123 We are all Wooden Men

David has a new diary entry where he went into a lot of details abt his new concert. I want to feel enthusiastic abt it but still feel hollow inside. Anyway glad that he made the effort to re-establish contact with his fans again. Its nice to read all your interesting comments TQ & encouraging that most of you are optimistic that the original David Tao we fell in love with may emerge in time *sigh* The trouble is even with this new msg, I still don't feel his sincerity & fire as before. Just for you Zoe, I put back the archives.
5/24/07
It’s been ages again since I wrote an entry and I’m sure many of you are wondering, “Where in the world did David go?” Well, here I am and I’ve some great news to share with you.
For the past half year I’ve been working on my film project in various capacities including pre-production, script writing and meeting many friends in the film industry. There is still so much to do and I’ve only scratched the surface of what I need to accomplish to complete this film. I won’t go into detail as to what I’ve been doing in terms of the film but I’ve already begun writing the script to the film which I’m planning on directing next year.
The exciting news that I would like to share, however, is that this year I will be rolling out a new concert tour entitled, “123 我們都是木頭人“ which loosely translated in English would be “123 We are all Wooden Men”. This is a brand new show with a new rundown, program and concept. Without giving too much away, I can say this will be a more visually driven show though musically I’m going for a more straight-ahead yet funkier sound. It’s a bit difficult to describe though, hopefully, it’ll all make sense once you watch the show in it’s final form.
There will be quite a few changes to the lineup of the band though Goh Kheng Long will still act as music director and bandleader. We’ve just finished re-arranging the songs for the show and I can’t wait for you to hear them in their new incarnations. About 80% of the songs from my repertoire have been re-thought for this show so you can be sure that they not resemble what you heard in the Soul Power and Love Can tours. This is an entirely new and fresh production.
The concept of this show revolves around a children’s game which is also known as “Red Light, Green Light” in some countries. However, unlike in a game, we are often not in control of our lives and life, in general. Another key theme in the show is the importance of simplicity and the need for us to be more human in this very technological age. With each tour, I’m always working on trying to simplify things, which is actually more difficult than an additive process. Another thing I’m also constantly trying to achieve is give each song more meaning using staging and visual elements. To make a production both visually and musically more complicated by adding flashy gimmicks is actually easier than making things simple. The objective for my production team and I has always been to make things relevant rather than just providing eye and ear candy.
Musically, this show has a very different sound and character compared to both Soul Power and Love Can. My musical director, Kheng Long, and I approached the rearrangement of the songs not for change’s sake but to see if there were alternate “personalities” within the songs that could be released. This may sound very abstract but if you imagine songs akin to human personalities then you will understand how it’s possible to “unlock” different intrinsic traits and personalities with songs and melodies. This can be a very nebulous and unpredictable process but if it works then the results are very rewarding, as in our case. What we wanted to avoid was to force an identity on a song by merely making it Latin Jazz, Rock or some musical style. Instead, what we did was listen to each song and melody very carefully taking into consideration all the elements and then allowing “it” to speak to us. We tried to work more organically than ever before without any preconceived notions on how each song would sound or what new “style” we’d give it. The end result would often pleasantly surprise us and that’s what we hope will make this show different and very exciting for you.
DT