A Singaporean In Australia

Lately I have been tuning in to FM Classic 97.7. Driving in the hot afternoon sun did make me sleepy. It could be the intense light or heat or both. Listening to punk music made it worse. I couldn't understand what crap music the west churns up these days. Good songs are a rarity these days. It seemed like music has turned for the worse each passing decade. Before Classic 97.7, I had been listening to the oldies FM, playing songs of my father's generation that many I've never heard before. They actually sound good.

FM 97.7 plays classical instrumental music. No singing, no wailing, no RnB and rap crap. They played the kind of classical music that would put me to sleep when I was younger. It works oddly differently now, keeping me awake instead. I'm not pretending to be arty-farty, I know nuts about music. It was just that these music reminded me so much of my games playing days. I couldn't forget the overture tunes and the battle themes of Might and Magic III. It was the kind of thing that was burnt in my mind forever. A few years back I realised the amazing music of the Dragon Quest series was originally symphonic, just that what we heard in our playing days were tuned down to 8-bit quality.

When Jen was pregnant with Albany, I actually played a lot of Dragon Quest IV music for them. It sounds crazy to play games music to a fetus instead of the Mozart and Beethoven type, yes? Didn't matter, good music has no boundaries. Listen to them, they're good. The Dragon Quest opening tune [link] and Faxanadu Town music [link]. Faxanadu was another of our favourite game back in the 90s. I doubt any even heard of the game. Wasn't that mainstream but it was as good as any of those like Legend of Zelda.

Lately I brought in a rather big used stereo to replace Rohan's radio. The problem with his radio was that we had to walk to it and re-tune it every few minutes because it would go into 'static' sound. In short, it was fucked. Rohan took a liking to the big stereo immediately. Surprisingly, instead of tuning in to the usual stations that repeatedly plays those Nikki Minaj crap, he tuned it to FM 97.7 and said those was the kind of music he liked. Classical music has been blasted for the entire week. Even the office people gave us strange looks. Even more strangely, Rohan disappeared from work during my delivery rounds. I hope it wasn't the music that did him in this time. I kinda expected it because he had been quite good for the past 2 weeks at work. It was the kind of combo breaker you couldn't wish wouldn't happen. Let's hope the interval will be longer each time until one day he'll be a more reliable asset to the team.

When I first came to Perth, I missed the Chinese radio stations that I used to listen when I was driving. Some find the bantering of the DJs nonsensical but I found them a good distraction to the traffic jams. Even up to the end of the year, I still found the urge to listen to these. There was none, only Nikki Minaj crap on two, three, four English stations preset in my car. Don't they have specific genres here? Why is everybody playing the same shit? Fortunately, I've found something that doesn't make my ears bleed. Hail FM 97.7.