This Star picture shows what we have missed by being 2 hours late.
We arrived at Little Penang Street Market (every last Sunday of the month) after 2 pm and I saw a familiar DAP face, but did not register and cannot recall his name. Just did a search and can confirm that he was YB Chow Kon Yeow, a Vice Chairman of DAP, MP for Tanjong and State Local Government, Traffic Management and Environment Committee chairman – the man I should have contacted about BRT! I have just read the papers and we have missed YAB Lim Guan Eng’s visit by a couple of hours.
Anyway, I am more interested in music than politics, where there is live music. At that time, an Indian classical group was performing, with modern keyboard and traditional drums. Besides Indian songs, I could recognize Hotel California and Hokien ‘Susu Liam Liam’ and they sounded funny with Indian accent.
Then, it was G Spot’s resident jazz band’s turn. G Spot was where British jazz singer Andrea Mann performed few months back. Earlier, I saw this big young man assembling his drum kit. I was quite amazed at the design as the bass drum was less than half that of mine in thickness. It was a good job I did not offer to help as he turned out to be the drummer! The bass guitarist has this constant ‘perplexed’ look but he knew what he was doing! The keyboardist’s humble disposition was such that he almost stooped low enough to use the mike to make an announcement at about 4 feet high! The saxaphonist looks a bit like Japanese and the trumpeter, a young lady for a change, reminds me of my friend’s daughter, Sook Yee. The big guy looked like he was frying something when he used his brush instead of drumstick. As always, the tunes were familiar but I could not remember the names.
It became livelier when a guest drummer, Kamal (if not mistaken) jammed with them. He seemed like a professional jazz drummer and he influenced the rest of the band to more exciting performance. In fact, when the original drummer came back, he too got livelier.
The next performance was by a guitarist cum singer by the name of Sam. It did occur to me that he could be related to Paul Ponnudorai, a fact, which I confirmed later. I have heard so much about Paul, yet not met him. So, meeting his elder brother has made my day. They were originally from Batu Gajah, which is meaningful to me.
Sam seems to like Ray Charles and even sang with his eyes closed. A man from the audience requested ‘Proud Mary’ and he warned us that his version is hardly recognizable from the original. Anyway, he got inspired by this lady in white with a hat that covered half her face. She looked special, sort of, stood out from the crowd. I could tell because he noticed and asked, ‘where’s the lady with a hat?’ During one of his numbers, a Caucasion guy stood up and started dancing with funny moves, like in a trance. Anyway, for encore, he obliged by singing his special version of ‘Baa Baa Black
Sheep’!
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