Gandhi and his Retro Music.

When did I first hear of the term "retro music"? If Im not mistaken, it was over the THR Radio station back in the early 90s. Now, that was a great radio station as far as the Klang Valley crowd is concerned. We were exposed to celebrity deejays who were not from the "tetap dan berpencen" fraternity of RTM's stations. Of course the Blue network had its share of "celebrity deejays". Connie, Janet, Nubert, Joey, Varsha, Nor Nikman, Alan Z stand out as evergreens. They also had a great tag line for their station, Station of the Nation. But am I straying away from the topic?

By the way, I started my permanent career as a deejay back in 1985. My first job was at this place in SS2 called Trollinger Lounge. Nothing much as far as excitement but it was a great place to do my practice to hon my skills in beat mixing. By the way there was another outlet called Trollinger Jalan Universiti where there wasa band downstiars and a deejay console upstairs. Here, was where I met a legendary deejay from Solosa Sounds called Richard La fabre. He went on to be one of the main faces of the early THR station. Oh ya they had a tag line too, called "The Attitude Station".
They started playing sounds of the 80s and called it retro. Well, to me, retro is "looking back". It could be anything from early 2000 to way back to tyhe 60s. But as a deejay, it peeves me off when punters come to the deejay console and request for "retro" and expect me to play Sweet dreams by eurthemics or I will survive by Gloria Gaynor. They seem to think I dont know my music if I end up playing Roses are red by Macband.
Now that brings me to the days where I used to hang out besides the deejay console in Trax Disco at the basement of Wisma central. They had some great deejays there. Ravi Abdullah, Najee and who can forget Jake, the man who said he will never be caught playing any stuff from non black artistes. We now know better. I used to be allowed into the deejay console to give Jake a break so that he could do his "PR" with the ladies. Thats when I was allowed to spin afew records for the crowd. This was in the mid 1988 period. Faces was jam packed every night with deejay Brian and Rao who were the residents there. Me? I was in an obscure Lounge in Wisma Macoba along Lornie Road. It is now known as Jalan Syed Putra.
That was the year Jake became the top deejay in a competition organised by the legendary Joe Siva. Brian is now a recognised studio producer in Singapore and Rao? well he is now retired. I was also carrying my 12" singles every Sat and sun day afternoons to Ampang Park's 3rd floor which housed TOP TEN Disco. I was the deejay spinning at their weekend Tee dances. 3pm to 7pm we ( me and DR Sam the deejay) rocked the kids. Cover charge was RM6 and that got u a watered down glass of Coke. No alcohol served. And our rivals at that time was Picadally Disco in Damansar Jaya. better known as Piccet. Top 10 was converted to Hearts Club, a Canto pop joint every night but on sats and sunday afternoon attendance was somehow by only the malay teens. Not a single Indian or malay. Other than the deejays and light jockey. What did we play? the best and latest in RnB and we rocked the place. Oh ya, nowadays the same stuff we played is called> RETRO.