I'm starting to feel like Ted Mosby [How I Met Your Mother], having to tell every little detail of every story until I get to the point, but if you'll indulge me before you click on that YouTube video at the end of this post, here's how it all came to be...

If you've known me for a while, you might have seen a video I posted on Vimeo years ago called "Eat It". It's basically the story of how my wife and I met, and it was what we showed at our wedding reception in lieu of a slideshow (just so you understand the context of it). In this video, if you got through the whole thing, you'll remember that there was a section where I refer to as "moments in your life that were captured on video that make you cringe". And if you skip forward to 4:40 in this video, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about.

But before we get to that, here's a little more context. Back in Junior High School, there was a genre of music that was introduced to me by my friend Andres that would become "life-changing" :) All of my Junior High and High School friends were obsessed with it, and for some bizarre reason it seemed be especially and almost exclusively popular among Asians (at least from what I could tell) - and that genre.... NEW WAVE. It is all that I ever listened to! (Quick honorable mention to other music that consumed me - The Beatles, Billy Joel, Michael Jackson, and Korean Music before it started getting referred to as K-Pop)

Shortly after I got into bands like Erasure and Depeche Mode, I started learning guitar, and at the time, my best friends Joe and Andres were guitar gods to me. If it weren't for those guys, I really might not be playing guitar today at all, so thanks guys! So one day, Andres came over to my house with his guitar for a little 'jam' session, and that "cringe" moment I described above happened. I guess even before Youtube came along, kids were still filming themselves singing not-so-great covers of songs they liked :) Andres was my hero because he knew how to play one of my FAVORITE Erasure songs of all time "A Little Respect". I barely knew any of the chords and strumming pattern, so I just sat there holding the guitar, and sang my new wave loving, adolescent heart out. It wasn't pretty.

Skip forward to just a few weeks ago, when I was hanging out w/ an old high school friend, Key - and we reminisced about all those mixtapes we all used to make for each other, with all our favorite new wave songs. If you were really good, you knew that if you press "pause" in between recording songs, you won't have a clicking noise - and if you timed out the songs carefully you had less than 5 seconds worth of blank space at the end of each side. I'm just gonna say it. I was a mixed tape master.

Years ago, I always told myself that one day, I'd like to record one of those songs just for fun. And that one day, well - it ended up being a random weekday in February of 2013. And when it came down to deciding which song I'd record - I knew without a doubt which one it would have to be.

So kids (the Mosby wrap up), if you work hard, and commit to practicing and honing your craft, you too can one day record a better version of "A Little Respect" than the one you did in high school. :)

Subscribe to my YouTube Channel, and I'll do my best to update as often as I can!

Special thanks to my talented good friend Andy, who worked on this video for me in the midst of his busy schedule! Love ya bro! Check out his VIMEO channel and his BLOG!

For future updates, follow me on TWITTER (@koochung) & "Like" my FACEBOOK PAGE (whatsakoochung)

Thanks for reading!