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Nothing much going on during this weekend, except that I happened to have entry passes to MY FM’s 9th anniversary celebrations concert, which took place in the Arena of Stars, Genting Highlands, last night. To the uninitiated, MY FM is the most popular Chinese-language radio station in Malaysia, with listenership of more than 2 million in year 2006. You must be surprised that I actually listen to some Chinese songs as well.

Well my spectrum of musical preference is pretty broad, I’d say (much unlike what my nickname ‘Narrowband’ suggests). Remember I told you about my growing up listening to alternative rock? I later began tuning in to Chinese radio stations and like they say, the rest is history.

Before the concert started, the organizers threw a huge ball to the audience and asked them to try and pass the ball to those seated further behind. It was pretty fun, but it wasn’t as easy as it seemed, as the ball kept spinning at only one place. The game, unfortunately took too much time and they decided to remove the ball and get on with the concert.

Multi-talented Singaporean, Lin Jun Jie (JJ 林俊杰) was the first to perform, and he belted, among others, sha shou (杀手), much to the delight of the fans. Sha shou means ‘killer’ in Mandarin, and if you’re interested, somebody has already Youtubified that song’s music video.

Lin Yu Zhong (Rynn 林宇中), one of Malaysia’s newest and most successful artistes, was also there to sing a few songs, with the most notable one being zhuo mi cang (捉迷藏). Zhuo mi cang is Mandarin for ‘hide-and-seek’. You may also remember him from his beautiful duet with the legendary Sheila Majid, called Melodi, as well as his appearance in a number of Sony Cybershot commercials.

Malaysian Idol 2 winner, Daniel Lee (李吉汉) sang his latest single ni de sheng ri kuai le ma? (你的生日快乐吗? - ‘Are you happy on your birthday?’), which was refreshing considering I had listened to him singing fei (飞 - ‘Fly’) almost too many times already. There was also this ‘water-screen effect’ during his performance, which was pretty cool I must say. However, the audience got wet too as the ceiling was spraying water all over. I still don’t know if that was part of the act, or a case of bocor (leakage).

Sabah-boy, Chao Ge (Gary 曹格) was absolutely a crowd-favorite. You may have heard his super-voice for the first time when he remade Karyn White’s Superwoman, which instantly propelled him to stardom. He sang several songs last night, one of which was Superman, taken from his latest album of the same name. He also sang the late Frank Sinatra’s My Way, which was an incredible display of his vocal prowess. You may check out his version of My Way on Youtube, recorded during an appearance on Taiwan’s Guess Guess Guess TV show (我猜我猜我猜猜猜).

Admittedly, I was a little disappointed with the lack of female singers in this year’s concert. So when Liang Jing Ru (Fish 梁静如) finally came on, I was beyond happy. The Kuala Pilah-born singer sang a lively nuan nuan (暖暖 - ‘Warm’), as well as her latest Cantonese number, yuan lai ni ye chang guo wo de ge (原来你也唱过我的歌 - ‘You have sung my song’). It was the only non-Mandarin song performed in the concert.

Liang Jing Ru also sang a duet with Zhang Dong Liang (Nicholas 张栋梁), who had earlier sung ru guo (如果 - ‘If’) and wang zi (王子 - ‘Prince’) himself. The duet piece, which was an immensely popular track titled zai wo shen ming zhong de mei yi tian (在我生命中的每一天 - ‘Every moment in my life’), was first made popular by Su Hui Lun (Tarcy 苏慧伦) and Jackie Chan (成龙), many, many years ago. The audience erupted in applause when the two singers held hands in the middle of the song. Hmm.

Other stars who also performed were Chen Ren Feng (Quincy 陈仁丰), Cai Min You (Evan 蔡旻佑), Zeng Guo Hui (曾国辉), Chen Shi An (Andrew 陈世安) and the Astro Talent Quest’s top 3 winners. There’d be too much to write if I were to mention everyone. The concert had a ‘Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs’ theme, with their DJ, Vivian as Snow White, whereas the rest, including newcomer Jojo, had their own roles and characters.

While it was obvious that everyone put in tremendous effort in making the event a successful one, crowd management, however, was extremely poor. The fact that a group of audience was forced to stand throughout the whole show due to the negligence of the organizers had marred the otherwise an entertaining event.

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