Byline: Phoenix Jay

Celebrating half a centuryof the world’s greatest rock ‘n’ roll band

The fuzzy monochrome photo, taken in 1950 at Wentworth Primary School in the UK, gives not the slightest hint of the superstardom to come. To the left of the frame, a clean-cut eight-year-old boy with lopsided fringe stands to attention in short trousers and pullover. Dead centre in the row behind, another boy – five months younger – grins wickedly, school tie askew and ears jutting out like the wings of a small aircraft. Little could these fresh faces have known that, more than six decades later, they would be chalking up half a century as the core of the world’s greatest rock ‘n’ roll band.

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, sole survivors of the original Rolling Stones line-up, were just four years old when destiny first conspired to bring them together. They parted ways when their families moved home, but collided again at Dartford train station one day en route to their respective colleges. The Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters albums Jagger had with him reignited their mutual interest and by the summer of 1962, a nervous band called the Rollin’ Stones was playing their first gig to a bemused crowd of jazz fans in a basement club on London’s Oxford Street.

On the front line that muggy night at The Marquee was lead vocalist Jagger, then 18 and a student at the London School of Economics; his old grammar school pal Richards, clad in funereally dark suit; and 20-year-old Brian Jones, who had recently named the band after a Muddy Waters song and for most of the show, according to Stones’ biographer Christopher Sandford, “pogoed up and down, leering at the women”. Behind them was the already comically deadpan rhythm section.

Rehearsal time had been limited, and as the band officially billed Mick Jagger and the Rollin’ Stones downed scotches and brandies on stage to calm their nerves, the assembled Buddy Holly doppelgangers took their time warming to the 50-minute blast of American rhythm and blues. Catcalls brought on by the initial “very suspect tuning and internal balance”, as described by Melody Maker magazine the following week, were silenced during the final 15 minutes when the band upped the tempo. The acne-scarred second guitarist, dressed entirely in black, spurred on the drummer by hammering one spindly leg up and down and screeching “Fuck you! Faster!”

After the gig, the band wandered unrecognised down the road and into The Tottenham pub, where they were joined by part-time drummer Charlie Watts. Watts had seen the show and recognised the Stones’ appeal. “My band was a joke to look at, but this lot crossed the barrier,” he said. “They actually looked like rock stars.” By Christmas of that year, Watts was the Stones’ new drummer.

No one, least of all the band themselves, guessed at the time that they were bound for the 21^st century. But as Chris Welch of The Bexleyheath & Welling Observer wrote just 18 months later, “Of all the sensational groups to hit British pop music since the advent of the Mersey Sound and the rhythm ‘n’ blues revival, the weirdest, oddest, the most uncompromising seem to be the Rolling Stones.”

“I didn’t expect to last until 50 myself, let alone with the Stones,” says the 68-year-old Keith Richards of today on rollingstones.com. “It’s incredible, really. In that sense we’re still living on borrowed time.” But while the Glimmer Twins who shocked our parents with Mars Bars, dope and sympathy for the devil may look a little worse for wear, the gnarled ex-junkie and the balloon-lipped Jagger seem to have vanquished their many drug- and wife-induced demons. As half a century clicks by, the Stones stand ranked number four in Rolling Stone magazine’s 100 Greatest Artists of All Time, and worldwide sales are estimated at more than 200 million albums.

It was on the eve of yet another milestone that local tribute band Stoned Again first came to be. Prodded by the managers of Sharky Bar into giving the nod to what is widely considered their finest album, a small group of expat musicians joined forces to recreate the sound of 1972 LP Exile on Main Street. Australian Karen McArthur is the outwardly unlikely lead vocalist of what was first known as The Stone Daddies and then Captain Jack before its current incarnation. “Originally we just played a set from Exile and got a really good response from the audience. Everyone was like ‘Wow, there’s a chick singing Mick Jagger.’

“I was teaching grade ones at the time so I constantly had a cold and could always get the gravel in my voice, which was great: the Mick Jagger growl. You know what it’s like in Phnom Penh: you can reinvent yourself however you want and I hadn’t sung since I left university, so that’s 23 years. I used to sing punk, rock ‘n’ roll, blues. But it’s not about being Mick Jagger – affectionately, we call me Chick Jagger – it’s about being myself and having fun.

“A lot of people have said that it’s interesting that we have a woman singing, but as we always said, we never wanted to have someone who was a bad imitation of Mick Jagger. If you’re going to be a cover band, you have to give it your own flavour. The band we have now, we all fit really well together. I can rely on James to entertain the audience, or we can have some banter on stage. We’re all really comfortable with each other. We’ve gone from just playing the album, to the music being part of the band.”

After a nine-month hiatus, Stoned Again took the stage at Sharky’s Penhstock III festival in May and have since been voted, on the bar’s blog, second best out of the 30 bands that played (Sliten6ix are currently leading with 47% of the vote versus Stoned Again’s 24%). But don’t expect carbon copies: “At first, we had a band member who wanted to be really true to the album and if I didn’t sound exactly like Mick’s phrasing, he’d go ‘No, no, it’s not right,’” says Karen. “We came to an agreement that we needed to put our own flavour to it, so I sang it the way it suited my voice.”

“There is only one Rolling Stones, and that’s not who we are,” says bass player Tim, owner of British pub The Cavern. “What we do is a tribute, just showing our appreciation for their music.” Because Stoned Again aren’t trying to emulate the Stones but simply pay respect, there’s a noticeable lack of the frippery so synonymous with the real thing. “The whole point of our band isn’t to be a really bad imitation; it’s about celebrating a really good group of rock ‘n’ roll musicians,” says Karen. “It’s quite freeing being a girl. I did one gig in a dress – and the audience just didn’t get it. ‘What are you wearing a dress for?’ I’m a girl!

“Whatever songs we play, by the end of the first set people are up dancing. They know we’re not an imitation, but an interpretation. For me, it’s more about symbols: whenever I hear The Rolling Stones, I see those big lips, always, always. I could never be Mick Jagger – and I would never take enough Botox to make my lips look like that!”

WHO: Stoned Again
WHAT: The ultimate Rolling Stones tribute band
WHERE: Sharky Bar, St. 130
WHEN: 9pm August 24
WHY: 50 years is a bloody long time in rock ‘n’ roll

 

She describes herself as a ‘one-woman worldwide wreckin’ machine’, was instrumental in the launch of MTV Base Africa, and is the only female ever to be nominated for a MOBO (Music of Black Origin) award. DJ Sarah Love, spinning at Pontoon later this month, was christened the UK’s First Lady of Hip Hop for a reason – and she’s on a zealous mission to bring the genre to some of the most remote corners of the Earth. The Advisor caught up with her between rock climbing expeditions in Thailand to talk DNA, spinning the wheels of steel with Grandmaster Flash, and the ongoing battle to keep hip hop culture alive and kickin’ it.

You describe yourself as a ‘genetic musician’.

Yeah, my mum’s South African and my dad is British. They’re both jazz musicians , and my mum’s an African musician too, so quite a mixture of sounds. My dad’s really into bebop: his main instrument is double bass, but he also plays trumpet and piano, and my mother’s a singer.

Why did you opt for electronic music?

I’ve been interested in music since a very young age. I’ve played piano, drums. Music’s always been there, and my parents’ record collection was always there. They were very much into soulful music, funk, dope party-rockin’ kinda tunes. My older sisters introduced me to hip hop. I had this nerdy fascination with music. I didn’t just want to be on the sidelines, I wanted to be involved. I wanted to find out how those sounds were made, to know what was going on. My own curiosity pushed me into investigating hip hop. What is this DJ thing? What are they doing? How is that happening? I had a boyfriend who was also a DJ, and I asked him to show me some things on the turn table but he refused. I was, like, ‘Cool. Fine.’ I thought, ‘Good. I’m happy to do it myself anyway.’ My parents taught me to be very independent. I watched DJs I thought were really good, and tried to memorise what they were doing. I’d go home and practice, see if I could recreate what I’d seen. It’s a ‘monkey see, monkey do’ sort of thing. Making mistakes is a great learning curve.

And you’re a graduate of one of the UK’s finest music schools.

I went to one of the pioneering schools for popular music, Salford University in Manchester, and did a popular music and recording degree. Salford was the first place in the UK that did a non-traditional, popular music recording and production-style degree.

You’ve worked with some of the greats, including Grandmaster Flash, who was here a few months ago.

He’s a real grand master in the game, a bona fide legend. It’s only a privilege and an honour to be able to rub shoulders with someone as accomplished as that, really, isn’t it? And DJ Muggs from Cypress Hill, he was just a laid-back, cool Cali cat with a cool Cali vibe. Chilled dude. But it’s always interesting to encounter all sorts of creative types at different levels in their careers and see how they handle that.

How has hip hop changed since you first took to the decks?

In the UK, there’s lots of electronic music that people are rapping on top of, but I differentiate between that and hip hop, which has a long history – three decades plus, almost as long as hip hop has been around in America. It’s a dedicated crowd. We’re all musical connoisseurs. That’s why hip hoppers are able to spin off and create other movements. Anything that’s dope has to come through the UK at some point. It’s like a melting pot for all the freshest stuff in the world. London is always a place to keep your eyes on, whether it’s live music, electronic, or hip hop. We’re always going to have hip hop aficionados to keep the bloodline going.

We’re a bit of a melting pot here too, with returnees from France and the US. Hip hop has a huge following. 

It’s fascinating to touchdown in any part of the world and be playing hip hop. It’s incredible to spend 12 hours on a plane and people know the music, and there’s a history of hip hop there. To encounter b boys, and graffiti, it’s just crazy. I feel it’s my responsibility to fly the flag for hip hop responsibly and correctly, to spread the word and keep our culture vibrant and alive.

There are so many DJs who’ve been around longer than me, but have sold out because they don’t feel confident. I just want to do what I feel passionate about. It’s not all about just chasing cheques. I want to do something that has meaning to me, so it’s an honour for me to be able to reach somewhere like Phnom Penh and spin for you guys, bring hip hop correct to the people.

With the launch of MTV Base Africa, you seem to be growing into an ambassadorial role.

I’d been an MTV DJ so when they asked me to be an ambassador for the launch, I came through to Nairobi in Kenya and had a phenomenal time. It was dope to be in the motherland, you know, and doing my thing there. Then I went through to DJ in Tanzania, and they have a dope, dope hip hop history there. I did a show with Fid Q, in Dar Es Salaam – a big outdoor party with 3,000 kids there and they’re all rapping the lyrics to his song; just beautiful. These are the messages and stories that I want to spread when I go back home, because people think we’re facing all these challenges in hip hop. A lot of people in the States are quite disheartened with hip hop, hence they become sell-outs. They need to know. You know what? There’s stuff going off in Tanzania; there’s stuff going off in Cambodia. There are things going off in Australia. Hip hop around the world is bigger than your back garden.

So it stands for something?  

Most definitely, hip hop has a very strong meaning and this is the message that needs to be clearer. There’s hip hop, and there’s rap. Rap music is songs that just have rapping on them; hip hop music is a whole culture, nearly four decades deep, that embodies dancing; it’s all about creativity, expression, community, and being funky fresh. It’s something that involves speaking in rhyme with flow and beat. It’s something also that embodies respect for heritage: you have to look at what has gone before you, do your research, and then cultivate that and bring it all together in something new. Hip hop is a culture that’s all about the people. It was originally for disenfranchised people who had no other outlet, a way of channelling ourselves in a positive way. People who were left behind by the government: ‘Oh, right. No one’s taking care of us? Let’s take care of ourselves.’ That’s what hip hop is really about, and it’s only in recent years that it’s become this corporatised thing and certain entities see it as a way to manipulate youths to make money out of them. It’s a shame that certain people from our community have got sucked into that and are now sucking the devil’s cock.

Who should we be looking up to?

Marvin Gaye said an artist, if they’re a true artist, is only interested in one thing and that’s to move the minds of men. So for me, people like Shortcut, who I’m going to see next week; people like Shortee Blitz, Taskforce, and Rodney P of London Possee from the UK; I have so much admiration for them.

And what’s on your playlist right now?

I listen to everything: rock, soul, classical. My favourite kind of music is good music. There are only two types of music in the world: good music and bad music. I’m not someone who goes ‘I only listen to hip hop and I have no ears for anything else.’ But hip hop-wise, there’s an artist called Willie Evans Jr – he’s on a great label in the States called High Water Music, and they’re really flying the flag for great independent music. There’s an artist called Sonnyjim on Eat Good Records who is really killing it – a very dope artist from the UK. Definitely worth checking out.

Take us back to the early days of Kung Fu: what was it like being on the front line of one of London’s most legendary club nights?

I remember, every night at the time, feeling that this was something classic. I just wanted to absorb every moment of what was going on. I knew we were going to be looking back at this as something classic – and I was right. It was incredible. I was in Melbourne, Australia last month and I’d just walked into a bar and this guy was, like, ‘You’re Sarah Love! From Kung Fu! You don’t understand – the DVD from Kung Fu, how much that means to us out here! We watch it religiously!’ You had to be there every month. Every month we had a queue going round the block. You didn’t want to miss out and we always put on the best party in town. It was so exciting for me to play. I just wanted to kill it. We had the illest DJs in London playing, and it really pushed me to get my chops up because I didn’t want to look silly next to anyone else. It was an honour for me to be a resident and to see what it escalated into.

Do you ever have moments when it suddenly hits you that you’re now this huge DJ?

I’m always thinking of my next target, so I don’t reminisce too much. When you sit back and start going, ‘I’ve made it. Look how amazing I am,’ that’s when you stop challenging yourself. I’ve not reached that stage yet, and then there’s always someone bigger than you round the corner, isn’t there?

And even if there isn’t, the Gods of Smug are listening and will smite thee…        

[laughs] Exactly!

So what’s next?

I’ve spent the past 12 years pushing myself like crazy, at the expense of everything else in my life, and it’s easy to do that when you love what you’re doing. I’m trying to pay attention to other areas of my life that I’ve been neglecting, and I’ve got some interesting projects back in the UK, but I don’t like talking about things until they’re happening. I’m paranoid about jinxing things…

WHO: DJ Sarah Love (MTV Bass and BBC Radio 1Xtra)
WHAT: The UK’s first lady of hip hop
WHERE: Pontoon, St. 172
WHEN: 11pm August 17
WHY: She’s funky fresh

 

“This has nothing to do with the Tolkien universe at all. A pre-hominid little person in Indonesia, nicknamed Flo, that’s the real hobbit. The film is based on what those people would have been like. They’re trying to tie in a little science, but then we have flying kimodo dragons, so it’s not 100%, you know, factual, obviously.”

BY PHOENIX JAY

When the frenzied spending of the roaring ‘20s dealt the US stock market a fatal blow in October 1929, Americans who’d been gilding their homes with the latest gadgets suddenly found themselves out of a job. The global crisis, initially dismissed by President Hoover as “a passing incident in our national lives”, put more than 15 million Americans – a quarter of the labour force – out of work. As disposable incomes dwindled, so did audiences at movie theatres: more than a third of the 23,000 that existed in 1930 were forced to switch off their projectors.

Those who refused were reduced to offering ever-more-unlikely appetisers to splice bums with seats. Prize draws promised everything from hams to cars; colourful vaudeville acts were staged on the sidelines. But the most effective formula by far was the ‘double feature’: two films for the price of one. The big-budget ‘A’ movie, given top billing, employed bona fide stars, quality scripts and professional production standards. The other movie, shot on a shoestring, was wildly entertaining, but made in a fraction of the time, at a fraction of the cost.

More than 75% of Hollywood films shot between the 1930s and 1950s were these so-called ‘cheapies’, which, on occasion, trounced their big-budget counterparts. John Wayne and Jack Nicholson both cut their teeth on the set of B movies, natural habitat for cult directors such as Ed Wood and his low-budget Dracula, Béla Lugosi. Perhaps most famous among their creators were the ‘Poverty Row’ production companies, who could shoot an entire film in seven days for less than $8,000.

“Most B movies are bad and forgotten,” writes Philip French in The Observer. “But at their worst they have an unpretentious, sometimes camp, charm. At their best they are as different from smooth A movies as the great pulp writers like David Goodis and Horace McCoy were from the respectable best-selling novelists of the day… One of the greatest cinematographers, Robert Alton, who won an Oscar for An American in Paris, preferred to work on low-budget movies shot on tight schedules because of the challenge they presented.”

Such knowledge is not lost on Anthony Fankhauser, the producer of Hollywood B movies Snakes on a Train, and Mega Shark versus Giant Octopus, among other tongue-firmly-in-cheek titles. He has spent the past two weeks crammed into a small cave in the wilds of Kampot, alongside hobbits, prehistoric Java men, the odd giant, and at least one large ‘flying’ kimodo dragon made of papier-mâché.

“There are only so many movies that can be made at studio level, but there’s an insatiable desire for new content – and that’s not just in America, it’s everywhere. If you go to Cannes Film Festival, for example, what runs concurrently with that is the Cannes Film Market and they sell all kinds of movies. If you walk through there, you’ll see your Batmans, all your big studio movies, and then, on the second floor, they have booths and booths of movies very much like this. There’s a big market for what I guess you could call second-tier content. And people enjoy them.”

Fankhauser, clad in shorts, plaid shirt and flat cap, is speaking on a set devoid of all the usual Hollywood trappings, eating rice while squeezed into a plastic picnic chair (his job title is conspicuously absent from the back). “Of course, I’m a fan. At the time, they probably weren’t considered B movies, but for me it was the Roy Harryhausen movies: Clash of the Titans, Jason and the Argonauts, stuff like that. I was fascinated by monsters and other creatures from a very young age.”

On another table under the far side of this vast canopy sits a small army of little people dressed in mock animal skins. Among them the notably taller ‘Java men’, sporting glued-on uni-brows that sprout from their foreheads like tarantula legs. One has a lethal-looking spiked wooden club dangling from one hand, a cigarette jabbing at his lips from the other. Bending over to hook a Coke out of the cooler reveals a flash of fake designer boxers. He grins at the camera, lips parting to reveal fake buck teeth.

These unlikely dwellers of 21^st century rural Cambodia are, along with one or two rather more recognised names such as The Crow star Bai Ling and Christopher Judge (Teal’c in TV’s Stargate SG-1), the hastily assembled cast of The Age of the Hobbits. The film is timed to beat its mainstream rival – director Sir Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy, inspired by the work of celebrated author JRR Tolkien – to screens before the year’s end. While Jackson’s prequel to the Lord of the Rings blockbuster has a budget of $500 million, The Age of the Hobbits’ is $500,000, most of which will be spent on post-production, or the sort of special effects that make kimodo dragons take flight. Filming took just 15 days.

This gloriously camp straight-to-TV ‘mockbuster’ is set 12,000 years ago in Indonesia, where the remains of one of mankind’s possible predecessors – rudely snuffed out since by the cruel processes of evolution – was identified in 2003. Barely a metre tall and even smaller of brain, Homo floresiensis was immediately christened ‘the Hobbit’ by a Tolkien-crazed media. One scientist even suggested naming the species Homo hobbitus.

In Hollywood, initial film pitches have to be 25 words or less (the pitch for Alien was, famously, even more to-the-point, reading simply: ‘Jaws in space’). “The idea behind this film,” says Fankhauser, “is just… hobbits. And there’s an immediate recognition of that word. This has nothing to do with the Tolkien universe at all. A pre-hominid little person in Indonesia, nicknamed Flo, that’s the real hobbit. The film is based on what those people would have been like. They’re trying to tie in a little science, but then we have flying kimodo dragons, so it’s not 100%, you know, factual, obviously.”

The script is hardly Oscar-winning material: “It’s a pretty clear-cut story. The hobbits’ village is raided by Java men, who also existed in Indonesia at the same time. They steal a bunch of their people and they’re going to sacrifice them to the moon goddess. Lots of people get picked off along the way. Yes, we have some impalement, but the piranhas got changed to giant spiders.”

Suggest the plot sounds reminiscent of real-life tensions between the Javanese and the Balinese and the producer laughs. “Doesn’t it, though? I’m sure the writer was aware of that. If you go back to old school science fiction – The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits – there always seemed to be a moral to the story. A lot of that’s been lost in recent B movies. Now it’s more just shock and awe, try to pack in as many visual effects as you can. But any writer who heard me say that would slap me in the face because they all try – I know they do, because some get busted for it – they all try to put subtexts and morals in the script, which you have to, otherwise why write the movie? I think Scorsese called it ‘idea smuggling’.”

Joe Lawson, directing this Tolkien knock-off, made his debut with The Institute LLC – the international arm of Hollywood studio The Asylum – earlier this year with the splendidly named Nazis at the Centre of the Earth. “What happens with a B film is that, hopefully, you walk in knowing that it’s not going to be the best thing in the universe, but it might be monumentally entertaining,” he says from beneath the brim of his legionnaire’s hat, perched on a rock in the searing afternoon sun. Behind us, Cambodian hobbits and Javans – some trained comedians and stage actors, others hired on spec – are smoking, giggling and poking each other with their clubs between takes. The role of King Korm, head of the humans, went to Phnom Penh-based beat poet and actor Antonis Greco after being turned down by John Rhys-Davies, the charismatic Arab excavator Sallah in the Indiana Jones films.

“And that’s the thing: the ride is going to be worth the time taken. It’s an hour and a half when you don’t have to think, and you don’t have to spend a lot of money for it. Our movies are about popping the popcorn in the oven, opening a beer; you can even sit back and make fun of it – so long as you’re having fun making fun of it. There are things we do in our films that are outrageous, absolutely outrageous – like Nazis at the Centre of the Earth. The title itself is already way out there. The company that we’re part of is definitely not shy about making films that are fun. And the people who are working on these films, if they’re not having fun, they’re learning something – even if that something is ‘I never want to work on a film like this again.’”

WHO: Hobbit fetishists
WHAT: Age of the Hobbits
WHERE: TV
WHEN: December-ish
WHY: Little people in leather

 

One was a short Prussian monarch who wore a tricorn and walked with a cane; the other a thin, bewigged writer who had decided that, on the whole, it would be best not to live in France. The intertwining of these momentous lives, Frederick the Great and French philosopher François-Marie Arouet (better known by his nom de plume, Voltaire) would inspire more than just New York pop artist Andy Warhol. Centuries after their passing, theirs has proven one of the most celebrated unions in history.

After brutal executions and abuses had been carried out for thousands of years in the name of Church and State, intellectuals in 18th century Europe finally began to tire of the Middle Ages. Stretching limbs and burning miscreants at the stake had its place, they mused, but that place belonged firmly in the past.

Voltaire was perhaps the greatest thinker of the French Enlightenment, and as a boy Frederick pored over his philosophies with his Huguenot tutors. It was these lessons in enlightened absolutism, along with music, which piqued the young prince’s interest (much to the disgust of his authoritarian father King Frederick William I, Frederick displayed no passion for the art of war and called military uniform “the gown of death”).

The French philosopher was 42 and already one of the most famous men of the day when, in August 1736, he received a letter from the Crown Prince of Prussia – the first in a succession of exchanges that would ultimately span more than four decades. Frederick wrote breathlessly of his admiration for the author of Zaïre. Voltaire took up his pen and responded: “un prince philosophe qui rendra les hommes heureux” (‘a philosopher prince who will make men happy’). For was it not Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius who once declared: “How happy peoples will be when kings are philosophers or when philosophers are kings!”?

Frederick was just 28 when he found himself seated on the Prussian throne in 1740. He immediately set about writing his own book, Anti-Machiavel, arguing that Italian humanist Niccolò Machiavelli’s remorselessly pragmatic maxims had no place in a more enlightened, civilised age. Declaring himself “a king by duty and a philosopher by inclination”, Voltaire’s protégé then proceeded to wage war, browbeat his neighbours, exploit diplomatic opportunities, and forge Prussia relentlessly into a great power. And yet, in many other ways, Frederick the Great – as he was by this time known – proved himself rather progressive.

He played the flute, composed four symphonies and 100 sonatas, and surrounded himself with artists and writers. He directed the planting of potato crops, personally led his troops into battle and was host of the most distinguished salon in Europe. To his palace of Sans Souci in Potsdam, Frederick brought ballet, symphonic assemblies and opera companies. He also promoted mass inoculation against smallpox; a more understanding attitude towards unmarried mothers (outside Prussia, committing infanticide would get you publicly executed), and religious open-mindedness. Old Fritz, in short, was the very model of an enlightened despot.

“You suppose that I think that the people need the curb of religion in order to be controlled,” the king wrote in 1766 in one of his many letters to Voltaire. “I assure you these are not my sentiments. On the contrary… a society could not exist without laws, but it could certainly exist without religion, provided that there is a power which, by punitive sanctions, can compel the masses to obey these laws.

“I see the present work of the philosophers as very useful, because men ought to be made to feel ashamed of fanaticism and intolerance, and because it is a service to humanity to fight these cruel and atrocious follies… To destroy fanaticism is to dry up the most deadly source of division and hatred in European memory, the bloody traces of which are found among all its peoples.”

Enlightenment swept the rest of Europe before hopping the Atlantic and taking root in the European colonies. There, it became a reference tool for Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, and the foundation for the American Declaration of Independence, the US Bill of Rights, and the French Declaration of Rights of Man and of the Citizen.

“Frederick the Great developed music, but aside from that he played an important role in the development of what we call civil society,” says the avuncular Anton Isselhardt, accomplished German flautist and director of the Art Plus Foundation in Phnom Penh, which this month launches a week-long series of classical concerts to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Frederick’s birth. “Frederick was one of the first who was going for Enlightened Absolutism. It’s a very interesting European movement which paved the way, finally, to the Age of Enlightenment and to democracy.

“This is the other side of Frederick – he was one of the greatest minds of all time. So, what is the relevance for Cambodia? The first thing, of course, is the music. The modern age transparency of the courts gives us access to their various art forms which have a continuous relevance for our cultural life. We can listen to what kings and their court composers have to say through their music. Frederick composed, King Father Norodom Sihanouk composed – and this is part of what we call the transparency of the courts.”

Mention court transparency in certain Cambodian circles and you can expect much indignant huffing, says Anton, but the Occidental concept of enlightened absolutism – which holds that power comes not from divine right, but from a social contract whereby the ruler has a duty to govern wisely – is one worth exporting via soft diplomacy.

“There is a very important figure in English history, the philosopher Thomas Hobbes, and he was the first – this was during the outgoing Middle Ages – who woke us up to the fact we need a civil society structure. Say you have a little farm with a few chickens. Now someone is coming and stealing your chickens, and stealing your land and your food. Who protects you? We need some sort of civil society structure.

“Cambodia had absolutely feudal structures before the French moved in; Thailand even more so. Even in Indonesia, the same thing is happening. The process from aristocracy through Enlightenment into civil society, this is something European. It has never happened in Asia; it’s a uniquely Western notion. This is what I used to call the arrogance of the West: ‘You see what we did?’ We don’t want to do that. But what we can offer, using such an approach as music and its side-effects, is an example of the development of society.

“If you go to the market and see the lady selling bananas, this is something Cambodian. Everything else – TVs, mobile phones, laptops – it’s Western, Western, Western. That’s why we can’t just promote democracy, we should promote the arts. The Western world is not just a world of economics; not just a world of technology. We are a world of values. People forget that.”

As Dirk Gieseke, a freemason just like Frederick, told the New York Times from beneath the rim of his three-cornered hat during a recent ceremony in Potsdam to mark the anniversary: “In politics we are looking for new role models. In times of great change you have a search for values.”

The Meta House event starts on July 30 with the opening of an exhibition, King, Court, Muse. On July 31, the Galant Trio will perform works by Bach, Quantz and Graun. A further concert on August 1 covers the development of music from the late baroque to Haydn’s Vienna Classic. That’s followed on August 2 with several flute sonatas, and on August 3 compositions by King Father Norodom Sihanouk will be given the Gabi Faja Trio jazz treatment.  The final concert, on August 4, resurrects recitals by Frederick’s Royal Prussian Court Orchestra. On the last night, August 5, the film My Name Is Bach, about the historic meeting between Frederick and Johann Sebastian Bach, will be screened.

WHO: Frederick the Great
WHAT: King, Court, Muse: 300th anniversary concert series
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Blvd.WHEN: 8pm July 30 – August 5
WHY: Revered and reviled, he’s the ultimate enlightened despot

 

The lobby of the mid-west American hotel, normally crowded, had all but emptied in a few minutes flat – requests for the ear-splitting “noise” blaring from the portable cassette player to be turned down, repeatedly ignored. Only when the manager threatened to call the police did the offending guest return to his room. Two minutes later, he re-emerged – followed almost immediately by a devastating dynamite explosion coming from the bathroom. Keith Moon turned to the horrified innkeeper and calmly explained: “That, my friend, is noise.” He turned on the cassette player again. “This, on the other hand, is The Who.”

The antics of ‘Moon the loon’, The Who’s legendary drummer and resident crazy, have for decades been considered the benchmark for rock ‘n’ roll eccentricity. Of his penchant for toilet pyrotechnics, rock’s premier hellraiser once told biographer Tony Fletcher: “All that porcelain flying through the air was quite unforgettable. I never realised dynamite was so powerful.” Long after his death in 1978 at the age of 32, Moon – permanently enshrined on Holiday Inn’s Ten Most Wanted list – was described by Allmusic.com thus: “Moon, with his manic, lunatic side, and his life of excessive drinking, partying, and other indulgences, probably represented the youthful, zany side of rock & roll, as well as its self-destructive side, better than anyone else on the planet.”

Almost as famous as Moon’s off-stage excesses were his on-stage machine-gun-like drum outbursts. Flying bass pedals; wild cymbal crashes; savage licks tearing drum skins from their supports – all were hallmarks of his exuberant kit-smashing style. Some 40 years later, more than 8,300 miles from where Moon drew his last breath in the same London flat Cass Elliot had died in four years earlier, a dilapidated practice kit creaks and groans under an equally ferocious attack. Perched atop the wobbly stool in The Shark Cage, the rehearsal space at Sharky Bar on Street 130, is the two-tone-haired drummer with Cambodia’s ‘original’ all-Khmer rock band. Above the thunder, preternatural screams.

Cartoon Emo, currently working on their second alternative/heavy metal/rock album, signed with Svang Dara Entertainment in 2010. The band’s commitment to writing original material is a rare thing in the local music market, and their debut album, Shadow, sold in the region of 1,000 copies – “but we don’t need the money,” says manager Vuth, 22. “We just want to promote our music on the internet so that everybody understands us.”

Music graduates from the Royal University of Fine Arts, this band of 20-somethings – Boy (vocals), Tom (lead guitar), Din (bass guitar), Dan (guitar), and La (drums) – cite Iowan heavy metal icons Slipknot, and Massachusetts-based metalcore group Killswitch Engage as among their influences. But they’re not altogether unaware of their English forefathers. Mention The Who, The Sex Pistols or The Rolling Stones, and five heavily stylised heads – all crowned with spiky technicolour hair – nod in approval. Mention K-Pop, and they explode in derisory snorts.

As Svang Dara’s executive director Meng Sok Vireak noted at the album launch for Shadow, “Rock music is not popular in Cambodia nowadays, so our company is introducing this original Khmer-style rock music to the people of the country.” Chiu Seila, director of Sabay, chimed: “The formation of the band shows that our arts scene is developing, even if a little slowly.”

Today, Cartoon Emo are regular staples on Khmer TV and make their living exclusively by playing in the country’s nightclubs – although they save their own music for the rowdier foreign-owned bars. “With rock music, it’s usually high-class rich people who listen to it,” says Vuth (during the interview, he intercepts every question – occasionally rewording the band’s Khmer-language answers in favour of his own). “We’re not poor and we’re not rich, we just have enough of everything – time and money, our own studio. We want to be famous rock stars in Cambodia and help people to understand rock music.”

During more than an hour spent backstage, the band barely drains one pitcher of beer – hardly the stuff of rock ‘n’ roll hellraisers. In the West, screeching guitars and deafening drum rolls have long been synonymous with sex and drugs, but what of Cartoon Emo’s self-penned lyrics? “When we do something bad or wrong to our parents, like a shadow that follows us, we try to think about how bad the experience feels,” volunteers Vuth. “So we try to do something good, to make a balance. We also sing about lovers, about women, about drugs, but everything is a lesson; education. We try to teach people to be good. Many people in Cambodia are gangsters, or playboys. You see how we are dressed: we may look like them, but we are not gangsters or playboys in our hearts.”

Quite how true this is may be a matter of debate (when Boy appeared with his manicured blue Mohawk and stretched ear lobes in the mosh pit at Equinox during last month’s Anti-Fate/Sliten6ix gig, rumour had it he’d given his manager the slip for a rare unchaperoned night out), but on stage Cartoon Emo are one of the rowdiest ass-kicking bands in the country – something Roger Daltrey’s band of degenerates would surely have appreciated. And though Cartoon Emo may not share Moon’s terminal lust for the wild life, they’re a damn sight more likely to survive their thirties.

WHO: Cartoon Emo
WHAT: Cambodia’s original rock band
WHERE: Sharky Bar, St. 130
WHEN: 9pm June 29
WHY: They’re going to be HUGE