Watched a bit of a variety show on Suria, the Malay language channel here, earlier this evening and found myself both thoroughly enjoying the segment with veteran rocker Ramli Sarip and realising just how much I admire him. This is in part because I like his music but it's also related to the fact that he's somehow managed to carve out a career as a genuine musician doing what I think he wants to do, which is by no means mainstream, in what must have been just about the least conducive environment for doing so that one might imagine. Earlier in the programme a talented young band called Bunkface featured and it struck me that they were likely to be facing a fair few constraints in terms of what they would have to play to make any kind of living. (I'm guessing that they didn't really see themselves as popular entertainers, though I may be wrong.) It made me wonder if they would last it out. Hope they do.
One guy who has lasted it out, in a very different environment, is Peter Hammill the uber-talented frontman of Van Der Graaf Generator. By chance I'd accessed an interview with him the other day in which he was talking about how he had never really wanted the stardom that came to two of his contemporaries - David Bowie and Peter Gabriel. He strikes me as a hugely sane guy and as someone whose career has been deeply successful and satisfying in a way that, oddly enough, perhaps may not be true of his two marvellously gifted contemporaries. And I wonder if the same might be said of Ramli: in a smaller way, but a deeper way, perhaps he can be seen as having achieved something more than some of the seemingly brightest stars.
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