Concert Review: ONJ in Singapore

You may not know this, as geeky and smart-alecky as I appear to be, deep inside I am really a hopeless romantic.

Yes, I know it's hard to believe, just like discovering that "I can't believe it's not really butter" isn't really butter. But it is true.

So when I found out from TV adverts that Livvy "Neutron Bomb" Olivia Newton-John was coming to Singapore for her first concert here, I promptly went and bought a ticket.

The cheapest ticket, of course. I'm a student - I need to eat!

I am quite a Livvy fan. I have five of her CDs, two cassette tapes and her Xanadu movie on video. In fact I think that Xanadu is her best movie.

"WHAT!?!! Are you a frakin' Xanadude?" you ask.

Wait, let me explain.

First of all, I hate Barbara Streisand and neon-coloured clothing.

Second, I first watched Xanadu (1980) when I was like ten years old, so the story was romantic and magical to me then. Of course now I know it has a stupid plot; boy do I know - I recently watched it side-by-side with Ridley Scott's awesome Alien (1979) that was released around that time.

The contrast is just mind-blowing. I mean chest-bursting.

As I was saying, Xanadu is great because it had a kiddy plot and a hot babe on skates.

And one more thing.

Feathered hair.
















Here is Livvy next to another sexy denizen of the 70's, Farrah Fawcett.

I love I love I LOVE!

Feathered hair spells S-E-X. It should've never gone out of fashion.

Anyway, let's talk about her concert now.

I took a bus to the Indoor Stadium last friday evening to catch Livvy's concert.

Boy was that a mistake. Four words: Traffic... Jam... Orchard... Road.

'nuff said.

When I arrived a long line of people had already formed. Surprisingly I find a number of younger people in the audience - and some very old uncles and aunties.

Tad outside the target demographic.

I wanted to take some photos of the concert, but there is a big sign on the entrance that said "No Photography".

Oh well. I wasn't there to hear my own voice if I get dragged out of the stadium screaming and kicking.

So you'll have to get your pictures from the excellent Only Olivia website instead. Which is all the better since they have kickass cameras and a much better shooting angle.

Here's one of their photos. Click on the picture to enter their concert resource page.















As you can see, Livvy looks great for a 58-year-old. I think she lost weight for her concert tour.

The stage setup is simple and low-key. Livvy is accompanied by a seven-member band which has multi-talented members. One of the guys can sing, play the harmonica, and even does a mean saxophone.

This sounds cruel, but it is true: apart from the lead guitarist, the other band members aren't pretty to look at. I believe this is no accident. There is a saying in Chinese: "鲜花要有绿叶来陪衬".

Now for my overview of her concert. I won't go into all the details - you can check out what other people have to say at the end of this post.

Instead I will just highlight some notable observations.

The opening performance was sung by Olinda Cho, a Singapore Idol finalist. Her sentimental rendition of Culture Club's "Karma-Chameleon" was just... weird.

New Wave pop - soft rock style? To me it doesn't work.

Next, Livvy's voice floated over the speakers, singing part of "I Honestly Love You" before she made her appearance to the cheering audience.

Her introductory banter was brief and she sounded distant. She said that she hadn't sung in Singapore for a long time, that it was wonderful to be here in our beautiful city and thanked the audience for making her feel so welcome.

I would have prefered country. I am being picky, but these things matter to me.

And then the songs began.

If I can sum up her vocal performance in one word, it would be: Power.

Some reviewers say that her voice is still the same after all these years - I definitely disagree. There is no question that her vocal range is still impressive and and she's still pitch-perfect, but her voice is noticeably lower in pitch and her singing style sounds stronger and brighter than her records from the 70's and 80's.

To me, this emphasis on power and energy makes her sound very different from the more endearing, wispy voice that you hear in the CDs. I believe much of this is due to the inherent nature of a concert - louder, brighter and more impersonal.

However some of this is definitely due to design - for two songs (including the Bossa Nova version of "Physical"), Livvy goes into ear-piercing falsetto, which underscores her superior pitch control and shows off her voice training. While that radiates positive energy, I certainly didn't like those parts.

I sense a feeling of distance throughout the concert. Let me give you two concrete examples.

After every song or two, Livvy would take a sip of tea and say "Cheers!"

The first time she asked "Cheers...what do you say here?" Some people in the audience screamed "Yam Seng!", but she didn't hear it. Which is a pity because apparently in the Taipei concerts she said "Gan Bei!" every time she had a drink.

In addition she asked if there were Aussies in the audience, much to the delight of Australian fans of course. However it made me feel that perhaps she considered Singapore just as a generic city that is somewhere near Australia.

Thus, try as I might, I couldn't feel any romance in the air when she sang "I Honestly Love You" as part of the encore. It sounded well-rehearsed, technically accurate and lacked intimacy.

At the closing of the concert, the appreciative audience gave Livvy a standing ovation. I think it was no mean feat singing with so such accuracy and so much energy for two hours straight. She definitely deserved the applause and cheers from us fans.

But, at the same time, I felt a disconnect. Despite the Livvy's youthful appearance and contemporary hairdo, the reality is that since the 70's she has become a double platinum record holder, an Order of the British Empire (OBE) and Order of Australia (OA) awardee.

A cancer fighter and survivor. An environmentalist. A multi-millionaire. A businesswoman. A mother.

She has received much and been through much in life - it's my own stupid fantasy to believe that she is still the same bright-eyed starlet who started on her path to fame with Bob Dylan's "If Not For You" in 1971.

Or perhaps the image of vulnerability and innocence was a fantasy from the start, a facade that conceals a strong, competitive and ambitious fighting spirit.

Livvy herself said it best in Xanadu: "I am not as I appear to you."

And so I leave you with this well-edited video from Youtube that reminisces on the past thirty years of her singing career.



I'll love you forever, Livvy.


Would you like to know more?

Other ONJ concert reviews
- Taipei concert
- Singapore concert (Channel News Asia)
- Genting concert

A Real Patent?

Check out this patent application:

United States Patent Application 20060071122

Full body teleportation system

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

[0002] The basis for this invention is an event, referring to FIG. 1, occurring on May 2, 2004, in which the inventor ("he") personally experienced a full-body teleportation while walking to the bus stop (A) along a road (B) that runs perpendicular to the nearby commercial airport runways where planes are landing. There is a wide iron grating (D) for water drainage that crosses the road at the center of the bus stop. The grating width is such that one has to make a concerted effort to jump across it in order to get from one side to the other. Approximately 50 meters from the iron grating, he (E) felt a vertical wave (F), similar to a flag waving in the breeze, traveling down the street toward the bus stop. The wave velocity was about 1 meter per second, which was slightly faster than his walking speed. In the next instance, he (G) found himself down the street near the corner of the next block. Realizing that he had passed the bus stop, he turned around to see the iron grating approximately 50 meters up the street in back of him. Because there was no recollection of having jumped across the iron grating nor of having passed the bus stop's yellow marker line, he realized that he had been teleported a distance of 100 meters while moving along with the traveling wave. It was obvious that the wave was pulsed because the front edge overtook the inventor, moved with him momentarily, and then the back edge of wave left him as it moved on down the street. While contemplating this sequence of events, he then looked up and saw in a span of a few seconds a twin-turboprop airplane (C) in the distance crossing above the road while making a shallow descent in order to land at the airport.

I don't know what is more bizarre - the fact that somebody actually spent time and money to file this application, or that the USPTO actually published it.

The truth is always funnier :P

Anyway "full body teleportation" events happen quite routinely in the lab.

Sometimes I would walk somewhere in the lab and forget why I walked there.

Then I would walk back to my bench and suddenly remember that I was going to get stuff from the freezer, which I overshot by 3 metres.

Every day you will meet some person wear that same puzzled look on his/her face, stop suddenly and head back towards some freezer or tissue culture room.

We were lost... in hyperspace.

Colour Of My Morale

Wow, it's been more than a month since my last update! I'm feeling rather embarrassed - Fresh Brainz isn't quite dead yet, but ever since I moved my computer into the lab, it has become a dedicated DNA sequencing machine, so I haven't kept up with the blogging.

In fact, I have become a dedicated DNA sequencing machine myself. This is the part of my PhD project where I keep designing primers and chasing sequence information in a continuous cycle.

Needless to say, it's hard to maintain any sense of humour when your daily concerns are highly mechanical. But boy do I try - I must! My sanity demands it!

So today I have yet another quirky observation for you.

Do you know that Time has colour?

Let me explain.

A long time ago, when I wasn't a grad student (yes, you may think in black and white) I used to work in a research lab at a hospital. I had to take a bus every morning and then transfer to a MRT train to get to work.

For many weeks I waited at the same bus stop, with the same pole-faced people, waiting for the same few buses. Blank expressionless faces all around that gazed impatiently at their watches every now and then.

Then one day I was late. What a difference 15 minutes makes!

The bus stop was still the same, of course. But the people were completely different. The earlier "batch" have already gotten on their buses, so I see a whole new crowd, albeit with the same expressionless faces.

Hah - what's so special about this, you may ask. People start work at different times - that isn't rocket science.

Seems trivial doesn't it? Now suppose one day you were in a hurry and forgot your watch.

It's raining so you can't see the sun.

You run into the bus stop and suddenly you realize what time it is. You immediately see the people who were waiting for the 7.15am bus, but don't see anyone who should be waiting for the 7.00am bus. Just by looking at faces you can tell the time within 15 minutes of accuracy. You can also estimate how long it will take for your bus to appear.

Neat huh? Which brings me back to the title of this blog post.

Time has colour because the way people dress is influenced by their morale.

There is a very obvious example of this in our research institute - we have one female postdoc who wears different coloured clothes every day of the week. Let me give you the data just for the past week.

Monday - Black
Tuesday - Dark purple
Wednesday - Brown
Thursday - Pastels
Friday - Red

Of course, not everyone dresses so predictably, but if someone does, you can tell what day it is simply by the colour of their clothes.

Example - "Dammit what day is it... oh it's Wednesday, 'cos she is wearing brown today!"

In addition, if the colour doesn't match the "proper" colour for that day, then you have a useful indicator of personal morale right there.

Example - "She's been wearing black every day for the past three days... Oh-oh!"

Ok I know none of this sounds very scientific, but what I'm trying to say is that there are many interesting ways to tell the time, using purely social methods.

Heh.

Photo Gallery One

I used to have a number of hobbies (such as stargazing and flying radio-controlled aircraft) but recently due to lack of time and energy, my interests have dwindled down to only photography and blogging.

Though Fresh Brainz is not a photoblog per se, I would like to share with you some of the better photos that I've taken over the past five years. I've been using simple equipment, so I know the quality is not professional grade, but I hope you can see what I was envisioning in these pictures.

If you like to see more arty photos check out my friend's photoblog!
















Bin there done that
(2004) Minolta X700












Figures on the beach
(2007) Sony S600













Floating balls
(2007) Sony S600












Geometry in blue
(2007) Sony S600













Geometry in brown
(2007) Sony S600

















Geometry in green
(2003) Kodak CX4200













Geometry in grey
(2007) Sony S600

















Glowing tower
(2005) Minolta X700













Gold lining
(2007) Sony S600












Into colour
(2007) Sony S600













Kid fountain
(2007) Sony S600












No sign
(2007) Sony S600

















Objet d'art
(2006) Minolta X700













On the wave
(2007) Sony S600

















One of us
(2004) Minolta X700













Serenity
(2007) Sony S600

















Sign of life
(2007) Sony S600

















Stark tree
(2002) Kodak CX4200













Tunnel light
(2007) Sony S600


Would you like to know more?

About the cameras I use:
- Sony S600 (6MP digital)
- Minolta X700 (35mm-film manual focus SLR)
- Kodak CX4200 (2MP digital)

These photos are copyright © 2007 http://freshbrainz.blogspot.com

Can't we just get along?

It's not a tool unless you can bash someone with it. Haiz...