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MUSIC: Thai teen duo Raptor call it quits
By: Andrew hirnasomboon
 As if the departure of Ginger Spice from the Spice Girls wasn't bad enough, we now find ourselves facing another tragedy in the pop music world: Raptor are calling it quits. I mean, c'mon guys, some of us are still getting over the breakup of Take That.
You know, Raptor : The international school duo - long-haired half-Thai, half-Scottish bimbo Louis Scott (and we mean "bimbo" in a good way) and bleach-headed half Scottish, half-Indonesian brat Joni Anwar (ditto for "brat") - who at one point ruled the Thai charts with hits like Runaway and I Don't Want to Sleep Alone.
Yeah, I don't recognise the songs by their titles either, but chances are you've heard them, though not necessarily by choice unless you're under the age of 16.
So as for why this is appearing in Outlook instead of, say, Student Weekly I'm not exactly sure either, except for the fact the two fresh-faced teenagers graced us with their presence late last week.
It was an exceptional visit, and not just for the weak-kneed giggling secretaries; "exceptional" because unlike other Thai labels, RS artists rarely - if ever - pay courtesy calls to the Capital's newspapers and magazines. Concerts, fashion shoots, maybe the occasional gameshow appearance, but unscripted interviews, they're few and far between.
This was different, a "special occasion", however. Joni and Louis had stopped by to say goodbye - a farewell media tour before the farewell concert tour - and it didn't matter that, as far as most of us are concerned, they had never said hello in the first place.
"This is like our way of saying goodbye, like Take That or X-Japan," explains Joni.
 In addition to interviews, there is the aptly-named Goodbye LP, a 12-song album of past hits along with the Raptor swan song, Sayonara Good bye; there will also be a tour of the provinces beginning in a week or so and then a final farewell blowout in Bangkok in mid-June.
"We want to be remembered on stage, rather than on television. Concerts are more 'straight-up', who we are, showing what we can do," Joni says.
"Yeah, and I want to meet everybody. Some people haven't seen us in some parts of Thailand so we want to go around and see everybody," adds Louis.
And after they see everybody, it's back to school. This, the two 11th-graders insist, is the main reason they are leaving the business. "School is very important to us and we don't want to miss school. It's like one week, we go to school like two days. We have a lot of school work, so we want to quit to have time for school," says Louis.
There are, of course, other reasons. In fact the suspicion is that school is only an excuse. Not to blame the dedicated educators over at Pattana, but the two don't exactly strike you as the studious type.
And how else to explain Joni's from-out-of-nowhere "Let's just say we've had enough of the business" comment? Jaded at 16?
Is there, perhaps, a wee bit of bitterness?
"Uh ... I mean ... I think we've come to the peak of who we are. I wouldn't wan't to say we've lost our childhood but there are things we want to do we can't do. Uh ... we could say that we've been a success in the business so we've come to the point where ... we're sick of it."
"That's a joke," he adds, laughing nervously.
What is not a joke is their obvious desire to step out of the spotlight, or at least one aspect of it, for the time being. When pressed, Louis admits that their decision was not solely based on their educational goals.
"You have no personal life," he explains. "You have a best friend - a girl best friend - and you're walking with her as a best friend. The next day you're on the front page: 'Louis was walking with a girl, doing this, doing this."
 Perhaps the two took their cue from fellow Scot Andy Goram, the veteran goalkeeper who left his country's World Cup-bound team less than two weeks before the tournament kick-off. "I think it's too much," Louis says of the press. "They should concentrate on us when we do our jobs, when we do concerts, not on our personal life."
Whatever the reason for their early retirement - whether it be school, burnout or an overzealous paparazzi - by the end of July, Raptor will be no more. No more albums (get 'em while you can, kids), no more concerts (see them while you can, kids), no more visits to the Bangkok Post.
Good luck with school, fellas. We'll see you when it's time for the reunion tour.
--Taken from Bangkok Post
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