Tuesday, March 02, 2010

Teenage Fentons - A Falcons Offshoot (Part IV)

The Falcons were happily playing for gigs around Ipoh and were proud and thankful they were the only band with a manager and had instruments provided for. Everything was hunky-dory until the day Robert called the group for a meeting. Things were to change drastically as he told us that his father wanted him to stop as our manager to concentrate on his family business. It came as a shock to us.
.
Together we formed another band called the Teenage Fentons (image). A friend agreed to manage the band and would provide the necessary instruments for us. We started practicing as a new band playing songs mainly by the Shadows as we just had a new Fender Stratocaster. It wasn’t long before we were offered gigs to perform at dances and as guest artistes at talentimes.
.
In the 60s, it was common that a band performed live before the start of a screen musical and we were offered to play at the Shaw Brothers chain of cinemas. The Shaw Brothers are two movie magnates with cinema halls in Malaya, Singapore and parts of South East Asia. We had our fair share of fun and fame although we were only paid $40 for a night’s gig. After a few changes with our band members we decided to call ourselves The Drifters.
.
Image/original article (edited): Joseph Chin Collection, Ipoh, Malaysia.

3 comments:

Nicholas Jennings said...

Andy, thank you for this post. Do you follow the blog Ipohworld's World? The Falcons were recently mentioned. Perhaps you would be willing to post comments or Ipoh music photos.

Here is the link to the Falcons comment:

http://www.ipohworld.org/blog/?p=5813

Best, Nicholas

Richard Ng said...


May 31st, 2013 at 7:06 pm · Reply
In 1966, I was a 17 year old studying in ACS Ipoh, Form 5. At that time, our idols were the Teenage Falcons, Ipoh’s first four peace rock and roll band. I remember that they cut a record and all the young people in Ipoh got very excited about that. Unless our parents are members of the Ipoh Club, most of us never got near that club.

ANDY: Pop Music Not Pills. © said...

Thank you Nicholas for the email and connection to Ipohworld's World. I have never heard them play but they must be good to be able to cut a record.

Thanks again for visit.