超級星光大道 versus Astro ASQ 新秀大赛

It has been quite some time (err... 1 week plus?) that I did not sit in front of TV. Yesterday after dinner, as my usual habit, I switched on Astro Channel 902 AOD while reading news paper, and my aunt + uncle and cousin visited me at the same time as well. My uncle was rushing to check on Astro and asking me to switch to channel 301 AEC for 超級星光大道. May be I shall introduce my uncle a little. He was totally English-ed and now at his 50s or 60s. So, may be everyone just like me wondering why he was so fond about 超級星光大道 which is a Taiwanese Mandarin singing performance show and most of the audience should be those youngsters.

I don't really follow such performance or competition, I just think it's just a stepping stone for those ah bengs and ah lians who always live in their wonder's land dreaming to become another Jay 周杰伦 or Jolin 蔡依林. So I did not follow the show, leaving my cousin and uncle watching the show in the living area. I went for shower and then joined my aunt to chatting in the room. It was then a rthym and voice that caught my ears. I thought it was another well known singer who came onto the stage as guest performer. Then my cousin ran into the room, asking me to join the tv show and listen to the singer.

Apparently the singer wasn't anyone well known like Jay or Leehom, he is just another contestant in the show, Yuming 赖铭伟 and here's his performance...





Since then, I stayed on with the show until it ended after 15 minutes later. I switched to channel 311 WLT and realized it was Astro Star Quest ASQ 2008 Final. My aunt family was interested to watch till the end as everyone of us was still enjoying the endearing performance by Yuming (and 萧煌奇老师) just now, and hopping to continue the momentum on ASQ. It was the guest performance time (you'd know who if you were watching the show). Right after 10 minutes, my aunt family decided to head home, with a simple comment, "Cheh! Not nice one, can't compare (with 星光) at all!"

... ... ...

I must admit that I was impressed with Yuming's performance when I watched him on the tv. He really sang like a professional singer and I could feel that he really plunged into the song and performed the song deep from his lung and heart. Allow me to retract my previous "Satutory Declaration" (on 星光) like P. Balasubramaniam, now I would say it's really a discovery show to look for professional talents who can and have passion to sing. Compare to the ASQ (I could not find in YouTube), as I said earlier, beng-ish and lian-ish were still the key elements in the show, to provide a stage for those who live in their wonder's land to realize their Jay/Jolin dream, than to discover talents who can really sing professionally like in 星光.

I am not a professional judge like 黄舒骏. But dumb audience like me and my aunt family could use our ears and eyes to differentiate the quality. Easy say, those in 星光 sing the songs with heart and deliver the intended message of the song to the audience, whereas those in ASQ sing the songs with good mouth and throat for the sake of entertaining the audience. For ASQ, show ends and the story finished, no one would remember the moment when off the tv or walk out from the stadium. For 星光, there would still be some audiences discuss about the show few nights ago on some of the endearing moments like Yuming's performance above.

I don't think that was the "only" quality we could produce in Malaysia though (Ha! How patriotic am I?!), we did produce a good "product" 张栋梁 from ASQ. Perhaps it's due to the way ASQ conducted the shortlisting in preliminary stages. Look at those "professional" judges, If you follow the progress from the beginning, you'd know what am I talking here...

And I changed my impression on 星光 from now onwards and understood why my uncle and cousin are following the show.