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Molek FMDig It: Aidil Rusli From Couple
Every month JUICE gets down with a trendsetting, jet-setting type and asks them to unearth their favourite people, places and things. This month, Aidil Rusli, frontman of indie minstrels Couple, lays into his deep fried chicken nuggets and lays down the word.
THE COFFIN JOE COLLECTION DVD BOXSET
A cult horror icon I’ve only read about before, it’s a joy to finally get to see these 8 films (plus a documentary on the auteur, the incomparably loony Jose Mojica Marins). Available for the first time ever in the UK, this box set was one of the first things I hunted down when my band was over there for a short tour. With titles like At Midnight I Will Take Your Soul, Tonight I Will Possess Your Corpse, Strange Hostel Of Naked Pleasures and Hallucinations Of A Deranged Mind, you know there’s no way you can lose.
THE HOLD STEADY’S ALMOST KILLED ME
I bought quite a number of CDs while I was in the UK, but none more precious than this debut album by one of my favourite current bands, The Hold Steady. Absolutely smart lyrics coupled with rip-roaring tunes. Closing song ‘Killer Parties’ is one of the most perfect closers you could ever hope to hear.
NASI AYAM MANCONGKAM (JALAN GOMBAK)
I’m sure you can name other places that serve better chicken rice (especially Chinese ones), but the thing that makes me always come back to this place is the crispy chicken (ayam garing) and the generous serving of rice that comes with it. Simple, yummy and reasonably priced – which is more than good enough for me.
FOPP
A subsidiary of HMV but with emphasis on independent music and film, this shop is just a piece of heaven if you’re a fanatical collector like me. I went to the ones in Manchester and London (there are only 9 outlets in the UK). You can find DVDs of films by Seijun Suzuki for only £4 or Jacques Tati for £8 (when other shops sell ’em for £20) and CDs by the likes of The Pixies, Grizzly Bear and David Bowie for only £5 (when they’d cost at least £10 at Rough Trade).
AMCORP MALL FLEA MARKET
Another piece of heaven for collectors, my personal favourites would definitely be the stall run by Joe Rozario, who used to run the Music Exchange shop (he sells LPs, and original R1 and R2 DVDs mostly); the stall selling CD-Rs of old Malay LPs; and the shop selling back issues of imported magazines. The stalls selling used CDs are not bad as well-found a copy of my favourite NKOTB album Step By Step there for only RM20.
SATAY DAGING @ CAPITOL CAFE (OPPOSITE SOGO)
Even though I usually hate beef satay, this particular little coffee shop had me coming back again and again. It’s the beef’s fat (lemak) bits that make it amazing as it just melts in your mouth, and can even induce some sort of sugar rush. Yes, it’s that good.
BOMP! – SAVING THE WORLD ONE RECORD AT A TIME
Books about rock ‘n’ roll are a dime a dozen but if I had to pick only one book, then this greatest hits compilation of Greg Shaw’s 3 legendary fanzines (Mojo Navigator, Who Put The Bomp and Bomp) should be the place to go. And when I say rock ‘n’ roll, I mean real rock ‘n’ roll; the kind of dumb, outsider/outlaw music that saw acts like The Stooges, MC5, The Ramones and The Replacements toil away without much commercial success, legends they may be now.
1940s HOLLYWOOD SCREWBALL COMEDIES
I love all sorts of movies but a personal favourite would be 1940s Hollywood screwball comedies. Sure, they’re just romantic comedies to some, but watch a movie like The Awful Truth (directed by Leo McCarey), The Lady Eve, The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (in fact any movie directed by Preston Sturges at Paramount in the ’40s) or Heaven Can Wait (by Ernst Lubitsch) and then you tell me whether they’re just another romantic comedy. The kind of anarchy and vitality that you can find in these films can probably only be found in some of the current “bromance” movies (like The Hangover) and movies directed by Judd Apatow. Otherwise, it kinda seems like it’s a long-lost art form.
THE BEATLES – THE CAPITOL ALBUMS BOXSETS VOL 1 & 2
Like a lot of Beatles fanatics, my pants were mighty wet when I got the Beatles In Mono box set last year. However – and this might sound like blasphemy to some Beatles purists – I still can’t help going back to these 2 box sets, which I got a few years back. Somehow the tracklistings for these US versions (decided solely by Capitol Records) made a deeper impression on me, with the kind of “replayability” factor that you can only dream of. Even the US version of Rubber Soul (which opens with ‘I’ve Just Seen A Face’ and omits quite a few tunes) seems to make perfect sense to me. This particular collection is something to explore if you think pop and art don’t necessarily need to mean different things.
Get cosy with Couple at www.myspace.com/couple.
