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Aug 10

FC Barcelona v Chivas Guadalajara - Candlestick Park, SF

Filed under // Family football Live Event Sports

Comments [1]

Aug 6

A friend just sent me this Bergkamp compilation video. He was a master of ball control, especially with his back to long passes. This video is bookended by two of his finest goals ever – the first is pure poetry in motion against Newcastle, with a deft touch and a spin he was off; the final one against Argentina in 1998 really epitomizes the essence of Bergkamp – composure, grace, efficiency, and cold-blooded finishing.

Too bad I couldn't go to the Dennis Bergkamp testimonial at the Emirates back in 2006, but I did get a T-shirt from a mate who went. Truly a special player.

Filed under // football Sports Video

Comments [3]

Aug 5

Japan

Recently I excavated a bunch of old CDs from my storage closet and found a handful of them that I haven't touched in years, many of them way over 20 years old. In the fairly large stack of titles were a few by Japan, a band I have not thought about for a very long time. I first heard their music around 1982 while still living in Hong Kong. Me and my primary school friends were discovering a lot of music back then, and we were particularly fascinated by the new wave bands like Depeche Mode, Yaz, Duran Duran, Ultravox, and the pre-crap, pre-Good-Morning-America Boy George and Culture Club.

But it was Japan that really captured our attention. Their earlier materials were heavily influenced by Roxy Music and David Bowie, by their last 2 albums (Gentlemen Take Polaroids, Tin Drum) they sounded like no one else. Back then we didn't really get the music. Atmospheric and minimal songs like Ghost and Life Without Buildings were completely inaccessible to us, but we could follow the more upbeat and melodic tracks like Quiet Life, Cantonese Boy, Gentlemen Take Polaroids, though they were still very complex compositionally. Japan intrigued us anyway because up until that point pop music did not sound like this. Mick Karn's fretless bass lines, Jensen's complex and manic percussion and David Sylvian's baritone vocals were all new. But mainly we thought they just looked so damn cool. They were and always will be inimitable.