Last Sunday marked 20 years since Wong Ka Kui died in a freak stage accident in Japan.
In terms of being a fan, I was very late in catching on. But at least it was when he was still alive. I was introduced to him by my university friends during our many karaoke trips after exams. They loved his songs, and borrowing some of their cassettes, I was soon introduced to this foursome band from Cantopop land in Hong Kong.
Cantopop in those days was filled with singers belting out schmaltzy ballads, most of them undistinguishable from the next. Don’t get me wrong. There are some gifted singers. But if in terms of standing against the flow of conformity, there was only one band, called Beyond.
It did help that they rocked a little harder than their counterparts, while still playing the ballads. But they wrote great songs about individuality, a somewhat foreign concept in the Chinese psyche back in those days.
One day I heard it on the radio about his accident. I rushed on over to my pal’s room, this guy was the biggest Beyond fan I knew. He was taking it quite well. “Wah, you also heard about it ar?” was his wry reply when I told him. This was a simpler time without the internet and SMS.
Well, after the next the exam ended, we went down to the karaoke and belted all his famous hits as a tribute to Ka Kui.
大地.
å–œæ¬¢ä½ .
ç°è‰²è½¨è¿¹.
Amani.
å…‰è¼æ²æœˆ.
And of course, my favourites, çœŸçš„çˆ±ä½ and 海闊天空.
***
One day back home on holiday, I asked my brother if he had heard of Beyond. “Yes, I know them. What’s so special about them?” was his reply. Of course, this coming from a guy heavily schooled in Clapton, the Police and Dire Straits.
My reply was, “but in terms of everyone else in Cantopop, aren’t they a world apart?”
He could only say, “Well, yes.”