.
They're on their phones, man.
They're watching stuff from their phones and their devices, whatever.
And I'm the one sitting in front of the TV.
And the only thing that I watch, again speaking strictly as a consumer, would be Channel News
Asia.
I want to know the news.
I mean we've gone back again.
Strangely, like what you just said, right?
You go back, the vinyls came back.
Now people like me, I want to know the news.
The same person I think was the one who was touting his Facebook account as being the
only thing he needs, for example.
And he may not hold that opinion today when he first opened his account.
That's what I'm thinking.
In other words, the nature of the beast is in fact the nature of the collective people
who support it.
You know what I mean?
We created this thing.
The fact is we don't know what's coming.
But you see, for me, I enjoy TV and radio, especially 70s and 80s, you know, and part
of the 90s.
I did enjoy it very, very much, man.
And to me, oh that's a job I've always wanted.
I didn't get into it though, not because I was not selected.
I just by some freak chance I didn't get into it.
But today when I listen on radio, yeah, the standards is a little different now.
I'm not saying better or worse.
Different from what it used to be.
I preferred radio back then, way back when.
Again, that's just me.
That's just me.
The people that we had, I mean those big names that you mentioned earlier on, the late great
Victor Kuhl, Roger Kuhl, you know.
I mentioned earlier when we sat down, Eric Lim on Rediffusion, right?
I mean my goodness me.
Those guys were monsters, man.
They were monsters.
I mean I really enjoyed radio then and even TV back then.
And then I realized something as I was doing, you know, of course I had to do some research.
William Xavier, then Ikeedon.
Okay, this is what I get.
Ikeedon Mr. X.
I'm still getting the same thing.
I mean dude, your digital footprint is almost non-existent.
For someone like you.
Yeah.
But you know what I found?
I'm going to flash this on the screen right now, Kai.
Can we put that one up?
Did you see this one?
I see it.
This was a picture from when my news reading days.
Yeah, but did you see the 18 million there below your name?
There's a site that's called Net Worth Post.
And then it comes up, William Xavier's worth $18 million.
Did they clear that picture with us?
I don't know.
I really don't know.
But you might well, Net Worth might well say that I couldn't possibly comment.
That's one thing I found on you.
But really not much of a digital footprint, man.
You know what?
I'm too busy being something else.
You know what I mean?
Maybe you could use the word dinosaur.
But you know what?
I think if you allow me, I would then say that you know what?
I still have much to do where I am right now before I take on that other beast.
In other words, I haven't been completely through my CD collection.
I've not heard everything.
Even if you know what?
If I did one album a day, I'd take to about 21, 22 before I got through the entire thing.
And then what's that you said about internet?
You know what I mean?
So maybe it's a focus.
And again, you hear your father or your uncle or somebody who's your senior colleague says
to you, stick to what you're good at and make the most of it.
Because technology is the tool.
It's not the game.
So you are the game.
And so raise your game.
Are you as good as you think you could be?
Or do you think you are as good as someone expects you to be?
And until you can say yes to both, stick with what you're good at.
No disrespect to those who have to operate the digital natives as we know them today.
Gen Z and the millennials, they have to deal and operate with what is given to them or
they have at their disposal.
Get somewhere along the line when they have kids of their own, for example, and then say,
hear what is being said to them by things that they heard themselves saying to the generation
before.
It's not about right or wrong.
It's about true or false.
It is what it is.
It is the reality.
You have to deal the hand that you're played, right?
I find it very strange, as an aside, I find it very strange.
Throughout this entire hour plus we've been talking, I have not been potty-mouthed.
It's remarkable.
That may be a job requirement.
I don't think I've ever sworn on the air.
No, no, no.
I mean, I know you guys, you shouldn't because it's national radio.
These are the prevailing standards.
Yeah, but podcasts, we don't really care.
I don't care, but personally, my potty-mouth linguistics are so freaking popular for that
shit, but I really haven't been potty-mouthed at all with you, and you're the second guest
I've ever had of all my shoots.
I haven't been like this, man.
Like I said, I'm starstruck.
You're very kind.
I'm really starstruck, man.
I mean, you could go on forever and I just sit down here, don't have to really work that
hard, and there you go.
Will Zavich is going on and on and on.
It's like that old Le Mans song, right?
The ending story.
The story is still being written.
That's the nice part about being in this industry.
So, nobody has said that, but the story is still being written.
Can I just ask you just a few short little questions before we end the show?
NDP, will you still continue to do it?
You're a national day birthday baby as well, isn't it?
Correct.
As long as I'm able.
Really?
And you will still continue to do it despite all the rehearsals that you've got to do?
It's a nightmare.
I know that, man.
Until the invitation stops coming.
Wow.
So, you're happy to do it, huh?
I'm happy to do this.
I'm happy to be here, Chris.
Thank you.
I'm so glad that you actually did come for the show.
And one more thing.
You're going to go on.
There's going to be, like you said, a never-ending story.
Story's being still been written.
So what's next?
More of the same.
Like I said, I haven't heard every CD in my collection.
So you're not going to try something new?
The last song I'll ever play on the radio has yet to be written.
Wow.
So you intend to go on?
Until they tell me not to.
Really?
Wow.
Are you listening, bosses?
Wow.
Okay.
You know, you said so much.
Just one question.
You went on for an hour plus and you gave so much.
I mean, I really, really appreciate it.
I really didn't have to work very hard.
And until the point where poor old VJ came all the way here and I got to do this, man.
You got to really try this.
Please go ahead.
This is something that I always, always insist it's got to be on my podcast desk.
And it's Prawn Vade's, probably the fluffiest, crispiest vades you can find in the land.
And they are from Gordon's Vade's.
The number's up there.
You can just give them a WhatsApp or you can order them online at gordonvade.com.
Look for VJ.
He'll be very, very happy to serve you.
And please indulge.
These guys are great.
Little munchkins.
That's what I call them.
And thank you again, Mr. Rex.
Thank you for being on the show.
Really, really.
Oh my goodness, I'm so starstruck.
I'm happy to say, Chris, you are a witness or you have the complete record as it were.
I've told all the stories that I've shared with you in various parts over a very extended
period of time.
So it's all been condensed into the one podcast.
Well played, bro.
No, I was asked one question.
I sit back and relax, you know, just listen to you talk.
I did run the soundtrack of my life in my head before I got here.
And you're absolutely right.
It is a story.
And definitely people in my business definitely appreciate your intention or your desire to
try and put it on the record.
Just what it is.
What are the, however humble they may be, about the building blocks that built this
behemoth called the industry?
Yeah.
I mean, I've always had been of the opinion that, you know, people like you, people in
the music business, musos especially, not really being acknowledged very much, you know,
in this land.
And my little voice through the show, I try and I do my best to bring these guys forward,
you know, and so that people know that, look, these are the people that were here before
most and they brought music to the fore, man.
And these guys were so committed, dedicated to their craft, you know, guys like you, you
know, guys like Gingerbread.
I've had them on my show, Jason and Jason Shahoo and Anne Hussain.
I had Dudley Nones and Leonard Rezel.
And these are the people to this day, they're still playing this, to this day, they're still
doing their bit for the music industry.
And that to me is so important because I think music in Singapore has been dead for a bit.
And yeah, as far as I can help it, I will not stop trying to get people who are integral
in our music industry to come on the show as my tribute to them.
And thank you so much as well, Mr. X, for really bringing music on our airwaves.
And it's all these years, man.
I mean, I enjoy listening to the discography, you know, your knowledge of muses, you know,
and bands across the globe.
I mean, it's amazing.
I think I've lived through it, I think basically is the reason, you know, and I know of which
you speak, you know, I've had first experience.
I also want to say that it needs to be done what you're doing.
And in so doing, you then begun to understand the difference as to why we do this and what
is the motivation for people.
And I can't say I speak for everyone else, but definitely is, if you get it right, you
immediately start to see a line emerge between job and work.
Yeah, man.
Right?
And you do this because you want to, not because you have to.
I want to.
I want to do this.
It's important to me.
You know, besides the UFO stories that I also have in my other vertical, right?
But this means a lot.
And there have been muses of us, I must say, who've rejected coming on the show for whatever
reason that they see fit, which I respect.
I wish that they would be here, you know, so that we can talk more about how they got
to where they are, you know.
And I really, really would want to continue doing this as far and as long as I can.
I think you think a little like me in the sense that we always want to be, at some point,
the picture next to the description in the Encyclopedia Britannica.
So in other words, if you had a term which you had to define or explain as Singapore
DJ, you want to see my picture next to the description.
For example.
And so it is always a desire and ambition, if you want to call it a life's work, to be
the best version of this.
The best version of this.
And at least all collected in one place, the definitive story and all the information and
all the opinions gathered in the one place of what it is.
In other words, the Chris Hansen remix is the best version of our iconic history of
the entertainment industry.
Is that fair?
Yeah, well, they'll be great actually, but I have to have more and more of the old musos
and DJs come on the show and then the collection is going to be great.
I'm pretty sure of that.
Those of us who do it don't see to it that that is the case.
We leave that to others.
But whatever you can contribute, you should or must or please contribute.
So that the definitive record is in the one place.
It's always been my desire.
It's also for the younger generation to understand what it took for these guys, you know, and
how analog things were.
You know, when they were playing their music, man, the way they were recording stuff.
What they managed to do with the limited resources.
Exactly.
But done with so much passion.
And you know, what I've learned from this series, just to end the show, which can go
on talking forever.
What I've learned through this series is that there's this one common thread.
And that thread is the influence I've got was from my folks playing music.
They play music, they play songs, and then it got to me.
And then I knew that's going to be my life.
So a lot of people have said that to me.
This is one really commonality.
This is one common thread, even for me.
And I've said this a few times too.
If it weren't for my mom and my uncles, I don't think I would have had this joy for
music because I sing as well.
And you know, listening to Elvis, listening to Lobo, the Shy Lights, Stylistics, you're
right.
I've had this influence, Nat King Cole, Jim Reeves, Charlie Pride, Slim Whitman, Marty
Robbins, right?
I don't think I would have had this, I'm going to use the term, passion for this, to get
behind a microphone.
Sure.
It's always been the thing for me.
And this is this common thread.
And it's amazing actually.
Everyone, everybody so far, no one's let me down on that.
So it's pretty cool, man.
So when you told me, four years old.
Yeah.
That story takes some beating.
But I can't understand because there's so much truth in that.
Even for me, I think even probably five, six years old, you know, still remember the music
and records that we've been playing over and over and over again.
And you were from SGI Mission School.
I came from a mission school.
And this thing about speak right, stand up, read.
I was that kid too.
It keeps today's parents wanting to send their kids to these places.
Right.
And you don't come out, you don't graduate from these schools shy.
If you are born an introvert, you will still be an introvert, but you will rise to the
occasion.
Not when you enter the classroom.
Leave your introvertism outside.
So you know, that's where I think, again, you know, the common thread is for most of
my guests that I've gotten the show, every time I ask them, so why?
How did you get here?
And they tell you, yeah, it's, you know, my folks, my uncles, my, you know, my brother,
my brothers, they play records and then, you know, and I hear the same music all the time.
And I love that.
You know, I can't get that so often.
All those pieces are just looking for an opportunity, quite frankly.
And these days, the enabling technology makes it very easy to put those things to work.
Yeah.
And I just want the young people to say, hey, come on, whatever you do, don't diss the old
a lot because without them, you wouldn't be here.
You know?
Love me do in mono, man.
Oh gosh.
That's the only version of that song I want to hear.
Love me do in mono.
Which means music on the left side and the vocals on the right.
No, everything down the middle.
Okay.
In other words, it's not panned.
Yeah.
Not panned.
You're going through one mic and out one speaker.
You'll hear everything.
On one speaker.
Yeah, that's right.
You don't miss anything if you don't have a second speaker.
You know, I'm still kind of young, so I don't really recall those years, you know, when
radio was like that in mono.
I think in my time, it's already stereo.
Yeah.
Though we did have the AM band as well.
Yeah.
Sure.
Yeah.
Well, anyway, thanks so very much again, Will, for being on the show.
We have to call time on this because goodness me.
Kai, you're right, Kai.
It's already Monday.
Kai, you're right.
Chris is going to take two hours.
Here we go.
Thanks very much for inviting me.
No, not at all.
Thanks for being here, man.
The pleasure is all mine as well.
Okay, people, whatever you do, hit the subscribe button and hit that notification bell.
This is Chris Hansen along with Mr. X.
Thank you so very much for being here with us.
I'll see you again soon.
Bye-bye.