A rock moment

Those who really love rock music will know what it means by “The Moment” when you hear something really awesome. I am not talking about when you hear something you like and you say “This song rocks!” I am talking about a moment when the music gives you a total body bliss and makes your jaws drop in disbelief that you have found it. Then for the next few days, you carry your ipod with you playing the song over and over again, on the MRT, walking on the streets, fighting against traffic, waiting for friends. You take it with you everywhere you go. Sometimes, you can’t wait to say goodbye to your friends so that you can go back to your ipod.

That Moment.

That moment, when the music makes your ears ring….really ring!

For a few days, I wouldn't be able to put my earphones down. For a few days, the song would be pumping loudly in my room and I would be dancing, jumping on the floor, on my bed, until it is time for bed.

I have been chasing those moments more than half my life, since AHA’s Take on me gave me my first moment. Those were the Tears for Fears, AHA, Wilson Philips’ days.

When I was young and immature and had no sense of social proprieties, I would verbally abuse some poor fellows for their lack of taste when they told me a band they liked which I hated. As a young girl, I was feisty and I was verbally powerful. Now that I am older, I have learnt to walk away fairly quickly when the urge to abuse a poor fellow starts to surge.



“Oh, that band…I know. I know…..Hey, I need a drink…talk to you later.” You would catch me say.

I hunt for “those moments” when I am not chasing stories, listening to the radio stations, browsing websites, browsing CD shops. I have a lot to thank for in this Internet age. It makes my hunting so much easier. Pitchforkmedia is my best friend.

You got to have juvenile tastes to like rock. My tastes have not really "grown up." I still like Aztec Camera's Oblivious, a song Roddy Frame wrote when he was 19. All the stuff you see and hear on MTV is made for kids in their puberty. Look at Blink 182’s Enema of The State, it is not fitting for a sophisticated working adult. But after work when I am in the seclusion of my room, I would dance to Blink 182's First Date to the drum beats of Travis Barker, dressed still in my stockings and my corporate suit.

Athough my music tastes have gone beyond rock to include Tom Waits, Joni Mitchell and KD Lang, although I would kill for a KD Lang concert ticket the way I would for a ticket to a Radiohead concert, the moment a rock song gives me reduces me to an excitable nerd more than a new album launched by KD Lang.

Tom Waits’ songs make me want to pick up a glass of whisky and slowly sip it, a rock song gives me that “moment” where I want to jump, dance, scream…....go wild. For that five minutes, I am in a total bliss.


The urge for that moment is huge. It is in my blood. I scour websites, CD shops, friends’ playlists, across genres, from alternative to punk to hard rock, from popular bands to unknown ones. When it arrives, I would be reduced to a teenaged girl in a gripe of a crush. If you ask, I would say in an almost breathless tone, “This is really good!”

It is hard to explain. You have to be there.

Current moments given by - Dogs Die in Hot Cars.