Byline: Ned Kelly

Riz Farooqi, vocalist for the Hong Kong hardcore band King Ly Chee, should have more chips on his shoulder than a poker table at Naga World. Riz is Pakistani by ethnic heritage and his parents are devout Muslims. Yet, despite being Pakistani and growing up in China, English is Riz’s first and native language. He has never fit into the society in which he grew up, and he’s used to having to struggle with people who don’t understand him.

It is no mere coincidence that his band recently released an album titled CNHC. The CN stands for China, the HC stands for – you guessed it – hardcore. It’s a hardcore affectation that’s been scrawled as graffiti on bathroom walls or merchandised at shows as t-shirts. It was used first (or if not first, then most famously) in New York as NYHC.

Hardcore is a musical genre that formed as an offshoot of punk. It still shares some commonality with traditional punk, but over the years it mutated and evolved to the point where it had its own distinct sound. By the late ‘80s there was a definite metal influence on hardcore’s style of guitar-playing, as well as its haircuts. Today, hardcore has its own family tree of sub-genres, some of them arguably more popular than hardcore ever has been. Metalcore, for instance, likely has a lot more current listeners than traditional hardcore.

King Ly Chee has been an active band since 1999, with four albums out and a number of tours of Asia under its belt. When the group started out 16 years ago, there was no awareness of hardcore in Hong Kong, and very little going on generally with underground or alternative music. Riz first got into hardcore when he attended the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1994.

In that same year, I was in America, running an all-ages DIY venue for punk and hardcore shows with the singer of the band Bloodline, which headlined that first show I’d attended. I was a bit precocious, without a doubt, but hardcore is a participatory culture. It requires its fans to be the creators of the music or the organisers of the shows, because if they don’t take it upon themselves to do it, nobody else will. There’s no real money in it, and it has little mass appeal or commercial potential. DIY as an ideology isn’t about home improvement. The Do It Yourself ethic is about having an independent streak – about creating instead of just contemplating – and it is often accompanied by an anti-capitalist conviction that music (and art in general) should be created for the sake of self-expression, not just to make money.

With that in mind, how exactly does one go about growing a music scene into something vibrant, exciting, and sustained by the efforts of the fans? Riz shared his thoughts on what he believes is necessary to develop a more active underground music scene in Cambodia. He’d be the first to tell you that he hasn’t achieved the total results he’d hoped for in Hong Kong to date, but his 16 years of experience nonetheless give him a great deal of insight into the subject.

1. We need more bands.

“The best thing to do is to get more bands started,” Riz says. “Then those bands will inspire even more people to start their own bands. The more bands you get going the more they will want to get better than the next band as a way of friendly competition and that helps improve songwriting and raises the standards. As these bands play shows together, over time, a community forms around them.”

When Riz asked for my help in setting up King Ly Chee with a show here in Phnom Penh, my first thought was: who the hell do I get to play with them? While shows with bands from disparate genres can be fun and are a good way to cross-pollinate the fan bases of those different genres and groups, the most effective way to get people to show up for a touring band that they aren’t familiar with is to give them strong local support in the form of a local band that already has a following. And, in order to maximise the possibility that the local band’s fans will in turn become fans of the touring act, they should have a similar sound.

For this reason, I asked Sliten6ix to open as they are, if not hardcore precisely, the most well-known “heavy” band in Cambodia. They have also been more or less defunct for over a year now, after they parted ways with their original guitarist. In the intervening year, the bassist also left to join another band. Sliten6ix, in order to play, needed a bassist and guitarist. We managed to get it done, but having to bring a band out of retirement just to put a bill together for a show speaks volumes about the current state of alternative/underground music in Cambodia.

2. These bands need to write and play their own songs. Covers should be a fun rarity, not the entire set list.

“Cover songs are not your songs,” Riz says. “No matter how much you can connect to someone else’s song, it’s still someone else’s song. So when you’re playing someone else’s song and the crowd is going wild, you have to realise how much cooler it would be if the crowd was going wild screaming the words to a song whose words came from your heart, based on your feelings and thoughts.”

Cover bands do not encourage the growth of a music scene in the same manner as bands playing their own original music. They can be fun to watch and entertaining and all that, but some kid isn’t going to watch you play a Beatles tune and think to themself, “I want to be like THAT guy!” They are going to think, “I want to be like John Lennon, and so does that guy!” They come away with the impression that live music is for rank amateurs who don’t even know how to write their own songs. They aren’t watching John Lennon perform live, they do not get to meet him after the show and talk about other bands that John Lennon likes, and it doesn’t matter how note perfect your cover is, because you aren’t him or Paul McCartney or George Harrison. Hell, you’re not even Ringo. Not even close. Those guys are all still remote as the Gods perched on Mount Olympus to a bunch of kids looking to be inspired. And in order to inspire kids to form their own bands, we need to do so ourselves.

3. Should teens be hanging out in dive bars? Even in Cambodia?“

Once you’ve got bands going you gotta find a place to play,” Riz says. “Then book your own shows, put out your own music, get it up online and spread the word. There’s a reason people outside of Cambodia don’t know anything about Cambodian heavy music – and it’s up to YOU guys to change that.”

Teenagers who are 18 years old can go wherever they like. But it’s better if they are exposed to the live music scene a few years earlier than that, if possible. The existence of a safe, clean, welcoming, and wholesome all-ages music venue willing to let bands play, whose music is none of the above, is perhaps an unachievable pipe-dream. But with the number of NGOs operating here, you’re telling me that not one of them has any kind of community centre that they’ve opened in Phnom Penh? Nothing like that? Perhaps somebody could start an NGO, solicit donations internationally, pay themselves a salary out of those donations, and use the rest to open a community centre that has a performance space where bands could play, including teenagers’ newly formed bands. Just a thought, if anybody out there is tired of teaching.

4. What kind of bands do we need more of?

“The ‘sound’ doesn’t matter as much as the heart and attitude,” says Riz. “I’ve seen some pretty amazing bands in the States that absolutely were hardcore at heart, if not in their sound.”

It would be nice to see any kind of bands forming, so long as they’re playing original songs. Personally, I would like to hear and see more music from the extreme or alternative genres being played. But ultimately, as Riz says, it doesn’t matter so much what a band sounds like, rather, how the band thinks and how they do things. Are they independent? Passionate about what they believe in and their music? It doesn’t matter so much whether the music generated by all of these young pioneers is hip hop or hardcore. It’s more important to the future of arts in the city that it be original and – hopefully sooner rather than later – actually good.

King Ly Chee will play at 8pm, Wednesday June 17 at Show Box, #11 St. 330 with Sliten6ix as part of their Asia tour.

Mixmaster Mike was known, once upon a time, merely by the mild moniker of Michael Schwartz. He was an ordinary mortal, boring and average, just like you or me or Sam Rainsy when he is viewed without Hun Sen looming in the background to provide a lot of gloomy contrast.

Then, one day, Michael Schwartz witnessed his destiny and got a glimpse of the future that he’d claimed for himself. He perchanced to lay eyes upon DJ Grandmixer D.ST on stage with Herbie Hancock, a musician who’s earlier work with Miles Davis had already brought ample fame to his name. I know this to be the case as this very brief tale of two names joining together in musical matrimony is one that is told on nearly every one of Mixmaster Mike’s many bio pages. If it is apocryphal then it is an extremely well-traveled tall-tale.

Perhaps it was their 1983 performance together at the Grammy Awards? With an introduction by none other than John Denver, who was uncharacteristically garbed in a suave tuxedo, his glasses off and hair trimmed neatly. Denver that evening was handsome indeed, but looking slightly lonely without a horde of Henson’s Muppets surrounding him and cackling away like they did for most of Denver’s life (as I remember it) in the prior decade, the NSFW 1970’s.

http://youtu.be/1UjFZiOAZKc

Smutty #7

Smutty #7, the decade that gave birth to such dark delights and dastardly deeds as modern pornography and the war on drugs, did also deliver to us the proto-rumblings of Rap music, which culminated in 1979 with Kurtis Blow’s signing to Mercury records. The first rapper with a major label deal, he was often supported at his gigs by Joseph Simmons of Run DMC, then known as “DJ Run, Son of Kurtis Blow.” Thus did DJ Run, later of DMC, come to realize that “a DJ could be a band, stand on his own feet, get you out your seat.”

The venerated worship of the DJ as a Rock Star in his own right and a one-man all-star band took hold and joined our Necronomicon of pop-culture rituals. It has since held on steadily, through various twists and turns and variations, on up through today.

Denver introduced them most modestly, as if they were a group of children from the neighborhood who wanted to put on a little show for everyone, even though everyone wanted nothing more in the world than for them to not do that. But they were all going to smile politely anyways, when he said: “… with the help of some of his friends, Herbie Hancock!”

Herbie’s friends certainly must have made an impression on the young Michael Schwartz, but how could they not? The spectacle at hand was meant to herald in the very future of music itself, as envisioned by the primitives that were us, human beings, in 1983. I was 6 years old and would have thought this was fantastic as it seemed to indicate that an age of dancing robots was nigh upon us, mechanical dancing automatons a fact of everyday life was the unstated promise. Electronic drum kits that looked like thin rubber pads, all sorts of robot-like mannequins dancing in time to the music, and a man with a white leather jacket, sleeves rolled up, sunglasses on, wearing headphones that were sporting an antenna sticking straight up in a style reminiscent of something Elroy would wear on the Jetson’s, was standing there playing … record players?

Yes indeed, turntables and scratching are everywhere in “Rockit,” probably the most prominent early example of its use in mainstream pop music. The song opens with the sound, so familiar to us today, of a vinyl record being manually halted in its revolutions on the turntable, and the player’s needle being worked forwards and backwards in the record’s grooves to produce literal scratching, as in physical damage to the vinyl, as well as aural scratching, which manifests as a herky-jerky rhythmic bounce with muted hints of the record’s contents, distorted to a smear of ascending or descending tones as they undergo that wear and tear.

It was probably all a blur to young Michael Schwartz as he sat there stunned, mutely watching the television as Herbie, clad in similar fashion to his DJ, all leather & sunglasses, hoisted his Keytar (a keyboard guitar) that was strapped around his neck, and banged out the opening notes to “Rockit,” the only Herbie Hancock song that any of you reading this are probably familiar with. But then again, as a testament to the song’s strange powers, you’re also probably still very familiar with it even if you’ve never heard of Herbie Hancock, at least past a certain age you must be.

It is a (now) retro-futuristic sounding instrumental classic, both dated and timeless, a moment to save for music history’s scrapbook even if it involved a keytar, which is an aspect of this moment that is best buried under a mountain of denial and never spoken of again. A keyboard-guitar, you say? Sounds made up to me. You mean so that the keyboard player, should he also be the vocalist and ostensible band leader, can get up and march about with it and prance around the stage? Preposterous, no one who suffered through that many years of piano lessons would ever stand the indignity of such a sad display. Never speak of it again.

http://youtu.be/bZlyInYFuHw

Hip-Hop Hero

Young Michael Schwartz watched music history being made, and despite the presence of the keytar in a starring role, he didn’t quit listening to music entirely after puncturing his own ear drums with a pencil. The opposite in fact.

He had an epiphany that sent his mind spinning like a vinyl platter at 72 RPM. Perhaps he had a vision of himself up there on stage with Herbie, his face in place of that of Grandmixer D.ST. Up there with them, the Stars, hob-knobbing with John Denver, wearing sunglasses at night (albeit under bright stage lights,) and sporting a pristine white leather jacket inside of a climate controlled theater, and rolling the sleeves up instead of taking it off if it restricted his movements or was too warm for him. He wasn’t gonna take it off. Not when he looked that dope wearing it and you’re a liar if you claim that you would have taken it off either, not if you’ve seen the clip.

Most importantly ¬– for his future and the future of his chosen art and profession – he can see himself up there on stage absorb in adulation of fans near and far, being worthy of that strange worship, music history rewritten to not so much replace Grandmixer D.ST, but to very definitely, one day, include him.

We’ve all dreamed of glory at one time or another. Certainly in our most private unshared thoughts, if nowhere bolder. But very few of us ever achieve the lofty heights we wish to climb to, not by a long shot, because such feats are reserved for heroes and legends, not the likes of the common man, he who is the “best of the lousiest and the lousiest of the best.” It is the fate of so many of us to be resolutely average that it’s better that we not despair of it insensibly and instead celebrate those who are decidedly above the median values for talent and skill.

The seemingly ordinary Michael Schwartz would not be dissuaded and by use of some sorcery or super-science, as yet unknown to mankind at large, he underwent a metamorphosis and transformed himself into Mixmaster Mike, a legend on the turntables and a Hip-Hop Hero. Years ago his dreams of glory became the glorious reality he now inhabits as a globe-trotting icon in his chosen field, as important to the history of his occupation as a person could be short of having founded it themselves. Mixmaster Mike is more of an Abraham Lincoln of the turntables than he is a George Washington; the idea had been developed by others, the format and the stage established already and in place for him to do great things. He was given the opportunity to change music history’s direction irrevocably in this area, and through his talent and clever innovation, he did so.

Indeed, his list of accomplishments is grand in scope. He is a World Champion turntablist several times over and was actually asked to retire and become a judge in order to open up the competition to new talent in order to help grow the art form by giving a shred of hope to his competition, a move which he gracefully agreed to in 1995 after winning the title three years in a row. He has award-winning albums to his sole credit and he has collaborated on all manner of songs and albums with a long list of notable musicians.

The most notable name and the group which he is most famously associated with: The Beastie Boys, NYC rap legends who began their musical journey as a hardcore punk band, in days of yore.

In 1997, Mixmaster Mike became the fourth, current, and likely final DJ for the group, after the death from cancer of Adam Yauch in 2012. Mixmaster Mike was The Beastie Boys DJ longer than any of the other DJ’s who previously held the job (and who are legends in their own right) and he was privileged enough to work with them on all of their albums, tours, and live appearances from 1997 onwards.

Mixmaster Mike hasn’t slowed down much over the years. He’s had a weekly radio show in Los Angeles, worked on video games and appeared in movies – both on screen and on their soundtracks, and played venues of all variety the world over.

His current tour of Asia is taking him to the very obvious stops, such as Singapore. And, courtesy of Eddie Newman of Code Red, he is appearing in such far-flung places as, well, right here.

Phnom Penh. D-Club on Wednesday, January 14th, at 9:00PM. In front of an audience of no more than 150 lucky souls who will each pay the very reasonable and modest sum of $15 to see a legend and be entertained by him. You don’t have anything better to do on a Wednesday night in Cambodia. Trust me. You don’t. You just don’t. Believe that.

Besides, what could possibly be better than seeing a legendary performer do his thing anywhere, be the show in PP or NYC? Well, perhaps a legend and his friends? Oh, if only Herbie and the gang were also in town. Maybe they’ll surprise us.*

* Nah, they won’t, and this in no way constitutes any sort of claim that Herbie Hancock will be appearing. If that’s a deal-breaker for you – sorry. Herbie’s 74, he might make it over one of these days. Probably not. But you never know.

Photo By Fabio Venni from London, UK (Cause nobody can do it like Mix Master Mike can) [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons