Happy New Year 2555: Thailand

The route back from Australia this year was broken by a brief stopover in Bangkok to try and add something a little different to the otherwise notoriously long flight. It wasn’t quite the proverbial “One night in Bangkok” as proposed by Murray Head back in the 80s, but not far from it perhaps.

The track is a strange one in many ways, with its processed spoken word, almost rap lyrics, its jinky chorus and firstly its Middle Eastern intro. But there are some intrigues behind the scenes, such as mentions of Yul Brynner who once played the King of Siam in The King and I.

As it goes, the real King of Thailand, King Bhumibol Adulyadej or Rama IX is also Thailand’s King of Jazz, having recorded many compositions throughout his lifetime and played with the likes of Woody Herman and Benny Goodman.

The words and music of “One night in Bangkok” too were composed by none other than Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, recently departed from ABBA, as well as Andrew Lloyd Webber collaborator and knight of the realm Sir Tim Rice. The track was originally part of the musical Chess, hence the references to the game in the video. The story of the musical is based around a bizarre love triangle set in the cold war era and inspired by Bobby Fischer amongst others (see also As though the shame would outlive him for more on this track…) As a further aside, ABBA have announced  the release of a new track this week, an archival recording left in the vaults from the sessions that produced their last album “The Visitors” from 1981. By this stage the creative and emotional burn out from touring and wife swapping had put tainted the bands usual pop swagger with more mournful strains and introspective words.

But back to Thailand… one of the main attractions of down town Bangkok away from the temples and reclining Buddhas is the tourist Mecca of the Khao San Road, essentially a busy street lined with bars, restaurants and hotels. At night the streets flood with food vendors while the sidewalks are perpetually cluttered with T-shirt sellers.

The most popular shirts are the singlet tops, great for avoiding the humid heat and also for showing off your body, an important part of the youthful hormone-charged scene it appears. The designs on offer range from the usual mock ups of famous brands, some well-done copies of more standard designer shirts featuring Banksy designs etc, to classic Asian beer commercials (Chang, Singha, Tiger etc) and even to the odd band shirt. However, the striking thing about Khao San and the T-shirt culture is not that exists, but that it is universal. It was as if every backpacker passing through town had the obligation to head straight to Khao San, buy a shirt and get into it straight away to say “I’m here. I belong. I have the knowledge”. The clonal nature of the culture on the street was staggering, more so since it absorbed people from many countries and languages and absorbed them instantly. My last night there I overheard a conversation from two Canadian guys in their early twenties. They were trying to pull two girls by asking them some travel advice, having mentioned they’d just got off the plane. Both of them already had on their Tiger beer singlets and were ready.

One shirt I did grab for myself was a Velvet Underground shirt featuring the classic banana design. I didn’t wear the shirt until I got back home out of some principle of resistance and almost the same day came across this report in the Guardian about how the group had launched legal action against the Andy Warhol Foundation for attempting to sell the rights to use the famous banana logo to Apple. The same week Megaupload went under as has been widely reported and the parallels are obvious: essentially free merchandise in an unregulated market place where none of the profits or benefits go to the artist. But the other side is, how much profit ever went to Lou Reed et al anyway back in the day? Is the new dawn really a return to corporate control and stockpiling profits in the hands of record company executives?

One of 2011s most prolific producers was BNJMN (aka Ben Thomas) who released two exceptional albums “Black Square” and “Plastic World”, on Rush Hour. The title track to the former features a sampled loop of “All tomorrows parties”

BNJM has also just released a new single on the Second Kiss label run by Little White Earbuds editor Steve Mizek that does not feature any music by the Velvet Underground, but offers instead a more direct house track with a less cerebral arrangement and sound design.

But down the Khao San road is also one other hangover from the backpacker scene of south east Asia: Goan trance and the trite music of Full Moon Parties.

There are several vendors on the street blaring out and selling pirate CDs and mixes. It’s funny how this music almost does not exist outside of this context. Sure, you can find a few trance clubs around, a section of your local electronic music mag has a few reviews, but there is little critical acceptance or even promotional interviews outside the channels already designed for fans. One problem is that trance has always been lowest common denominator dance music almost since the beginning, catering to those more inclined to drugs than music. Its market place in such meat head environments as Full Moon Parties also doesn’t help and neither does its continual association with the God Ganesh, god of music and the arts, Thai dye shirts and all the other moronic psychedelic trappings. Trance it seems is also not the music that travels well with you through the ages, like The Doors. More than most music, it perhaps has a narrower window where it is ok to enjoy it (as judged by peer approval) and where it is physically possible to enjoy it in terms of party culture and those around you and whether they are worth spending time with or not.

What then ever happened to a genuine Cyber Punk movement that shops like Cyber Dog in London used to promote? Did the music not evolve enough to take more people with it? Personally I always appreciated some of the sounds and intentions of trance, but always found the chemical-flavoured production aesthetic too limiting and too ridiculous. The fashion too was incredible: authentically futuristic,  provocative and even erotic at times, but clearly too much for the modern day and age. One of its beauties though, was that it required a philosophical commitment almost, like Rockabilly guys and girls with their hair and tattoos, and was something not for everyone.

Years ago I had the pleasure of seeing Green Nuns of the Revolution playing live at the Melkweg in Amsterdam the night before New Year’s Eve. I was alone and there in the spirit of my housemate Eric who was a big fan. The crowd was insanely committed: one young guy dressed in full tin foil robot outfit, several others more the vinyl and plastic Cyber Dog style and even a few really old folk still dressed in the same rags they had in the 60s, beards almost down to the ground.

I met an American guy at a gig a year or so ago who told me of an alternative, darker and less-commercial strain of trance that he had been listening to that sounded intriguing, but alas, I couldn’t find anything on the internet. Is there any good trance left in the world, like this Voyager remix of System 7?

We spent one day outside the capital at the hideously touristic Floating Market and made a lightning visit to the bridge on the River Kwae where the infamous Death Railway seems anything but, now painted in bright rainbow colours as it shakes and rattles across the famous bridge. There was also time to stop at the infamous and appalling Tiger Temple, where it is possible to have your photo taken (at a price) with allegedly drugged and possibly illegally trafficked tigers, although the monks might tell you otherwise (click for news video ).

Perhaps better might have been a trip to see the famous Thai Elephant Orchestra?

Finally, Khao San should not be confused with Khe Sanh, the mythical Cold Chisel song originally released and censored from airplay in Australia 1978. The song details the life and restlessness of an Australian Vietnam veteran and features many controversial lyrics, including the lines “Their legs where open, but their minds were closed” which could equally relate to Thailand’s Patpong district as equally as to the Hong Kong girls of the song.

By a strange twist of fate Scottish-born front man Jimmy Barnes is actually married to a Thai woman and their family has a lovely restaurant called Amarin Thai on Rokeby Road in Perth. Jimmy has been spotted there occasionally when in town.

In anycase, Happy New Year and properous 2555 to all those in Thailand.

So long and thank you for the music

It was with great sadness that I learned from a friend last week that demolition had already commenced on the Perth Entertainment Centre (PEC). Hardly a bastion of world music, but nonetheless, like all good venues, it played its role in delivering many epiphanal moments to many on the ground.

The building itself also commands a special place, having arisen from the barren flat city centre in the early 70s and gradually becoming iconic of both Perth’s second big boom (after the 19th century goldrush). Its distinctive sun bleached orange corrugated roof and circular structure were certainly evocative of the summer heat and the shadowless sun that bathes the city throughout its yearly, endless summer. It was the closest Perth had to the Opera House or a silhouette on a skyline, a skyline that back then only had the AMP building in it.

In the 90s the short lived arrival of the Perth Wildcats basketball team gave it a new lease of life, perfectly coinciding with Australia’s growing closeness to and infiltration by US culture. Their short lived tenure is probably testament enough to how that bubble burst, but it was only later in its career, when it really acquired its status. Long periods of sustained inactivity and indecision turned it into an eyesore that somehow encapsulated Perth’s Dullsville tag. Not even the Entertainment centre was entertaining anymore.

Now with the restructuring of the city centre to make it more open, attractive and interesting it must make way. In the end, there was not enough money and no clear ideas. Now it is no more. In its place, or where its carpark used to be, shall rise the Perth Arena.

My first musical experience was in the PEC at the ripe age of 3.5 years. My parents took my elder sister (10 months older) and I to one of the two concerts that ABBA played there on the 10th and 11th of March, 1977 as part of their Australian tour that saw ABBA-mania throughout the country and birthed a tour film called ABBA: the movie that features footage from the Perth show. My mother tells me that my father was not impressed at having to pay for the tickets, but we were adamant we had to go. My only recollection is of being somewhere near the back and that afterwards we were each bought a cap, mine with primary green and blue stripes and my sister’s with yellow and red with ABBA written across the forehead.

This song "Tiger", played here at the concert, is not one of my favourites, but it gives me one of my distinct early memories of listening to this song on my father’s reel-to-reel player and hiding from imaginary tigers behind the curtains in my parent’s bedroom with my sisters. It surprises me as well to find that there is even a bootleg album available of the concert which seems like a strange souvenir to have from a time that you can barely remember.

My second epiphany at the PEC was witnessing INXS at the height of their powers during the Kick/Calling All Nations tour. We saw the first night of three at the PEC, having got lucky with tickets through my friends mum who also came with us. The first two shows had sold out, but tickets for a third show, which was played first on November 6 1988, became available. It was a perfect moment: with your best friend at the end of the school year, days getting warmer, Kick was the best album ever and you have your first teenage rock experience. We were in the so-called “lounge” the pit in front of the stage, close enough to see into Michael Hutchence’s eyes. The band played two sets complete with costume changes and Hutchence and Kirk Pengiley finishing the first half alone on acoustic guitars with their “hippy song” (so said Michael at the time) “Shine like it does”. This was one of those concerts where you don’t want to shower afterwards to avoid washing the magic away.

"Don’t Change" was the last song they played that night and and will always bear that melancholy feeling of knowing that the show was all over even though you wanted more. The ticket stayed glued to the wall next to the bed for a long time. This version is from San Francisco around the same period.

My next concert there was exactly a year later on Friday 27 October 1989. We went to see Jimmy Barnes, that most particularly Australian rock icon on his Barnestorming tour. The Christmas before he had released the Barnestorming live album which my mum gave me on double cassette. The opening track “Driving wheels” was the sound of that summer. But Jimmy`s show was disappointing even to us amateurs back then. Something about the performance just wasn’t heart felt enough, like it was too heavy for Barnes to perform every night. You could see he wanted it, but he wasn’t touching the same level as his albums. He was getting older and had punished himself enough. After that show, his star in my mind began to fade, but a musical lesson was learned about how to approach your idols.

But this night is arguably more memorable not for Jimmy’s show, but for our escapade outside before the doors opened. I was with some school friends and the oldest looking one of us, probably me because I was tall, had bought a couple of UDLs (premix alcohol drinks) at the bottleo to drink before we went inside. Standing in the park we were approached by two men who began to talk to us, asked what we were doing, about the show and who we were meeting. My two friends D and J had their cans, whereas B and myself had already finished, even though we had another stuffed into our trousers for inside. As we talked an aboriginal man also joined us, carrying a blanket and asking the same sorts of questions. He left us for a moment to fish a silver 4 litre bag of goon (cheap wine) from under a tree. After drinking from the plastic tap he offered it to us. This is when the two men produced their police badges. One went to the side with the aboriginal man and the other stayed with us taking D and J’s details. Since B and I were not drinking at the time, we were let off with no fine. The business over, we scurried inside. B and I were still shitting ourselves since we had alcohol hidden on us, but had luckily not been caught. After entering we dashed off to the bathroom and quickly downed our bourbon and coke. Breath wreaking of booze, we entered the “lounge” knowing that Jimmy would be proud.

Perhaps the last time I ever went inside the PEC was January 13 1995 when REM opened their Monster world tour in Perth. MTV and all the media outlets were in town. Support was Grant Lee Buffalo and Died Pretty and guitarist Peter Buck had been married only days earlier in the Cottesloe Civic Centre where we had our school balls. Mike Mills the bass player fondly recalls playing golf at the Vines and getting disturbed by kangaroos. Expectation was high despite the disappointment of the Monster album, the first turkey REM had ever released. The follow up New Adventures in Hi Fi was a return to form, but also signalled the end of the participation of Bill Berry, the drummer retiring after suffering aneurisms. It was the end of the first and great era of REMs music. Since then I have been too timid to try and discover them again, being content with all the great albums up to this point. More poignant then. that we should see the opening night of the last world tour of the original band. Sadly it didn’t live up to the expectation, with even the band admitting at one stage it was a rough show. The next night was better, apparently, but by then, their star was also fading.

So long Perth Entertainment Centre, and thanks for all the music.