Being “on air” makes me think of being high. Or perhaps how you might describe someone bouncing merrily on a whimsical, life-loving cloud. Or both.

These are my thoughts as I watch a menacing child blatantly ignoring the “On Air” sign beaming above him, just outside the studio
in which I sit. He’s pressed up against a soundproof sheet of glass and threatening a big, moist blowfish. He’s an enormous distraction. Kid: I’m trying to answer this damn question.

In the basement of Mong Kok’s Langham Place is an internet radio station called Radio Dada – a quaint little corner of the mall overlooking a noodle shop, separated from the rampant shoppers, Udon slurpers and maniacal, radio-hating children by a mere piece of glass. Along with Time Out’s Editor Paul Kay, I am a guest on Underground Battlefield, a weekly radio show hosted by Bun Ng and Calvin Wong that promotes local independent music – and we’ve been invited, in not quite so many words, to shoot the shit about the Hong Kong music scene.

As journalists, interviews form a hefty chunk of what we do. We’re used to being the custodian over the juicy questions, dredging up little chestnuts of discussion, firing controversial queries at interviewees, and interjecting with unexpected little ditties.

But sitting here, I’ve become supremely conscious of the world spinning around – that the interrogational tables have turned, like a spinning lazy susan. Those tough little chestnuts of discussion are being fired at me, and I don’t know if I’m entirely comfortable with it.

In these moments, pondering a question about Hong Kong’s music scene, I lament the absence of the power of the page. Radio is a scary medium. Body language is lost. There’s a daunting immediacy to it, where ill-considered things that should rightly still be milling around in my mind escape into the audible ether, victim of some uncontrollable verbal diarrhea. In print you can stew over sentences and paragraphs for minutes at a time; radio, meanwhile, provides disappointingly few opportunities to build to a dick joke.

On the other side of these rather convoluted thoughts – a nice little bit of dead air for the show – I spout something that loosely resembles my view that Hong Kong’s music scene is definitely on the way up. I think. But I can’t shake the feeling it would have sounded so much better in print.

Mark Tjhung

Underground Battlefield airs on Radio Dada at 3pm every Saturday. Hear the Time Out team on the show at www.radiodada.hk/#archive/battlefield20100703.