Current Records/現代唱片/The Think Tank Ltd - Tsai Shing/齊成 (=Richard Yung Ka Tsai/翁家齊 & Joseph Chow Kung Shing/周功成) - Tsai Shing/齊成 (1988) 8.280021

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Special Thanks to Griffin for sharing the cover artworks.

Tracklist
01. This Year's Model (5:23) 1988 [劉美君 - 廣播道神話]
{words & music: Joseph Chow} Pacific Music Publishing Ltd
02. No Compromise (3:53) 1988
{words & music: Joseph Chow} Pacific Music Publishing Ltd
03. Don't You Know Me By Now (3:37) 1988
{words & music: Joseph Chow} Pacific Music Publishing Ltd
04. Mind Made Up (4:37) 1988 [劉美君 - Mind Made Up]
{music: Richard Yung & lyrics: Joseph Chow} Pacific Music Publishing Ltd
05. My Girl Friend Smokes (And I Don't) (4:26) 1985 ** From “Fried Rice”
{words & music: Joseph Chow} Pacific Music Publishing Ltd
06. Women (5:06) 1988
{words & music: Richard Yung} Pacific Music Publishing Ltd
07. Songs (7:03) 1988 * [何嘉麗 - 我需要愛]
{words & tune: Richard Yung} Pacific Music Publishing Ltd
08. Necessary Losses (4:19) 1988
{words & music: Joseph Chow} Pacific Music Publishing Ltd
09. Mr. Cairo's (4:31) 1988 *
{words & music: Joseph Chow} Pacific Music Publishing Ltd
10. Little By Little (5:09) 1988
{words: Richard Yung/Joseph Chow & music: Richard Yung} Pacific Music Publishing Ltd
11. You Haven't Got A Leg To Stand On (5:08) 1988 [鄭瑞芬 - 假裝假純情]
{words & music: Joseph Chow} Pacific Music Publishing
12. Eye To Eye (3:42) 1988 ** From “Fried Rice” Special Edition [林保怡 & 劉美君 - 偷窺]
{words & music: Richard Yung} Pacific Music Publishing
13. Chinese Menu [English & Cantonese] (4:14) 1988
{words & music: Joseph Chow} Pacific Music Publishing
14. “Fun Lean Barn” (訓練班) [Cantonese] (4:14) 1988
{“Jock Cook” (作曲) & “Teen Chee” (填詞): Yung Ka Ysai (翁家齊)} Pacific Music Publishing

CD Bonus Tracks * & ** (taken from first album “Fried Rise”/Special Edition)!

Also available on LP: 6.280021 and MC: 4.280021 (CD: 8.280021)

(P) & (C) 1988 The Think Tank Ltd

Additional Notes
I re-worked my messenger app/chat with Richard Yung a few years back (2017) in a “sort of” interview, fun facts/stories & also talk about of the 2 albums. {I hope Richard will not mind, as I expect their fans would like to know/read about these & as he said it’s not secretive, some questionable ones I removed of course}. Enjoy!


Q (my question): There are 2 versions of Eye To Eye (Fried Rice: Promo Copy of the Album & Released Album). When I listened to them I noticed there were 2 versions of Eye To Eye. On one of the version: the vocals were much more on the foreground (the music a bit softer). This was how I could put it (in words)! What is/are the difference(s)?

A (Richard’s answer): Good question! The differences between the two versions of Eye To Eye are:
1) the vocal part,
2) the mix.
After the initial release of 200 promo copies of the vinyl which incidentally had a different cover, with red and yellow highlighting the Char Siu and Egg in the fried rice in the wok and the Chinese TsaiShing logo in Black, Danny Chung 鍾定一, the part owner of the record company Black & White which released the record, felt that, from a commercial viability and saleability standpoint, he suggested a more "mature" voice and a mix with more reverb, so he produced my vocal re-recording and supervised the mix at a different studio. But personally I prefer our original one which to me sounds more personable! So it's just a matter of taste.


T (Richard’s tidbit/花絮): Actually Thank YOU for asking cos it's nothing secretive... just that nobody ever asked! One more tidbit if you're curious, basically to save cost, the general release Vinyl Cover of the first album was a one-colour printing with a green TsaiShing logo, the 200 promo copies that preceded it was a 2-colour printing, with red for the char siu and yellow for the egg and a black TsaiShing logo.

S (my side story): Many years later of listening to Cantonese music I was interested in finding & buying the original songs of the Cantonese covers! I love Prudence & Bowie duet (Eye To Eye) & Prudence her covers (Mind Made Up & This Year's Model)! So I bought 2 BMG compilation CD's with Eye To Eye & This Year's Model on them. I loved the originals so much!


Q: I remember you once said that “you hated they destroyed your original songs by covering them in Cantonese”, why did you say that? But because of that (Cantonese Covers of your songs) I was introduced to your music.

A: Actually I don't hate Eye To Eye and Mind Made Up Cantonese version cos I had a hand in their production. With Eye To Eye, I had a good long chat with the Chinese lyricist Chow Loy Mow 周禮茂 before he went off and wrote it, also I know the arranger who used to play bass guitar for me, so it came out the way I'd wished it to be, I approve... hahaha
As for Mind Made Up, I did the Prudence Liew 劉美君 arrangement myself and co-produced her singing and was also responsible for mixing it, so no complaints there.


Q: Or did you mean the Cantonese lyrics don't match (the idea/meaning) with the original lyrics you wrote?

A: The thing is when I or anyone write a song, I would imagine a scene in my head as to what it's about, to whom or for who I'm singing it etc. and that would form the basis for the lyrics, so when it comes to the cover in a different language, I would prefer the lyricist to bear all that in mind before putting pen to paper.


T: An interesting tidbit was when I produced Ruth Chen 曾路得 album in the early 80s, I thought of a song which might suit her and it was by none other than The Beatles' (Paul McCartney's own) "I Will" from their "White Album". The Beatles songs were notoriously hard to get copyright permission and direct approval, not only for the high cost but the lyrics (translated into English for them) have to be close to its original lyrics and approved by McCartney himself before we were granted permission to replicate it in Cantonese. So after about 3 months, we got a note that we could go ahead and do it. I believe that's the way it should be to give the composer a peace of mind.

S: Years later I met 2 friends on the internet. We shared the same passion/dream to find all the originals to the Cantonese/Mandarin covers! As we proceded we found more of your songs were covered (Songs by Susanne Ho & You Haven't Got A Leg To Stand On by Fanny Cheng)! So I was glad they covered your songs! Otherwise I wouldn't got the chance to know your music & you 2 talented musicians.


Q: You said/wrote in 2006: “who would want to buy 20-year-old songs from 2 geezers in their 50's?” If the 2 albums will get a “back to black”-reissues on CD. I will buy them even though now I have the files. I still will buy the actual CD! And my 2 friends will also want to buy them on CD/vinyl. So I think you are wrong (you underestimated it). Why did you say/think that?

A: You see, for bread and butter, before the 2 TsaiShing's albums we were solely songwriters, occasionally asked to write songs for artists we were not producing for, hence we had no control of the outcome and usually we disapproved of them! But after we released the first album, we were very cautious as to who would sing the Canto cover, the two songs you mentioned were from artists that we produced ourselves, at least Susanne 何嘉麗 was mine, dunno about Joe's (Joseph) involvement with Fanny 鄭瑞芬, so once again we approved of the lyrics etc before they put them down to tape.


Q: So do you know more of your songs which had been covered? Or these were the only 5 of them?
林保怡 & 劉美君 - 偷窺/齊成 - Eye To Eye
劉美君 - Mind Made Up/齊成 - Mind Made Up
劉美君 - 廣播道神話/齊成 - This Year's Model
鄭瑞芬 - 假裝假純情/齊成 - You Haven't Got A Leg To Stand On
何嘉麗 - 我需要愛/齊成 - Songs
Because we've seen more songs composed by you (guys). But we couldn't find an original to those. We guess those were the original songs written for those artists then.

A: Wow... another good question from you... cover versions of our English originals?!! Never counted myself! All I can tell you is... whenever I write a song, they'd be in English with possibly just a verse or even a few lines in them. Possibly it's because we're raised in a British colony, educated in a predominatingly English speaking school, and after that I spent 10 years studying in England, so naturally my English (although not great) is miles better than my Chinese. Besides I've always regarded Cantopop to be UK or US pop songs but sung in Cantonese, which as a dialect of the Chinese language is not exactly suitable for music, much less, for English melodies as there are 8 (some say 12) tones to each word hence restricting the creative freedom of melodies. Mandarin is miles more fluent as there are only 4 tones... and English has no tones basically! So we always dreaded it whenever we handed over "demos" to record companies cos we'd never know what they would come out sounding like, and most of the time they were horrible IMHO. hahaha


Q: BMG/Current once put out a wrong version out of "Eye To Eye" cover. It was Bowie there but the female artist wasn't Prudence. Do you know who that female singer was?

A: Huh? Really? I didn't know that?! I think the duet by Bowie and some other female singer possibly happened because the record company responsible couldn't get Prudence to sing for it cos she's signed to another record company.


T: Dunno if you know, Bowie 林保怡 was introduced to me when he's 19 by a friend cos when I first came back to HK, I was looking for a budding drummer (and FREE... hahaha) to do demos for me, and he came along. Seeing his talent and knowing he wanted to get into the music business, I got him into the then newly set-up WEA in HK where I worked as a producer... and so to all my old music friends, Bowie is my Drummer Boy although I regarded him more as a little brother. So happy he's extremely popular and successful actor now in this part of the world, proud of him. Talk about Bowie 林保怡 ... he told me the reason he left the HK TVB is the wages he get filming a Mainland TV series, just one episode exceeds what he gets in HK.


Q: No, it was on Bowie his compilation CD on BMG/Current! It was supposed to be with Prudence (printed on CD & Cover)! But later, before release covering Prudence' name with a sticker). I dug up/out my Bowie CD (on the label side it stated duets with Prudence), booklet printed duets with Prudence but covering with a white sticker. CD back cover that part was blank.

A: Prudence, Current Records have folded long ago and BMG since 2008 was bought over by Sony. Hence the artists have since terminated their contracts. It's all about music politics and money

Wikipedia: Make My Day & 流水飄 共用了一曲而重新塡詞. 在兩張作品中收錄的 偷窺 他分別與不同女聲合唱. Natural 內為劉美君, 流水飄 內則不詳.


T: "Rights" is a huge thing, I ran into problems few years ago having been approached by a new record company asking if TsaiShing 1 & 2 could be re-issued! Although I hold the Mechanical rights, that's the production of the actual tracks but because of the companies involved in releasing them, they demanded an absurd sum, so naturally the new company backed off. Actually just a couple of weeks ago I was approached by a new Mainland Record Company asking about the same thing and since I still own and have in my possession the 24-track original masters, .... {secret :P}


Q: I had to see what you said to me. It was so nice talking to you. I've never had thought I could communicate with the artists themselves. It's a honor to do so. Especially that one is so nice (easy, down to earth) to talk to/with, right?

A: Hahaha... I'm just an ordinary guy but admittedly a bit longwinded in my old age. It's MY honour to have spoken to someone who's so into our music or HK music in general. In fact now you know more about the fate of our old recordings than even my partner Joseph Chow 周功成 himself, he's currently living back in the USA and haven't been back to HK for years... and possibly doesn't give a damn to our old efforts! hahaha... Cheers


Q: Well about Cantopop songs from 70's/80's/90's/00's, had many covers from originals in all different languages: (Mandarin/ English/ French/ German/ Italian/ Spanish/ Finnish/ Portuguese/ Japanese/ Korean/ Indonesian/ Malay/ Philipines/ Thai/ Dutch/ Norwegian/ Russian/ Hungerian/ Greek/ Swedish etc)! If you have time feel free to check my friend's FB page & blogs. Really interesting sometimes: we were just wondering how/why had the HKG artists covering those from?

A: Thanks, some of them I know about. Your friend's a true fan of the HK pop scene

Q: Well, our friend in China is more our expert on the Japanese covers. My friend from America Western/Japanese both a bit. I mainly in Western & many european covers were found by me. Especially I cracked a few really tough ones. I kept on searching & searching, finally got those gems like Grasshopper 草蜢 covering from Blue - Cryin' In My sleep or Faye Wong 王菲 covering Yuri - Soy Libre Those were my findings

A: WOW... u know a WHOLE LOT MORE than I do. I never listen to Grasshopper and I've been totally out of touch with the UK and US music scene since the 90s... apart from the odd hits! And I've always been more into original songs than cover versions.


S: Most the times the credits given in the booklet were far from correct/complete. We need to try very hard to find the previews (pre-internet period). Often we had to buy CD's just to confirm some hunches.

T: In these last couple of years, I only follow the music career of my nephew Howie Yung 翁厚樑 and his CantoPunk rock band "Dear Jane" and also that of the daughter of a close friend of mine named Jude(nith) Tsang 曾若華 who just started... or even the sons of my old friends namely Justin Lo 側田 and Aarif Rahman or Aarif Lee 李治廷, known them since they're babies.

S: I like 側田 his songs (Ted Lo is his uncle). I know the band Dear Jane and some of their songs. 遠征 I like a lot. I Didn't know your nephew is in the band. Now I will pay more attention to their music! Aarif Lee is an actor as well, I thought I seen him on tv promoting his films/series! The other one (Jude) I have never heard of!


S: But I have to say without the covers we were never introduced to the originals like TsaiShing's music! And sometimes the arrangement on the cover is way better than the original!

T: Interesting point you made there... arrangement: for instance, Mind Made Up, I wrote it as a reggae, so our version was exactly the way I intended it to be heard but when it came to Prudence, she wanted a more danceable feel, so I gave it a "club" like feel or "disco" feel in those days!

S: I think at that time the disco/club music suited Prudence more (clubbing & remixes were "in"). Okay, I have listened to the 2 albums.

Fried Rice 1986
01 Midnight {reminds me of Falco}
02 My Girl Friend Smokes (And I Don't) @
03 Funny How The Money Goes {reminds me of Culture Club}
04 A Good Dream While It Lasted @
05 The Night Is Young {reminds me of Eurythmics} @
06 Where's The Music Gone {reminds me of Elvis} @
07 I Can Give Her Up@
08A Eye To Eye (Vers.1=Promo Version, TsaiShing's Mix) @
08B Eye To Eye (Vers.2=Released Album Version, Danny Chung Mix, mature vocal & more reverb) @
09 Don't Wear No Name
10 The Way Love Used To Be {reminds me of Beatles} @

Very western sounding. Just listening to it/them. I wouldn't expect these were from 2 Chinese/Asian guys. It was so 80's sounding. I could hear the British Music influences & some American or perhaps Japanese (which was also heavily influenced by Western music). Okay, released in 1986 but these were probably from 1982/1983. Because these did sound older. @ these one I like by first time listening. Sometimes other songs have to grew on you. Is it how you say it? 🤔 After a few more times then you will start to like them more.

Tsai Shing 1988
01 This Year's Model @
02 No Compromise @
03 Don't You Know Me By Now @
04 Mind Made Up @
05 Women @
06 Songs @
07 Necessary Losses @
08 Mr. Cairo's @
09 Little By Little @
10 You Haven't Got A Leg To Stand On @
11 Chinese Menu @

Still 80's sounding, but more mature, some songs are even a bit timeless. Even my mom loves it. She's about 70 years old. I asked her "is it good?" She said "yes" I asked her again if I don't tell you these were from 2 Chinese/Asian guys would you have guessed these were from 鬼佬? She said "definitely"!

T: Thanks... especially your Mum, and btw NO songwriters like criticism about their music unless it's correctly spotted, influences yes, but not comparisons. U only got one correct, The Night Is Young was originally a rock number which we did in the early 80s but we decided to update it in 1985 and we deliberately modelled it on Eurythmics AND The Human League. Also we HATE Japanese pop and we never listen to it, they're years behind time and have always been cloning UK and US stuffs, so please don't compare our stuffs to any music from it or any other country except for UK and US. Thanks.

T: One more thing, don't even mention South Korea, they copy from the Japanese not only in music but everything else, their electronics, their cosmetic surgery obsession, their cars etc etc etc. Thanks.

S: By listening to them, they gave me some kind of feel, yeah it sounds a bit like ...! I listen to all music (from my years in HKG Cantonese/Japanese/Mandarin)! And then came back here (all European music: British/ Dutch/ German/ French/ Italian/ Spanish/ Scandinavian). And by far the 80's music is still my favourite. I hope you're not angry/mad. It was not my intention!

T: It's OK, like many other songwriters, writers, film directors, artists that I know, we hate our works being analysed, criticised and similarities drawn to some other works that mostly we've not heard of much less copying or cloning intentionally. But sometimes an unintentional resemblance do occur that ended up in court cases like Barry Manilow suing George Michael claiming that "Last Christmas" sounded like his "Can't Smile Without You" and he won. Also George Harrison's (of The Beatles) 1970 monstrous No.1 hit "My Sweet Lord" got sued for copying a 1963 song by the Chiffons called "He's So Fine" and he lost but years later he bought the song's copyright! Other examples were Morris Albert got sued for not crediting the original French composer for using the melody of his 1957 French song called "Pour Toi" in his 1974 hit "Feelings" and lost the case. Finally, Canadian folk singer Gordon Lightfoot sued the writer of Whitney Houston's "The Greatest Love Of All" for copying 24 bars of his 1971 No.1 hit "If You Could Read My Mind" but later dropped the lawsuit as he would not want to tarnish the reputation of Whitney Houston.

S: Wow you know a lot! I'm impressed!

T: Thing is we always self analyse our works before releasing them in case people say we copied off this and that but we can't help it if it's a style of piano playing (I admit I learnt it from Elton John as I do play a lot of his songs for fun) or singing wise or arrangement like I deliberately wanted a string quartet like that on The Beatles' "Yesterday" in my song "The Way Love Used To Be" which you so cleverly recognised.

T: Actually I analyse every phrase of my own songs WHILE writing them which is why I haven't written as many as I should have over the years. Whenever I hummed a few lines of melody in the writing stage that I felt I heard before, I'll dump it and start over again which is the reason why it takes me years to come up with what I consider a relatively original melody. It can't be helped actually cos there's only 12 semitones in an octave and with literally thousands and thousands of songs written in the last 80 decades of the modern song era, it's awfully hard to come up with something mildly original

S: Oh, you thought I was saying that you copied those songs. Oh no, I just tried to match your songs to the music what I know of. The feel I got from listening to your songs. It's a kind of compliment. Because those I meant I like a lot: Falco/Eurythmics/Beatles/Elvis also The Human League you mentioned. Actually when comparing your works to my music heroes that means your songs are that good. If my comparisons offended you. My sincerely apologies.

Q: I thought I heard all the songs on your second album. But today when looked at them I saw I missed the final track. Fun Lean Barn (訓練班). Why have you guys decided to put a Cantonese song on a full English album? I thought it was an english song as well by looking at the title. But then it started with some Cantonese words...I know why your musical partner hated you for that

A: Blame me, it's all for fun... and cos it's the only time I wrote Chinese lyrics myself and I meant to tease every young person in HK at the time for desperately seeking fame and fortune in the field of entertainment by joining TVB's 訓練班! Actually it was performed in a theatrical skit by Elisa Chan 陳潔靈 and Do Do Cheng 鄭裕玲 etc on stage prior to the album release... for fun. Joe Chow 周功成 hated me for doing it... hahahahaha. He hates musicals be it film or theatre except for Rogers and Hammerstein's works or West Side Story but I love them all

T: Check out my cool R&B number which I spent hours recording in the middle of many a night at my home studio, DON'T knock it cos I REALLY LOVE IT. I just posted it, best to listen after midnight esp when you can't get to sleep hahahahaa. https://www.facebook.com/TsaiShing/videos/10155497029153679/

S: Okay, I thought "Songs" that the one on the album & covered by Susanne Ho. What's the title of the new r&b song then? Songs as well?

T: No, we have no new songs, but as I posted yesterday, I'm replacing most of TsaiShing's LIVE video with the actual recording because the audio of the live performances were horrible! It's not easy to do cos I have to speed up or slow down the video every few bars to sort of sync it to the recording. Difficulty with this one is we performed it on 3 different nights but the trumpeter Joe (Joseph) Chan 陳永良 (actually he's 劉美君 Prudence Liew's producer) were ad-libbing every single performance making the sync job awfully difficult to do esp if u can play a brass instrument you'll notice it at once. Anyway, I'm super proud of this one and I was meaning to re-do the video for some time now just that I never got around to doing it!

T: Ah forgot to ask you, is music a part of your job? or rather your job is music related? jounalist? Music critic? give me a CLUE, luv guessing (my answer: I’m just a ordinary salesman). Being basically a Product Designer myself who loves technology, especially the recent news about 100% of trains run on wind power. I left the company for another job after 2000, working for a friend in his online job hunting site called JobsDB.com which later acquired the popular foodie site openrice.com