Pasar Malam, hot drizzly steam coming up from the wet grasses that push out to the narrow sidewalk, colonized tonight by carts and stands and generators to run the purplish-white fluorescents. I’m 12, oldest child in an American family in Singapore. It’s the 1960s. This night market of freestanding carts, of mangos, batik, silk, cameras, carvings, books and records is a new addiction, endless as it snakes around the curves of Tanglin Road. I flip through the stacks of records, some familiar, some not, some truly alien, like Mr Acker Bilk. The audience for a record seller in Singapore would be Brits, Aussies, Kiwis, Yanks, and the speakers of Bahasa Malayu, Cantonese, Hokkien, Fukien, Tamil and Hindi. Have to supply them all, yes, but the new young people of all classes and creeds are the ones buying the most. They’re buying Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Supremes, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Stevie Wonder, The Moody Blues, Steppenwolf, The Doors, Jethro Tull and Cream. I go to every record booth, checking new releases, checking prices, studying song lists. I buy one single, Donovan, and as I get near the end of the mile long strand I still have two weeks allowance in my pocket. One more record cart left, way at the dim and dangerous end, small and poorly lit; unpromising. I flip quickly through the same titles I’ve seen all night, Between the Buttons, Bookends, Axis: Bold as Love, Blonde on Blonde, This is Tom Jones. I flip to the last disc, feet sore and mind numb. Suddenly I catch my heart leaping to my mouth. The very last is a white sleeve with the center cut out. Showing through, like the official crest of world hippie headquarters, is a bright green apple. I know this apple. I have Hey Jude/Revolution, a handgrenade of rockin’ great music in 7 inches, and it’s on The Apple. I rush the white thing up to my eyes, what is it? What is it? It does not reveal itself. There is nothing on the cover. It is white, only white; a very elegant and shiny white, like a box of expensive chocolates. Closer. I have the label now eight inches in front of my face. No title, no artist. Only this cipher: PMC 7067 XEX 709 Mfg. in UK ©1968. “What this?,” I pigeoned the Malay smoking Kretek behind the table. “New one, good one,” says chegu. “What band?” “Good one, you like.” My hands trembled, “how much?” “Ten-la, nevermind, you take home, you like.” It is one dollar more than a regular album. Why? It doesn’t have a proper cover and no name. I’m a good bargainer. Sometimes. But now my brain is messed up on some kind of joy opium. “OK, ten.” He carefully takes the white thing from my grip and wraps it in yesterday’s Straits Times. He takes the ten-spot that got from my pocket to hand I don’t remember how. I take the record. I walk and walk, toward Tanglin Circus, hearing nothing, seeing little, until I catch sight of my mother’s dress near one of the fabric booths. Soon I will have my treasure on the turntable, its secret to understand. At home Mom says, “no music tonight, it’s school tomorrow and look at the time.” I already have the disc out, ready on the record player. “Can I just hear a few seconds?” Mom looks at me, and only the slight arc of one eyebrow tells me “make it short.” I lift the needle. I skip over the first track, and then see: there are no band separators. It looks like one long song filling up the whole side. The green apple spins round and round, alive. I drop the needle carefully, carefully; near the end of the side. Electric guitars. YES. Drums. YES. Bass, heavy Bass. YES YES YES. Then the voice: “She’s well acquainted with the touch of the velvet hand, like a lizard on a window pane; the man in the crowd with the multicoloured mirrors on his hobnail boots.” Enough. OH YES. This singer knows it all, it’s all in his voice, a million miles traveled, a thousand stories heard and told. This is going to be good.
