Mark Cruz15 said:That’s not quite right—TBF really blew up after their first album. If I recall correctly, Yen was the first single from the record, and that was getting airplay on TV about a year later. Little San Mak was their second big hit from the album.
I can't swear by it since it was ages ago, but I think Little San Mak was actually their first single and hit. I remember back in eighth grade (around '95/'96), a guy from my class showed up with a recording of that song, and the rest of my class—mostly guys—just collectively latched onto it. It became our unofficial anthem pretty fast. At the time, I was acting like this "hardcore" rocker, rebelling against them and questioning how anyone could listen to that stuff. I tried to force everyone to listen to the Ramones, which I had just discovered, but it was a total lost cause. 😁
Since we were always hanging out before and after school, and that song was playing constantly, even I eventually started liking it—even after hearing it maybe the 128th time. In the beginning, I totally misinterpreted the lyrics; I took their sense of irony as some kind of mockery or joke about music in general, which I found repulsive, so I didn't accept it for a while. But over time, I realized that's just their vibe and there's nothing wrong with it, so I embraced it just like the rest of my school friends.
I should also mention that at the end of eighth grade, they organized an Adio scuola party at our school playground, and there was this vote where all the students picked the songs they wanted played that day. The rule was that the top 20 songs with the most votes would make the list. Most classes felt "forced" to vote for TBF just to get them on there, and when the results came out, the first 19 were all those massive, well-known hits of the era, while Little San Mak landed at number 20 with barely any votes. Man, I still remember the chaos in the hallway when the results were posted on the bulletin board. 🤣
The issue popped up when the teachers took that song list to the local radio station (they were supposed to burn a CD for us) and realized they had every single song except for that one. They were left scratching their heads wondering what TBF even was. That's when things got "complicated," because there was no way we were accepting any other solution, and nobody alive besides my classmate actually had a copy of that song. I don't remember exactly how it ended or how they finally got it (maybe they just played his cassette?), but I will never forget the moment when, after the first 19 hits, Little San Mak started blasting over the speakers. Almost my entire class dropped to the floor, and all thirty of us started jumping and singing along word for word in a trance, while the rest of the students just stared at us like we had gone totally crazy. 😁
I'm just glad cell phones weren't a thing back then, or I'd feel terrible knowing my "rapping" was caught on video. I can only imagine how ridiculous I looked. 🤦
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