Category: Features

A carved-up photograph of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II with a safety pin through her face has become one of the defining images of punk rock. Created in 1977 by artist Jamie Reid as the cover for the famously banned Sex Pistols’ single God Save the Queen, it cemented the otherwise abstract social ideas the Pistols had sung about a year earlier in Anarchy in the UK. But the roots of punk ideology stretch far beyond the advent of Johnny Rotten; beyond even the sweat-soaked stages of the most venerable punk hang-outs in 1974 New York: clubs like CBGB’s and Max’s Kansas City, where bands such as The Ramones were launching their musical counter-culture manifestos. The seeds of punk’s anarchic politics, far from being American or British, in fact sprouted from mid-20th century French philosophy – philosophy that continues to shape punk to this day. The theory is perhaps most eloquently laid out by Greil Marcus in Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century, in which the author examines punk in the context of everything from Dadaism to Guy Debord. In the prologue, he describes how Johnny Rotten’s first moments in Anarchy in the UK, “a rolling earthquake of a laugh, a buried shout, then hoary words somehow stripped of all claptrap and set down in the city streets…” – I AM AN ANTICHRIST – “remain as powerful as anything I know.” For as Andrew Hussey, head of French and Comparative Studies at the University of London Institute in Paris, once told the BBC: “Punk rock would have happened in the UK without France. But without the French, without their big ideas and their politics and fanaticism, punk rock in the UK would’ve been nothing more than growly old rockers with shorter hair. The real influence of French punk rock lies in the ideas, the style and the ruthless elegance. They never produced a Clash or a Sex Pistols, but what they did was introduce the real politics in punk.” Those politics were the product of Gallic intellectuals hell-bent on cultural subversion and determined to change the world using art and ideas. Led by rebel extraordinaire Debord, they sought disorder versus authority; youthful zeal versus a sclerotic status quo – the very inspiration for what would later be called punk. Debord was a French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker and founding member in 1957 of what became known as the Situationist International – a group of rebels whose defining moment came during the Paris riots of May 1968, when they lent philosophical muscle to the students and workers attacking the state. By the time a young Malcolm McLaren arrived at the scene, the streets of Paris were quiet again, but he found and was immediately seduced by Situationist posters bearing slogans such as ‘Be realistic, demand the impossible’ and others that would ultimately find their way into Sex Pistols’ lyrics: ‘Cheap holidays in other people’s misery’; ‘No future.’ Followers of this prankster-turned-philosopher, finally proclaimed a tresor national (‘national treasure’) by the French in 2009, even helped popularise the very technique used by Reid on God Save the Queen: detournement, the process of flipping images directly against themselves and subverting them so that they become ‘cultural weapons’. But the spark that ignited the first flame of punk, ultimately, was one of boredom. Just as the Situationists sought to create a new world order in which urban areas were divided into zones corresponding to specific emotions, a city where you could find yourself in an unexpected ‘situation’ on any street at any moment, so, decades later, punks yearned for radical social change. As Eric Debrais from punk band Metal Urbain, formed in Paris in 1975, remembers: “Everything was black and white: the TV was in black and white, the streets were in black and white. Everyday life was extremely boring; you felt people needed a push so they’d feel alive. The idea was to stir the pot and see what happened and of course people in England were doing the same.” All of this is not entirely lost on Didier Wampas, for the past 30 years lead singer with another French punk band, Les Wampas – one of only a handful to survive beyond the 1980s. Born in 1962 and currently en route to Phnom Penh’s Sharky Bar, he may have been too young to appreciate the philosophy behind the Parisian riots of 1968, but he’s no stranger to music as a vehicle for rebellion. Mention Debord and his Situationists and the affirmations come thick and fast in a French accent equally thick and fast. “Aaaaaaaaaaaaah, yeah yeah yeah,” he bellows over an impossibly awful phone connection from Thailand at the start of Les Wampas’ Asian tour. “Why not? But for me, the beginning of punk rock was in 1976 or 1977. The music is the most important thing for me – the first Ramones album. Punk is about doing what you want; you can make punk music even if you don’t really know how to play. In 1977, every week there was a new single or album. I was listening to all the punk bands: The Clash, The Ramones, the Sex Pistols, The Jam – everything. It was great to be 15 in 1977. I was very lucky.” Wampas is rare among his brethren, refusing for three decades – until May last year – to resign from his job as a public transport electrician despite having produced 11 albums and a top 20 hit. The reason, he says, is that if he were to depend on album sales, it would compromise his artistic independence – a message reinforced with a loathing of artists who exist on government grants. “If you say you’re a punk, to want to have money from the government is crazy. You say you’re anti-system, but you want to have money from the government to play punk rock? I don’t care about working; it’s no problem for me. I can do what I want. I don’t care about radio or TV; I was just working and making music and I don’t care about the rest.” He’s not entirely immune to the trappings of international musicianship, however. Of his first solo album, 2011’s Shut Me Up, he says: “No, no, no. You can’t shut me up. Nobody can. The record company asked me if I wanted to make a solo album and I said no, but then they said ‘Do you want to fly to Los Angeles?’ so I said OK. It was in winter and they said ‘Do you want to go to LA for ten days?’ No problem! I didn’t want to make a solo album; I just wanted to go to Los Angeles. I did all the singing in a one-metre-square cupboard in the producer’s kitchen because it was cheaper than in France. Fun!” Despite having a dig at one of his former bass players on the track Never Trust a Guy Who, Having Been a Punk, is Now Playing Electro’, Didier and his Wampas – who call their take on the genre ‘Ye Ye Punk’ – span a myriad sub-genres, from psychobilly to pop-punk ballads. Les Wampas’ first album, Tutti Frutti from 1984, calls forth the joyous cacophony of everyone from Demented Are Go to The Cramps. “Oh, yes! I love this album but I didn’t want to be in a psychobilly band. I love rock ‘n’ roll and want to play everything, not just one genre. We played with The Meteors, with King Kurt, with all these bands. It was very fun on stage. And we played with The Cramps in the 1990s, which was a mad experience. But in real life, they were just disappointing – no fun at all.” Didier’s latest project is one involving his other band, Bikini Machine, now in the process of recording a new album in London. But if the name sounds as though it was inspired by Dr Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine – a 1965 B roller in which mad scientist Vincent Price creates a gang of bikini-clad female robots with which to seduce and rob rich men – the significance is lost on Didier, who seems more interested in the fact the London studio’s equipment all dated from the 1950s. What is not lost on Didier is how his on-stage philosophy differs from that of the Sex Pistols. Where the Pistols were infamous for spitting at and punching fans, Didier is infamous for singing off-key and in a high-pitched squeak, amd he prefers to climb into his fans’ midst and plant as many kisses on cheeks as possible. But just how long can he keep it up, after a punishing 30 years as a punk frontman? “You just try to stop me! I remember when I was 15, I knew I wanted to play in a rock ‘n’ roll band and I don’t want to stop. If you don’t want to stop, you don’t stop. I eat peanut butter sandwiches, like Elvis! Yes, yes, yes. It’s the secret of rock ‘n’ roll…”

WHO: Les Wampas
WHAT: French ‘Ye Ye Punk’
WHERE: Sharky Bar, St. 130
WHEN: 9pm February 22
WHY: French philosophy inspired punk rock. No, really.

‘On the afternoon of the 13th, we thought we could hear a boat engine at intervals throughout the afternoon but we couldn’t be sure. Suddenly, a boat came in closer. I was about to go up on deck when the boat opened fire and sent some shots over our mast.’ – Kerry Hamill’s journal, August 13 1978.

The end, when it finally came, was as unforeseeable as it was barbaric. Foxy Lady, a 28ft traditional Malaysian perahu bedar, was just a few months into what was meant to be the trip of a lifetime. From Darwin harbour on Australia’s rugged northern coast, the tiny yacht had nosed her way through the crystalline waters of the Pacific Ocean, past Timor and Flores, then on to Bali and Singapore, heading up the Straits of Malacca and around the tip of the Malaysian peninsula. On board, a trio of tanned young adventurers passed for captain and crew.

Kerry Hamill was 27 when he wrote his last journal entry from Foxy Lady in August 1978. The eldest son of a tight-knit New Zealand family, he – along with fellow travellers Stuart Glass, a Canadian, and John Dewhirst from England – would within weeks become one of only nine foreigners ever executed by the Khmer Rouge.

At the time, few people outside Cambodia knew of the atrocities being committed. Before Foxy Lady’s course was forever altered, Kerry had sent countless letters back home, regaling his family with breathless tales they’d read aloud by a blazing fire in the coastal wilds of Whakatane. Suddenly, the letters stopped. The silence was deafening. It would be a further 18 months before the Hamills finally discovered what awful fate had befallen their son.

“I remember my mum looking out to sea approaching Christmas time and saying ‘Kerry’s going to come over the horizon and surprise us with tales of his adventures,’” says his little brother Rob, today an Olympic and Trans-Atlantic rowing champion. Their parents, Esther and Miles, fretted about what to do; who to contact. Kerry’s father wrote letters of his own, bashing away furiously at an antiquated typewriter stuffed with carbon sheaves. The theorising began: pirates; maybe a shipwreck. Perhaps their son had just decided to go silent for a while.

Sixteen months later, the phone finally rang – only the voice at the other end wasn’t Kerry’s, but that of a neighbour: ‘Get the local paper.’ John, the second eldest, went to a nearby dairy. There it was, in bold type face on the front page: his brother’s torture and execution at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. A few months later, John – also 27 – walked to the edge of a cliff and jumped. Rob, then 14, sought solace in the numbing arms of alcohol.

Today, asked what he remembers of Kerry, Rob is silent for a moment. Eventually, slowly and deeply, he exhales. Each word is carefully weighed before being spoken. “He was outgoing; his own man. He wasn’t overly demonstrative. He was really calm and just a lovely guy. One of his acquaintances said he was ‘a gorgeous, beautiful man’ and that phrase has stuck with me forever. He was a very able, helpful, loving guy.” [His voice breaks] “I can’t say much more…”

More than 30 years have passed since Foxy Lady was blown off course in a storm, straying into waters controlled by Democratic Kampuchea’s out-of-control Marxist machine. Stuart was shot dead immediately; Kerry and John were taken for interrogation at S-21. John was executed weeks later; two months of torture followed for Kerry. At best, he was blindfolded, taken to a pre-dug trench, made to kneel down beside it, hit over the head with a metal bar, his throat slit, and then buried. At worst, he was dragged into the street and burned alive.

Not knowing why, or even how, has haunted Rob ever since. In 1997, rowing across the Atlantic Ocean with the late Phil Stubbs, his anguish loomed like a tidal wave. “I was grief stricken, even though it had been 20-plus years,” he says from his New Zealand home. “Whether it was through exhaustion, or sleep deprivation, or the connection with the ocean – Kerry had a strong connection with water – every day on the boat, when I was rowing or when I was in the cabin while my teammate was out rowing, he didn’t know but at some point every day I grieved for my brother. It was at that point that I knew I had to do something to pay tribute to his life and to what happened.”

They won the race by a full eight days, but more than a decade passed before the invitation to testify at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal finally came. “When the court case came up, I knew that was the time I was going to go to Cambodia, whether it was just to try to find out more about what happened, or just to honour him. Soon after that, I was contacted by a film producer called James Bellamy to see if I wanted to tell the whole story.”

Thirty-one years to the day that Kerry had first set foot on Cambodian soil, on 13 August 2009 Rob Hamill landed at Phnom Penh International Airport to confront his brother’s torturers. “It was incredibly poignant. The first day I arrived at the airport was very traumatic. When I came through customs I remember the first guy I saw looked like a commander in the Khmer Rouge, with the big hat and the medals. I don’t think I’d ever had my photograph taken at an airport before. They took my passport and then took my photo. I was horrified; really angry. I felt like I was going through the same process my brother had gone through 31 years prior at S-21.

“I got through that and calmed down a bit, then went to get my bags and my mind was going. I saw all these bags coming out on the carousel and they became metaphoric corpses. I went from anger to being quite emotional, suddenly feeling for all the lives that had been affected by the Khmer Rouge. It was a bizarre moment for me. I hadn’t prepared myself for that at all.”

Within the clinical white walls of the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia, Rob delivered one of the tribunal’s most incendiary testimonies. That time, he was better prepared. As S-21 prison chief Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, took the stand, their eyes locked. “He challenged me: it was more than a feeling. The judges came in, we stood up and I looked across the courtroom and he was just staring at me. We stared at each other for about ten seconds. I felt that was quite a challenging thing to do, for someone who was supposedly remorseful and seeking forgiveness. It intrigued me. For me, trying to forgive, it didn’t bode well.”

Reading his victim impact statement out to the court, Rob said: “Duch, at times I have wanted to ‘smash’ you, to use your words, in the same way that you smashed so many others. At times I have imagined you shackled, starved, whipped and clubbed viciously. I have imagined your scrotum electrified, being forced to eat your own faeces, being nearly drowned and having your throat cut. I have wanted that to be your experience, your reality.”

Duch, who admitted overseeing the deaths of at least four of the nine foreigners, told the judges that he couldn’t remember Kerry. “My interpretation of that,” says Rob, “is that it’s a lot worse than I ever could have imagined, so he tried not to even go there because it wouldn’t have made him look any better. I haven’t read every word that was written or that he said in the court, but my general feeling is that there are parts of his testimony that are genuine and heart-felt and really remorseful; the problem is it’s been very inconsistent and contradictory.”

In February 2012, Duch’s 30-year sentence was extended to life imprisonment for his crimes during the murderous rule of the Khmer Rouge. But does Rob believe justice been served? “Having someone be brought to trial and shown up for who they are is important, but justice is bigger than that. It’s more of an overall bigger picture: getting people talking about the issue, about what happened; the trauma inflicted on all the families that were affected by this.”

It’s to this end that Rob agreed to the filming of Brother Number One, an award-winning documentary by Annie Goldson, James Bellamy and Peter Gilbert that follows his journey to the ECCC and is screening at Meta House this week. Along the way, he visits Tuol Sleng, where his brother was tortured; meets three S-21 survivors; and penetrates a Khmer Rouge stronghold to find the Navy officer in charge when Kerry’s yacht was attacked. It is, above all, the story of an innocent man brought to his knees and killed in the prime of his life, and the impact his death had on just one family.

“Here in New Zealand, having this film made and people being able to watch it, and creating this conversation afterwards. I know people have seen the film and have gone away for days, weeks, contemplating it and talking about the ramifications of what happened at that time – and hopefully learning from it. That’s what the court has helped facilitate: books being written; conversations overheard in a cafe. It’s infinite, and that’s where the court has played a bigger role than having one person brought up in front of the world. It’s created a dialogue and that’s incredibly powerful.

“Whether Case 003 goes ahead or not, there’s an opportunity now to start up a Truth and Reconciliation Commission – the South African version of seeking justice. Could something be created in Cambodia to say ‘We 100% guarantee no one else is going to be brought to trial, but you’re probably feeling a lot of guilt about what you did, so come forward, talk about it and let’s get it out there.’?”

As for reconciling his own loss, Rob – whose request for a meeting with Duch has twice been refused – is more circumspect, but says the process of confronting the past for Brother Number One has been “very, very positive”. “If I think deeply about it the emotion starts coming up, which suggests there are issues still there and reinforces that the process of grieving never ends. I still want to meet with Duch. I’d like to find out more about what he was thinking; why he was thinking the way he was thinking and why he did the things that he did; the motives behind it.” [His voice breaks] “I can’t say too much…”

He’s the lead singer of an apocalyptic American alt-rock band famous for destroying instruments on stage, but this soft-spoken second-gen hippy is more at home in his own fantastical Tolkienesque universe – complete with languages, maps and timelines – than he is embodying the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle. When not committing unspeakable acts of violence against guitars, drum kits and the odd piano, Conrad Keely of the ominously titled … And You Shall Know Us By The Trail Of Dead is more often to be found wearing blue ballpoint pens to a nub bringing to life the extraordinary world he’s been constructing in his mind since childhood. This half-Thai half-Englishman, born-in-Britain and raised in Hawaii, was one of the founders, along with childhood pal, drummer, vocalist and guitarist Jason Reece, of the Trail of Dead – a band once described by Rolling Stone magazine’s Andrew Dansby as a “post-punk Voltron that just might be the most exciting unit working today.” The parallel universe Keely, also an accomplished artist, has conjured forth on paper knows no borders: characters, plots, all spill over from sketches and comics straight into his music. As Trail of Dead ready for the release of their eighth album, the material for which was recorded in Germany earlier this year, Keely is working on a graphic novel here in Phnom Penh before their tour of the UK, Germany and Taiwan kicks off in October. The Advisor caught him between local gigs (“When I’m playing here, with the Kampot Playboys or Amanda Bloom and Charlie Corrie, that’s when I get to play stuff that isn’t hard rock, the stuff that I write; things like Hank Snow, Bruce Springsteen, David Bowie – things I like to sing”) to talk Taoism, the new apocalypse, and what it was like knowing Kurt Cobain.

…And You Shall Know Us By The Trail Of Dead sprang from fittingly apocalyptic roots. 

My family moved to Seattle right before the big grunge explosion and it was there, at a college I ended up going to, where the Riot Girl movement started. I saw Nirvana when they were still a small, shitty band. Then I saw them as they got better and better – and then they blew up. In 1993, our lives in Olympia imploded. Not just our lives, but everyone’s lives. Things got really dark. When Kurt Cobain committed suicide, there was this real dark shadow around – everyone knew him and was friends with him. It was a really dark time. A lot of our friends got into drugs; people were dying of overdoses. Jason Reece and I had both had enough and we just said let’s get out of here. We hit on Austin, Texas because no one we knew lived there. We discovered this whole new music scene and latched onto it pretty quickly. Climate-wise it reminded me of Hawaii and even socially people were a lot more laidback and expressive. I felt really at home because people were boisterous and obnoxious in a fun way. That’s where …And You Shall Know Us By The Trail Of Dead started.

There’s a rumour about the name being inspired by a Mayan chant, but that isn’t entirely true, is it?

We’d seen this anime movie called Legend of the Overfiend. There was a scene with this army going through the land and leaving this trail of destruction and desolation, so that’s what I was thinking – the image I came up with while we were driving around coming up with names. I said: [adopts creepy nasal voice] ‘You will know us by the trail of dead.’

In that exact voice, I hope.

[Laughs] In that exact voice – and it made us laugh. I was thinking of Jason’s ex-band-mate, who’d started a band in Olympia called Behead The Prophet And The Lord Shall Live, so the idea of these long Doomsday-sounding band names was on our minds. But that was the name that made us laugh the most.

All these scriptural references: has religion played much of a part in your life?

My mum was raised Catholic, my dad was raised Muslim and my stepfather was involved in this New Age church back before they’d even coined the term ‘New Age’. They were interdenominational – they studied Hari Krishna, Buddhism, everything – and they tried to find fundamental truths in all of them. One of my favourite gospels, which I always go back to for inspiration, is the Gospel of Thomas and that’s been removed from the Bible. It was taken out as an apocryphal gospel during the Council of Nicaea. It’s fascinating: there’s no story in it, just parables, sayings. ‘Jesus said this. Jesus said that.’ In the Bible it says: ‘Give unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s; give unto God that which is God’s,’ but in the Gospel of Thomas it says: ‘Give unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s; give unto God that which is God’s; give unto me that which is mine.’ It’s a very interesting, cryptic twist. It makes you think: what is mine? That became a lyric on our last album, Tao of the Dead. I was raised thinking about spirituality over religion and my parents had a healthy distrust and disdain for organised religion, even though they believed in the idea of Christ and his teachings. So when Jason and I met, I opened him up to all these ideas and theological discussions – that teenaged questioning thing. Then when it came to the band, it was more like these ideas became symbols and themes around which to wrap concepts.

My lyrics have always been a platform for what I’m interested in and I’m genuinely fascinated by these things. We live not in an apocalyptic time, but we’re obviously leading up to something – some massive world event – that’s going to change the way global society has been moving this past 200 years since the Industrial Revolution. We’ve set this ball rolling and it’s impossible for us to stop. All of us know what’s wrong with society: there’s too many cars, there’s too many people, there’s too much pollution, we’re destroying the planet. We can say these things all we want, but the ball is rolling. Are you and I, right now, willing to give up television and the internet and electronics and move into the woods? No. None of us is going to do that. We’re a part of this snowball effect. We’re caught up in it, we’re moving along with it, and it’s just going to play itself out to its logical conclusion. To live in this time is fascinating and frightening at the same time. I address these things in our lyrics.

How much of a crossover is there between your music and your art?

There was a time at 17 or 18 when I was convinced that, because music was such a discipline for me, I couldn’t do art and I actually tried to give up. In that concerted attempt to stop, that was when it came to me that I had to do art: art was not a choice. It’s not a choice for people who have that drive. You have a pen in your hand and a piece of paper and it’s going to come out. So when I took all my stuff back from my agent and said I’m not doing art any more, it was kind of a big deal. It was a symbolic gesture: I wasn’t giving myself any other option but to do music. I think it was this raw passion that music brought out in me.

The picture that led to what I’m working on now is the cover of our sixth album, Century of Self: a boy looking at a skull in this room cluttered with things, which is basically inspired by what my mum’s house looks like. She has Buddhas and books and knick-knacks everywhere. That led to the question who is this boy and what’s he doing here? And that led to the storyline of the last album, which became the graphic novel for the comic, and then this album led to the novel I’m working on, Strange News From Another Planet.

The boy’s name is Adsel and he’s a savant who was found by this monastic sisterhood. Because he’s found to have special powers, they take him to this temple on an island and to get there, he goes onto this ship, The Festival Time, which was one of our songs and I made a graphic out of it. All of these characters are reflections of people I know, periods of my life, and based on my experiences of travelling and touring – even though it’s set in this science fiction fantasy parallel universe.

What would Sigmund Freud make of this universe you’ve created?

Freud? I don’t know. I started world-building when I was nine, shortly after I read The Hobbit for the first time. This world was something I grew up with. It became something that’s so real it’s like an alternate reality that I can go to when things here get too tedious. I did all the typical world-building things, like create languages and maps and timelines.

Art is my celebration of what I love visually, music of what I love to listen to, and writing is my celebration of the language that I love. English has such an amazing history and it’s such an unlikely success story. Patrick O’Brian, author of the Aubrey-Maturin ‘Master and Commander’ series, is definitely one of the masters of the English language and has been a sort of style guide for me. He breaks all the rules.

Are you breaking any rules with Trail of Dead?

In some ways we’re embracing old rules. I believe in the Western music tradition: I love JS Bach and Mozart. A lot of the rules we apply to our music are actually classical things. On this new album, I was really into the idea of musical motifs and there’s this one ascending riff that’s used in four or five different songs deliberately, this running motif that you hear through the album. There’s a few of those, just to create a sense that the album is one work, one piece – a mini symphony. In that sense, I like the old rules that got forgotten about in rock. Rock broke down so many walls. A lot of the kids that were raised with rock didn’t bother to learn those rules, but the pioneers of rock did. You’ve heard of Peaches? We’ve done a tour with her and she’s hilarious; awesome lady. She recently did the Jesus Christ Superstar musical. They did a show in Brooklyn, New York and it was just insane – and it pissed me off because I’d been wanting to do a Jesus Christ Superstar thing for so long. The opera tradition hasn’t died. People don’t necessarily call it opera any more, but the idea of music as narrative and music as high drama still exists.

There’s no shortage of high drama in the new album, if what you just played for me is anything to go by.

People who are familiar with our band and hear this album will say this is the most aggressive Trail of Dead record in a while. A lot of the aggression that I put into music is addressed to other kinds of music.

Hence the lyrics to Worlds Apart: ‘Look at these cunts on MTV / With their cars and cribs and rings and shit / Is that what being a celebrity means? / Look boys and girls here’s BBC / See corpses, rapes and amputees / What do you think now of the American Dream?’

Things that have always irritated me with music are the lack of convictions, an approach to music that doesn’t display great passion. Passion is what music inspired in me and something that I wanted to convey through music. When I saw Bikini Kill playing on stage – I’d see these local bands which are now legendary in reputation – this raw emotion and energy, inspiration, it was almost uncontrollable. I didn’t know what to do with it. It wasn’t the exact same thing I’d feel when I looked at a Warhol painting, you know? Looking at a Monet, I just didn’t feel like jumping up and down. There’s that visceral thing that music can do to you, especially when you’re at that age when your hormones are raging. It’s so physical, the effect of music. I’ve read a couple of books on the psychology of it and I know there’s something special about how vibrations work on the body. That’s what makes music have this ability, this capacity, to change the way people think, and spur these movements. It’s very powerful: it changes chemicals in the brain; it creates endorphins and does all these really weird things. I didn’t know that at the time, when I was young, but I knew that music created the most powerful passion in me.

WHO: Musical prophets
WHAT: Conrad Keely and friends
WHERE: Equinox, St. 278 (Aug 25), and The Willow, St. 21 (Aug 31)
WHEN: 9pm August 25 and 31
WHY: The beginning is nigh

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