singer : CHICORY TIP
COMPOSER : GIORGIO MORODER
published : 1971
off you got to school where you can learn the rules there right
be just like your dad lad
follow in the same tradition
never go astray and stay an honest lovin' son.
Son of my father
moulded I was folded I was preform-packed
son of my father
commanded I was branded in a plastic vac'
surrounded and confounded by statistic facts.
Tried to keep me in but jumped out of my skin in time
I saw thru the lies and read the alibi signs
so I left my home I'm relly on my own at last
left the trodden path and separated from the past.
Son of my father
changing rearranging into someone new
son of my father
collecting and selecting independant views
knowing and I'm showing that a change is due.
Son of my father
moulded I was folded...
Son of my father
moulded I was folded...
| Songfacts: |
| This was originally recorded by the Italian producer Giorgio Moroder. It was called "Nachts Scheint Die Sonne" in Germany. |
| This was the first ever UK #1 to feature a synthesizer. The Moog synthesizer was played by engineer Chris Thomas, who went on to become a famous producer. |
| This was Chicory Tip's first and biggest UK hit. They went on to record 2 more Top 20 singles - "What's Your Name" and "Good Grief Christina." (thanks, Edward Pearce - Ashford, Kent, England, for all above) |
| Comments: |
| thanks Clark, got to get me some of that Chicory Tip.........hmmmmm Chicory Tip - pete, nowra, Australia |
| son of my father was also the first uk#1 to use the entertainer rolf harris's 'stylophone' and also was used on david bowies space oddity - jeff, liverpool, England |
| Chicory Used in salads or cooked like spinach or greens, good-quality chicory will have inner leaves that are crisp and pale green in color. There are a number of varieties of chicory including heading and loose-leaf. Avoid product that has wilted, brown-edged or discolored leaves. Chicory is available year-round - depending on the variety. - Clark, Milroy, PA |
| so what's a chicory tip??????? - pete, nowra, Australia |
| what the hell's a chicory tip????? - pete, nowra, Australia |
When i visited my father's grave recently at Jeruk Puruk, located in the Jakarta suburbs , i traveled about 30 minutes from the Gran Melia Hotel where i resided for a few days, going through an orderly traffic and passing through many new sights i have never seen before.
It was the last day of my stay in the city and even though i had been there several times in the past few years i did not make any effort to call in for a visit. The last time i paid him my respects was in 1998,almost 10 years ago. There was no guilt conscience or regrets about it because i believe that i have never felt his physical loss since the day he was gone and i think he is with me everytime and whenever i thought about him anyway. I knew that as i say or perform my daily prayers, my thoughts for him will always linger there invariably.
My dad was a unique person as compared to all his brothers, whom i dearly called my uncles. He was the youngest of 5 siblings consisting of 4 males and 1 female and as of today, he is survived only by his second sibling,my Mak Ngah as we fondly calls her.
As the youngest child in his family, i have seen and noticed the respect and acknowledgment of my father's character as someone that has got a lot to do with public relations and kind-heartedness that is zestful and unrequited. He was a man of jovial persona, very well liked by his older nephews and often poked fun with sometimes by his nieces for his 'cheeky" and outspoken traits. In other words, my father was a simple person and he cares more to provide his love and laughter to whoever appreciates it. He was unmistakably himself like no other among his siblings. My other uncles somehow looked as though they had little or no sense of humour at all. Rigid to the brim i should say. Sighting them could be regarded as having seen a hungry ghost in the Chinese 7th lunar month festival ! My friends and neighbours could'nt agree more ! It wasnt a pleasing encounter so to speak.
I always believe that nobody can speak honestly of his own head of family unlike his own children, and i feel i have this duty to relate some of life's most precious and unforgettable moments with a person i call " Abah". Apparently Abba ( minus letter "H" also means father in Hebrew.)
I have quite a large family . When i was a bit younger, my family was of course a bit smaller too. Over the years the family expanded and coming from a Malay family, a big family is often regarded as a form of gift from God Almighty. Perhaps when you are the child in your own family, size does not relate any negative presumptions or inconveniences or dislikes. It is only when you grew up later that you realised their natural existence was very much like a coincidence or to be taken for granted and you begin to recognise them as your siblings too. However i also found out that some of my other friends have even bigger family members as compared to mine when i went to school. It was not our worry to know why we had additional sisters ( in my case) or even brothers. It was expected of us to welcome them into our home.
As a man, who comes from a 'big' family group, maybe it could have been my father's wish too to emulate that virtuous "fertile " family size . Size does not matter and so i find out too that my father was a very "hardworking" man indeed. What i actually meant was that he had always wanted more and more sons. My mother blessed him with daughters instead ! after my birth that is.
In my family , there were 2 sons , me and my elder brother, who presently is residing permanently just across the causeway. I suppose that was fated too by God that my father will have daughters all the way after me.
My father was a very simple person but he is almost a strict administrator on the other side of his character. Although my mother often called the shots as the perfect lady of the house in its overall family management, my father had very exacting house principles to call his own. He has perfect hopes like any father has or aspires. I often believe that he was so confident of his own family that he has not much to worry about it, especially in the upbringing of his children.
My mum would have played an important role in making my father's aspirations came into being and through her greatest maternal abilities.
These observations will later on influence all our lives.
I would say that i had a very happy but quiet life and under my father's tutelage and upbringing, i never felt any better and comfortable. No, he did not gave me tuition nor help me with my studies. I was never scorned about my studies as he knew that i could do well without much supervision.I guess my father was lucky that he was not bogged down with such chores.
Nor did he bring me to the playground to play with .What he did was to exercise freedom and independence to all his children.
I remembered vividly having my own limited collection of toys, fun trips to the amusement parks,movies, weddings, vacations to back country during the school holidays and much more that i could not even remember that my father actually participated with me and that was a wonderful memory indeed.
Our house even had a movie projector that played very short films and the monkey star was full of fun to watch. When the film ended i continued playing in the shadows on the wall using my hands and fingers to imitate some birds or other gestures. It was sheer fun.
Even in my youthful days, my father would share some kind of mutual jokes and laughter when the situation reckoned or when the lively spirits of coexistence appears in our impromptu family get togethers , although these are rare towards the later part of lives. ( One occasion that i vividly remembered was about his physical absence at home when we had breaking of fast because he had traveled to Bangkok.)
The fact that his job with the government office is tying his schedule in the rather unusual 9 -5 routine as most people do, he still managed to interact affectionately with his children.
Why he preferred a shifting timetable for work for almost all his life i did not quite understand.
My mother will certainly be able to explain better on this choice of situation. After all he still comes home to sleep except that his sleep times are not the usual everyday person way of routine. His work hours routine examples looked something like this : 7- 3, 3- 11, 11- 7 , OFF .
It was diligently pronounced in writing on the " Horse Racing Calender" that was mounted on the door that leads into our kitchen. It was so easy to track down my father's occupational activity after all !!!. My mother must have been very glad about these daily trademarks. On his free time, i will watch him jot down all these work schedules and he could even complete them months ahead ! maybe 4 or 5 months using his Parker ball pen. The pressings on the calender paper was so hard that you could see their line marks or bulges on the opposite sides .
I remembered sneaking into his uniform pockets to read his work schedule manifest. It was a pocket size like notebook with all his recordings of his daily work routine. He had so many times
written the clock times as 1700 hours, 1500 hours etc and i realise that it was "military time"schedule after that. I noticed also that he had so many of that stuff dumped in his baju melayu pocket hung up behind the room door. I suppose the baju melayu top attire was used due to its vast pockets that could hold practically anything at that time. Call it a perfect letter/ utility rack of sorts. The baju melayu sure comes in handy after the Hari Raya festival, i guess.
I remembered too giving my father a scare of his life, when the school authorities called home via the Charge Room, the office section as we knew by its function in our government quarters, one afternoon informing my father that i had been bitten by the school dog ! He would have almost jumped frantically i guessed and not made any quick second thoughts about the report but just dashed to my school to find out what had really happened.
I was pretty sure that he was very angry at me too at the same time but as i had seen him in the ambulance that carried me later to the General Hospital, he portrayed a feature of a kind man not the least worried but a man full of conviction about his son's awful behaviour deep inside his heartful emotions. I faded into my doze soon afterwards after enjoying the cool interiors of the ambulance, that enhanced me with its relaxing respiratory instruments. The ambulance is in fact a nice and comfortable place to be in and i remembered that it was green in colour.
The other incident which was just as serious if not dangerous was when my eye was blow- piped with a hard solid clay (using a slim aluminum pipe- similar to the tv antenna) by one of my play friend neighbours . I was just being at the wrong place at the wrong time. I just came into being to share play a game of hide and seek with some other friends at the nearby canteen,which was located next to my house by means of just hopping across the wall divider. As i entered the place, i felt a soft thud in my eye that suddenly blanked off my right vision almost simultaneously and at the same time, i noticed the person 's face responsible for the uncanny prank. I felt blinded by that foreign object and i just ran home to get it washed away. For a few seconds , i thought i was going to lose my eyesight and i panicked emotionally. It was painful and it was horrible.
I just cannot recall how i was sent to the hospital again to be inspected and treated for that unfortunate incident. My father was very upset with the neighbour's son who played the antic on me, who happened to be my very own classmate in primary school. Wearing an eye mask to class the following days were much of a personal embarrassment to me. Speak about the one - eye Jack or other comic characters' familiar resemblance!, but during those days, no TV series had such an icon as far as i could remember except the story books and novels.
How many of us can recall those kinds of tragic incidents in our lives ,but i must have been lucky that some people in comparison would have experience even far worse situations than me.
I wish my father would not have to go through those exasperating nightmare again. Fathers knows best.
I recalled, one breezy afternoon, just after school started, my father came knocking at my class room door while my teacher was in her high teaching enthusiasm session.
That could be the reason why my father had always insisted that his children be enrolled in nearby schools. In my case it was just a walking distance of 10 minutes from home without even having to cross any street or dangerous roads. How safe and convenient life was way back then.
(Incidentally, this scenario repeated itself all through my secondary school days.)
My father's hair looked neat as if he had just combed it, as he liked to apply Brylcreem on his hair. His face seemed like in daze and was like he had just woken up from his unfinished afternoon nap. He excused him self politely informing my class teacher that he has to bring me to the National Registration office to apply for my NRIC. I was 12 at that time and it was an offence, culpable to certain punishment to miss out the last date of registration, as the compulsory ruling warranted.
My father chatted with me briskly as we moved out of the school grounds which did not allowed him to cycle up to the entrance due to its sloping terrain . He told me that he will parked his bicycle somewhere and that we will continue our journey by bus near the Singapore River to get to the NRIC office. If i could remember too well, it was the second time my father have seen me at school though he could have done that earlier, when i was first registered in primary one a few years ago.
It has been a long time indeed that i have not been to this part of the city and i knew i would love the stroll because it was such an historic place according to my knowledge. The Victoria Memorial Hall was there, Sir Stamford Raffles monument was there too and of course the traditional tongkangs and barges that ply down the nasty scenting Singapore River.
Later on my father gave me a treat at the movies. I suppose this was the first time i never went to sleep while watching a movie. ( but it was an afternoon show anyway) It was a war movie called " Blue Max " starring George Peppard. ( October 1, 1928 – May 8, 1994)
(Quote : " Peppard developed a tendency to choose tough guy roles in big, ambitious pictures where he was somewhat overshadowed by ensemble casts; for example, his role as German pilot Bruno Stachel, an obsessively competitive officer from humble beginnings who challenges the Prussian aristocracy during World War I in The Blue Max (1966). For this role, Peppard learned to fly, earned a private pilot's license and did his own stunt flying."
The Blue Max is a 1966 British film about a German fighter pilot on the Western Front during World War I. It was directed by John Guillermin and starred George Peppard, James Mason, Ursula Andress, Karl Michael Vogler and Jeremy Kemp. The screenplay was written by David Pursall, Jack Seddon, and Gerald Hanley, based on the novel of the same name by Jack D. Hunter. )
QUOTE : MOVIE PLOT -
Bruno Stachel (George Peppard) is a corporal in the German infantry who, in spring 1918, leaves the fighting in the trenches to become a fighter pilot in the German Air Service. He sets his sights on winning the highest decoration, the Pour le Mérite, nicknamed the "Blue Max", for which he must shoot down 20 aircraft.
Coming from humble origins, Leutnant Stachel is driven to prove himself better than the aristocratic pilots in his new fighter squadron, especially Willi von Klugermann (Jeremy Kemp). Their commanding officer, Hauptmann Otto Heidemann (Karl Michael Vogler) is an upper-class officer whose notions of chivalry conflict with Stachel's ruthless determination.
On his first mission, Stachel shoots down a British S.E.5, but does not receive credit for his "kill" because there were no witnesses. He searches the French countryside for hours in a pouring rain looking for the wreckage, giving the other pilots the impression that he cares more about it than the death of the man he flew with.
Soon afterwards, he attacks an Allied two-man observation aircraft, incapacitating the rear gunner. Then, instead of downing the helpless victim, he signals the pilot to surrender and fly to his base. However, as they near the airfield, the wounded man revives and reaches for his machine gun, unseen by the admiring observers on the ground. Stachel is forced to shoot the aircraft down, but Heidemann believes Stachel simply murdered the crew in order to gain a "confirmed" kill.
The incident brings Stachel to the attention of General Count von Klugermann (James Mason), Willi's uncle. When the general comes to the base to award his nephew the Blue Max, he meets Stachel. As a member of the masses, "as common as dirt", the pilot has great potential for propaganda purposes. That night, the general's wife, Kaeti (Ursula Andress), mistakenly enters Stachel's room. She is carrying on a discreet affair with her nephew by marriage, with her husband's knowledge.
Soon afterwards, Stachel is shot down going to the aid of a red Fokker Dr.I attacked by two British fighters. He survives the crash landing. When he returns to the airfield, he is stunned when he is introduced to the man he saved: Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron. Grateful, von Richtofen offers Stachel a place in his squadron. He regretfully declines.
With Stachel temporarily grounded owing to a minor injury, General von Klugermann orders him to Berlin to help shore up crumbling public morale. While there, von Klugermann invites Stachel to dinner so that Kaeti can sleep with her latest hero.
When Stachel returns to duty, he and Willi von Klugermann volunteer to escort a reconnaissance aircraft. British fighters attack. Stachel's guns jam, but Willi downs two of the enemy on his first pass, then a third on Stachel's tail, and the rest disengage. As the two are returning to their base, Willi challenges Stachel. Spotting a bridge, Willi dives under the wide middle span, but Stachel tops him by flying under a much narrower side one. Seething, Willi clears the smaller span, but clips the top of a nearby brick tower and crashes. When Stachel reports his death, Heidemann assumes that the two verified victories were Willi's. Insulted, Stachel impulsively claims the kills, even though it is discovered that he had only fired 40 bullets. Outraged, Heidemann reports Stachel's lie to his superiors, but is told that Stachel's victories will be confirmed.
Then, during a strafing mission to cover the retreat of the German army, Stachel disobeys Heidemann's order not to engage enemy aircraft; the rest of the squadron follows him. Afterwards, Heidemann has Stachel arrested, furious that nearly half the pilots were killed in the ensuing dogfight. Stachel, however, cares only that he has shot down enough aircraft, even without Willi's kills, to qualify for the Blue Max. The two men are ordered to Berlin. There, General von Klugermann tells Heidemann privately that Stachel is to receive the Blue Max. Heidemann resigns his command in disgust when the general orders him to withdraw his report; he accepts a desk job.
Later that evening, the countess visits Stachel and suggests that they run away to Switzerland since Germany's defeat is inevitable. She storms out when he refuses to be one of her "lapdogs".
The next day, Stachel is awarded the Blue Max by the Crown Prince in a well-publicized ceremony. However, a field marshal telephones von Klugermann to inform him of an impending investigation into Stachel. The general asks how the field marshal became aware of Stachel's lie. While listening on the phone, he turns his gaze to his wife. Desperate to avoid a scandal, von Klugermann takes advantage of Heidemann's report that the new monoplane which he has just test-flown is a "death trap", with fatally-weak struts. He orders Stachel to take the aircraft up and to "show us some real flying." During strenuous aerobatics, Stachel's aircraft breaks up, plunges to the ground and bursts into flames. The General stamps and signs his personnel file and sends it to the Field Marshall. "It is the personal file of a German officer," he says, "and a hero."
Incidentally, my father was an ardent movie goer and a great P.Ramlee fan too, having brought me to many shows with the rest of the family especially with my brother. I always insisted to follow them but will eventually sleep through the whole event as my father loved to book the 9.pm show ! My father did not waste his money on the seat as i always sat on his lap or we just had an extra seat bonus when the next door patron failed to occupy the empty seat.
After the movie at Capitol cinema, we both walked to MPH at the corner of Stamford Road and Coleman Street. Once there, i was surprised with the vast array of imported toys being displayed in the 1st Floor department of the huge building. I remembered too, having visited MPH to follow my brother to purchase his textbooks there a few years earlier. I love the old lift that brings up the respective floors as it was like a cage and you could see the hollow structure as it moves up and down the well. It reminds me of the Virginia House lift at Keppel Road where the Chartered Bank once stood. I just love riding in the car through the open space and see the thin cables move like a rope that glides above and below you. It was definitely safe for kids lke me. At the toys department, i felt like an opportunity to make my X'mas wish come true. And of all the things found there, i selected an item called, Harmoni Pet - a made in Japan musical instrument that resembled a pianica. It was a 12 key plastic mouth instrument with a colourful keyboard on its face. I was delighted in having it as a gift from my father.
I learned from that day in my adult years that every parent must buy their children a present in order to make their children appreciate their father's generosity and kindness in later years. It does not have to be expensive but it was the thoughts that counts as everybody say.
It was such a fun and delightful activity for me that afternoon. But Ooops i actually cut school that day but with parental approval that is !
To be continued.........
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