The carbon-flavoured air did not make for a pleasant evening walk in the streets of KL. There has been way too many vehicles in that concrete jungle that al fresco dining at ground level is nothing more than a ridiculous joke. It didn’t help that I was having a bit of a cough that day.

I quickly crossed the street to meet up with Lionel. He arrived a bit earlier than he was supposed to, but we ended up lepaking at the sidewalk in front of Izzi while we waited for the birthday boy to show up. Izzi is a fancy restaurant that specialised in Italian dishes, although I have no idea why they even bothered to offer a bowl of Asam Laksa for five times the regular street price.

I took a look inside and couldn’t help but notice one of the wide 42″ plasma TV hanging from one of the walls, and it was showing a music video by Evanescence. It was probably a new video, I didn’t know what it was. At which point it suddenly hit me - Goddamn, I haven’t watched MTV for such a long time!

Come to think of it, I haven’t tuned in to local radio for quite a long while, too. I wonder if it has anything to do with my purchase of a MP3 CD player for my car, coupled with a DVD burner and over 27GB worth of songs. I gave it some thought and I realised that I’ve been quite,… what’s the word,… restrictive[?] when it comes to mainstream music.

I don’t really hate mainstream music per se. I’ve come to love quite a number of musicians throughout the time I listened to local radio, especially before I got my very first CD player, and before I started collecting and downloading MP3’s. The thing is, I always cringe whenever I hear songs that I hate, particular when it’s a black musician singing about clubs and getting high and shaking booty. Don’t get me wrong, I can enjoy black music. Luther Vandross, Craig David, Sade, just to name a few (LOL).

So I guess, in pursuit of the perfect and most wholesome personal music experience, I decided to do away with having myself being fed with random music by ever fluctuating mainstream sources. Ever since then, I have been out of touch with the music scene for a long long time.

I frequently found myself lost when people around start talking about AF (which I absolutely despise, by the way) and the newer songs in the Top 40 charts. Not that I feel left out or anything, it’s just I found those situations to be quite awkward and a bit funny at times, too. Like when I saw this music video and I asked,

“Who’s that?”

“Rihanna.”

“Who?”

“Rihanna? Umbrella?”

“What?”

“Unfaithful?”

“Never heard of it.”

“What? How can you have not heard of Rihanna? What world do you live in?”

Gee, no need to get pissy about it, man. I’ve a better shot at recognising the voices of Yukino Satsuki and Hisakawa Aya than recognising some black RnB musician who I couldn’t care less about.

With those thoughts I took another slice of the delicious pizza and concluded that I would just stick to burning CDs and playing them in my car after all.