Music – Page 9

Rock the mic right

Though open mics often focus on verbal skills such as poetry and comedy, the concept could well predate spoken language

Though open mics often focus on verbal skills such as poetry and comedy, the concept could well predate spoken language. Perhaps it once involved our big-foreheaded ancestors grunting melodiously for each other’s entertainment, evolving with the march of time into a way for folk to share their talents in the absence of any fourth wall. There are now more open mic nights in Phnom Penh than there are days of the week, so to help you navigate the scene here are a few of our favourites and what you can expect to hear when you get there.

Most laidback: Sundance Inn & Saloon

As intimate, friendly and casual as that girl you went around with for a few weeks during college, Sundance’s weekly open mic is a hotbed of talent. Most weeks, you can find Scott Bywater, of Cambodian Space Project fame, performing a lively set of both originals and covers. The nights are as loose as the cheap liquor suggests and, as such, are a good way to jam with people you wouldn’t get a chance to otherwise. They tend, like Sundance itself, to draw a good crowd of regulars who are supportive and appreciative of covers, originals and/or improvisation. From 8pm on Tuesdays at Sundance Inn & Saloon, #61 St. 172.

Most technical: Opera Cafe

If this write-up were a video-game, Opera Cafe’s open mic would appear at the end and take place in Bowser’s castle. Ostensibly billed as a Jazz Jam, the mic is kept open by Gabi Faja for those able to improvise on that level of musicianship. For variety’s sake, Gabi often cedes his role as host to someone with a slightly different background. And you might want to consider fasting before you go: the cafe is home to some of the finest Italian food in town. From 8pm on Fridays at Opera Cafe, #188 St. 13.

Loudest: Paddy Rice

With drums, amplifiers, mics and guitars, Paddy Rice serves as much as a rehearsal space for local bands as it does an open mic. Host Jet, of rock trio Bum N’ Draze, is quick to encourage anyone to join – and will happily provide a drum beat and/or improvised leads if you need an extra body or two. Expect to get gawped at by tourists strolling along Riverside. From 8:30pm on Thursdays at Paddy Rice, #213/217 Sisowath Quay.

Most diverse: Show Box

Originally intended as an unplugged poetry slam, the open mic at Show Box has since evolved into a many headed monster – a process that started when someone brought in an acoustic guitar and moved the party upstairs to play through their speakers. The night still features spoken word poetry by the likes of Kosal Kiev, but you’re just as likely to see stand-up comedians, beat boxing and pretty much everything in between. From 8pm every first and third Thursday of the month at Show Box, #11 St. 330.

Youngest: The Terrace

What began as a recital for students of Australian saxophonist Euan Gray – the front man with The Rooftops in his native Oz – is now a very public happening. The night still starts with recitals by his pupils, some as young as ten and performing in public for the first time, but then the floor is opened up to acoustic solo and/or duo acts – with Euan always poised to throw crazy sax leads over whatever tunes you bring to the table, should you so desire. Expect a more subdued and attentive audience than you’d find at most pub jams. From 6:30pm every other Saturday (check ‘The Terrace on 95’ on Facebook) at The Terrace, #43 St. 95.

Not just for laughs

Why do we laugh? The answer, argues Sigmund Freud in his 1905 book The Joke and its Relation to the Unconscious, is that jokes – much like dreams – satisfy our unconscious desires. “Jokes have not received nearly as much philosophical consideration as they deserve in view of the part they play in our mental life,” writes the Austrian psychoanalyst four decades before a young Lenny Bruce earned $12 and a spaghetti dinner for his first stand-up gig in Brooklyn. Freud has a point.

Stand-up comedy is arguably the oldest, most universal, basic and deeply significant form of humorous expression. From the fools and jesters of the Middle Ages, through 19th century humorists such as Mark Twain and Artemus Ward and finally onto the Rodney Dangerfields of today, comics are shamans: visionaries who use the alchemy of laughter to present the world in a different light.

“Changing the world, one endorphin at a time” is how Irish stand-up Aidan Killian puts it. A banker turned comedian (“Nothing funny about that”), he’s returning to Phnom Penh to offer a crash-course in stand-up comedy for the humorously challenged, cripplingly shy and/or would-be Lenny Bruces. Killian will school his comedy students over three days in everything from dealing with stage fright to great storytelling, with all proceeds – $100 per head – going to Operation Smile. Graduates will then deliver their own set at Pontoon on February 18 (interested? Call 012 968512 to register).

The Advisor caught up with Aidan in Thailand to talk Oscar Wilde, orgasms and how by being just a little bit funnier you can make the world a better place.

I was hoping we could explore the idea of ‘stand-up comedy as social and cultural mediation’, to borrow from one of the academic papers I’m reading.

Jesus Christ! What does that mean?

Once upon a time, about five centuries ago, Erasmus said something along the lines of ‘The path of folly leads to wisdom.’ The idea is that stand-up comedy isn’t just about making people laugh; it serves a much deeper purpose. The role of the comic as contemporary anthropologist, speaking truths that would land most journalists in jail; in your own words: ‘Changing the world, one endorphin at a time.’

Ahhhhh, nice! I haven’t used that phrase in a while. Well, Oscar Wilde, another great Irishman, said: ‘If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.’ And that’s really it, for me. I go to comedy gigs every night because that’s the life that I chose, and a lot of comedy really is just about getting that joke. That’s the truth. I’d love to say 90% of comedy is about sharing your soul and helping create consciousness among the masses so that we all live happily ever after and realise the oneness of humanity, but it’s not. Most comedy is about chasing the laugh, getting laughs, and you see a lot of that on TV. However, the comedy I love most, and I think many people love, is something that’s going to make you feel; something that’s going to make you think. Something that’s going to make you see something in a way you might never have seen before and makes you question the boundaries that you’ve created in your life. George Carlin, Lenny Bruce and Bill Hicks immediately come to mind.

George Carlin and Bill Hicks are my favourite comedians.

You obviously haven’t seen my set yet.

I have – and they’re still my favourite comedians.

Well, fuck you! [laughs] But look at what these guys did: Bill did 16 years of comedy and talked about his dad and him having a relationship. Silly jokes, but he made people laugh. And when people laugh, they release their stress. They’re in a place of happiness. It’s kind of like having an orgasm in the sense that you’re not thinking. You’re in that place of freedom and emptiness and nothingness. If you have that, then you’re more susceptible to positiveness, if that makes sense. So even though those jokes were silly and had no essence, he was still making people happy. Then he took it to a whole new level and everything he did – every word he spoke – had a purpose. That’s a huge gift. And we expect all of our students who do the course to be at least at that level after two and a half days’ working with me.

Ho ho. So does laughter have a role in making us more susceptible to certain ideas?

I see laughter as breaking down defences. I look for the truth that I most want to speak and then I say that, but if I just say that and it’s not funny, I look like a lecturer and most people are going to attack me because I’m not going along with mainstream thought. The laughter is necessary because if people laugh, they’re accepting what you’re saying – we’re laughing at the same things; we’re connecting. If they’re laughing, and the people around them are laughing, whatever you’re saying becomes the general consensus in that room: This Is Funny. Whether they agree with what I’m saying or not, they’ve accepted that what I’m saying is a funny experience. They’re laughing, and now I can pound them with some serious fucking truth: we are all Christ-like human beings; we are gods; we are kings and queens. I can say something like that – empower them – and then make them laugh. It’s like punching them with something good that they wouldn’t normally take because they’d be too busy going ‘No, no, no, I’m not a queen, I don’t deserve to be loved, I’m just an inputter in my job that I hate…’ But it gives people a chance to think, because you sandwich in what they need to hear between moments of laughter.

Humour helps you escape the censors.

Absolutely! I wonder if I could get away with the things that I say without being funny. I think they’d probably lock me up. I suppose that because people are laughing, you can just say whatever the fuck you want. It’s interesting because, as a comedian, you can kind of do whatever you want too. I can be out in public and I can say to someone speaking too much at a table, someone I think is taking up too much of the conversation and isn’t interesting enough, as a comedian I can say: ‘Hang on a second. You’re using up too many words. There are four people here and you should be taking up 25% but you’re taking up 80%. Can you please stop?’ I can say that and they’ll just go ‘Ah, he’s being funny.’

No, no, really. Just shut the fuck up.

[Laughs] That’s what it comes down to. It’s a label: that’s comedy, so it’s allowed. We like laughing. I can talk about Obama being captain of the child-killing drones, the face of the fourth Reich, because it’s just Aidan being funny. Only it isn’t. There are drones killing children and someone’s allowing that to happen. Blaming one person may be silly, but at the end of the day he’s Adolf Hitler… [Aidan’s doorbell rings in the background] Can I take this? I’m just going to open the door. I don’t know who it is. I don’t have any friends. Maybe it’s Obama. Shit! I shouldn’t have said that online… ARGGGH! [Pause] I got peanuts! I got peanuts! My security guard – mwah ha ha ha ha – brought me warm peanuts.

Nice. So, let’s take a closer look at how the folk who complete your course can deploy stand-up weaponry in their everyday lives.

Let’s put this in perspective: these guys are going to be doing stand-up comedy for the first time in their lives, most of them. They’re not going to be great in comparison to where they would be if they did stand-up comedy for one year, five years, 50 years because it takes time. However, they will leave the stage to the sound of laughter and clapping and they’ll feel really good about themselves, like I did after my first gig. I felt like the king of the world. The idea is this: most people think ‘I’m not funny; I’m not interesting; I could never do that; I’m not good at public speaking; I’m too shy,’ but this is simply a belief; an idea in your head. Once you break that idea and go to the opposite extreme – stand up on stage and do live stand-up comedy, which is videotaped so that you can see yourself making people laugh – you can never say that again. It breaks down this limiting belief that we’ve created and also it leaves people thinking: ‘What other things did I used to think I couldn’t do that I actually can do?’ That’s why I did stand-up: because people said I couldn’t.

Take us back to your first time.

Well, she was 16 and I was 25. She was screaming: ‘Get off me!’

Not THAT first time. The OTHER first time.

Oh! Oh, silly me. Oh my God. No. My first time was in a hotel with my girlfriend, by the way. Isabelle was her name. It still is… OK, right. First time: I was at a stand-up comedy show for expats in Tokyo with my friend and mentor at Bear Stearns, Steve. I said to him: ‘I could do that.’ And he said: ‘Why don’t you go put your name down?’ I had a month to prepare a three-minute set. I was so nervous. I don’t remember ever being so scared. I’ve been in fights; I’ve had a guy swing a glass at me, I’ve been scared but never this sort of fear. Your whole stomach goes completely. I think I went to the toilet seven times, but you don’t need to print that. My body didn’t work and my head was all over the place. I didn’t feel balanced or normal; I felt like I was drugged with fear. But I did it and as soon as I got the first laugh it was amazing; just beautiful. The most natural high I’d ever had.

But how do you teach others to be funny?

Well, let’s break it down. What exactly is happening when you’re on stage in front of people? Let’s list all the things that are happening. So, there are people looking at you. What else is happening?

You’re looking at them.

Correct! So, you’ve got eye contact. You’re speaking. You have to be funny. You’re trying to control the physical and psychological effects of fear. And you’re breathing; they’re connected. So, it’s a scary experience having to go up on stage and make people laugh. Most people would be scared of just having to get on stage and having people look at them, to a certain extent. Let’s break it down even more. Some people find it difficult just to hold eye contact with one person, not to mention a whole room. They get nervous and speak too fast, or they don’t speak at all. So we start off with the basics: get two people to hold eye contact for 30 seconds. What often happens is that people start to giggle. So why are they laughing? What is it that makes us laugh under such circumstances? It’s tension, and we release tension in two ways: one is through laughter; the other through sex. Either way, I win. Boom! [laughs] Once we understand that, we can use tension to be funny: we build tension and then release it. That’s one way of making people laugh. So first I want people to be confident enough just to stand on stage, then I want to get them to be funny. When they’re comfortable I want to hear about you. Who are you? What do you care about? What emotions do you feel? What makes you angry? What makes you sad? What scares you? I don’t want to hear ‘I was on a bus and something funny happened…’ I want something personal. Everything is funny. It’s quite amazing: there’s no subject you can pick, apart from rape and paedophilia, that isn’t funny. So what do you want to talk about? How do you want to make people laugh? What do you want to leave people with? Then I’m going to give you some comedy tools and you’re going to put them on top of whatever it is you want to talk about.

Give us an example of a comedy tool.

OK. I’m going to say two things and then you’re going to say whatever comes into your head, very quickly. Ready? Apples, oranges…

Bananas. That wasn’t funny at all.

The first thing, apples, was the point of introduction. I said ‘apples’, so you got a clue. The second point is confirmation of the first. I said ‘oranges’, so you now know where we’re going and can pick a random fruit because two points implies a direction and you can work out the next point yourself. So, how do we make that funny? If we can create a direction, and then break that direction, we’re misleading the audience. We say the opposite, so: ‘Me and Annie went for a walk in the park and we saw some ducks and we started feeding them and then I stabbed her in the face.’

You see the simplicity of it? Point one: we’re in the park. Point two: ducks are in the park. Point three: something completely random. Then we add in the details of the story, because it’s genuinely funnier if the audience actually cares about the story. You’ve made them feel something.

Most people don’t do this course because they want to become stand-up comedians. They just want to be able to be funny; to be interesting; to tell stories, to have that bungee-jump experience of self-help where you can actually stand on stage in front of a live audience and share your own unique life with them and make them laugh. If you can do that, you can do anything.

WHO: Aspiring stand-up comedians (or anyone who wants to polish their presentation skills)
WHAT: Aidan Killian’s comedy crash course
WHERE: Pontoon, St. 172
WHEN: February 15 – 18
WHY: “If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.” – Oscar Wilde

Mr Out Of The Ordinay

Scott Bywater is nothing out of the ordinary. Ordinary height, ordinary blue eyes, ordinary greying hair. Just your average espresso-drinking kind of guy. At least, that’s what the self-effacing Tasmanian would have you believe.

The fat biography of Muhammad peeping from under one arm tells a different story. So do the two volumes of Bywater’s own poetry crammed under the other, the latest of which, one sky/many skies, launched last week. As does his position in Phnom Penh rock ‘n’ roll history as one of the original line-up of the Cambodian Space Project, soloist in his own right and newly recruited frontman of the Lazy Drunks. “Poet of the bar-room”, thoughtful musician and ceaselessly rolling stone, it’s safe to say Bywater is probably one of the most extraordinary ordinary guys around.

That’s not what he tells people, of course; ‘(kind of a music guy)(writes a bit)’ his card advertises apologetically. “I got sick of reading on everyone’s cards ‘CEO this, Master of the Universe that,’” he says in explanation. “That’s what I am, and it doesn’t get anyone’s hopes up too much.” He laughs quietly.

So did he always want to be a music guy who writes a bit? “The first thing I ever wanted to be was a writer, when I was so high,” (indicating something not very high at all). “In my family, that’s what you aspire to. We’re not taught to be engineers or doctors or lawyers; the high ideals are the arts.”

However, the siren song of convention proved irresistible and for the earlier part of his life Bywater eschewed Art, labouring instead on the treadmill of domesticity in his home town of Hobart. But something wasn’t right. “I don’t know, sometimes I talk very negatively about Tasmania and I don’t want to do that… I had to get out of that regular kind of life. I thought I could get more from it, and it turned out I just… I just couldn’t.”

Wary of openly criticising domestic bliss, he need not be so cautious; his poems do so for him. Both volumes (available from under Scott’s arm at $5 a piece) are paeans to adventure, to the open road and its freedoms. Little mention is made of home or hearth, as Bywater’s poetic world is that of the outdoors, of a boundless sea and sky through which the narrator roams ‘in pursuit of the unlimit’.

Bywater readily admits to a fascination with the unlimit as both an artist and as a man. “It appeals to me, to be always moving. At this stage I’m down to a suitcase and a guitar or two. It’s the idea that the journey is more important than the destination. Arrival is always the same but the journey is always different.”

His creative process is similarly spontaneous; akin to the improvisation of a jazz tune, with big ideas bubbling away below the surface of his consciousness before bursting forth almost fully formed. Bywater just has to “improvise on a theme I’ve had in there for a while. That’s when spectacular things happen.”

Realising that the description of his work as ‘spectacular’ is rather uncharacteristic for someone normally so self-effacing, he politely back-peddles. “But I’m never sure about my stuff. It’s not academic poetry,” he says, layering ‘academic’ with fake import. “I think that my writing appeals to people who don’t like poetry; I’m not so much a poet for the poetry society as for the bar. A poet for people who don’t read poetry.”

Whatever kind of poet he is, Bywater’s fascination with being on the road has led him to adopt the kind of peripatetic lifestyle that would leave a younger man (he was born in 1967) begging for a break. “Because I don’t have other routines, I have to listen to my underlying rhythms. Without getting too hippy trippy about it I think, ‘What shall I do next?’ and something comes up.”

Since 2011 those rhythms have taken him to Phnom Penh, France and then back again, sometimes writing a bit, touring Europe with the Space Project, sometimes going solo. Then there was the Krash Project, a two-man endeavour on French island La Reunion, which saw Bywater and his Space Project companion Alex playing to “fresh audiences in tiny bars overlooking the Indian Ocean”.

His musical style is multifaceted enough to encompass such different gigs, audiences and locations, redolent of chansonniers like Jacques Brel as well as Anglophonic troubadours Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan. Bywater of course sidesteps such laudatory comparisons: “It’s not like I see any link at all between what I do musically and Dylan. People see the harmonica rack and the guitar and assume my stuff is like Dylan, but I don’t think it’s anything like him.”

That isn’t to say Dylan hasn’t been a huge influence on Bywater. Bywater acknowledges he “fell pretty hard for Dylan” in his mid-teens, working his way through the classics onto Dylan’s obscurities and albums of the last decade, which Bywater considers among his best works. And like Dylan he delights in not playing by the rules, experimenting with electronica and dub, then going back to his acoustic roots before jumping off into spoken word poetry. “I’ll give everything a shot; there aren’t any rules. I’m just as comfortable playing solo at Riverside Bistro as I am playing rhythm with the Space Project.”

Bywater was there at the very beginning of the now legendary Cambodian Space Project. A compatriot of co-founder Julien Poulson, Bywater found himself sitting in behind Poulson and Srey Thy on their first gig more than three years ago. Since then he’s played regularly with the band, finding himself at the helm for a while at the close of 2010 (which he describes as “an interesting time”) and touring with them in 2012.

Since returning to Cambodia from the Krash Project, Bywater says he’s “rarely been so active, without having to hustle or anything!” The astonishment in his voice is audible. Taking advantage of this good fortune he’s accepted the gauntlet thrown down to him by The Lazy Drunks, the first band he ever played with in Phnom Penh, to become a bona fide frontman. “Their lead singer suddenly went back to England, and I already knew all the songs. I thought about it and I thought, ‘Here’s a real challenge, to be a real lead singer’. To connect with the audience on that level, I’ve never been very good at it. I always feel very self-conscious, but this is a chance to bring out the Steve-Tyler-Mick-Jagger thing inside.” And how is he working on bringing it out? For a moment Bywater looks nonplussed, then brightens. “Well, I’m going to wear a pink shirt…”

Scott Bywater: musician, poet, and definitely one of the least ordinary guys you’re likely to meet this year.

WHO: Scott Bywater
WHAT: Kind of a music guy. Writes a bit.
WHERE: Riverside Bistro, Sisowath Quay, and Rubies, St. 19 and 240
WHEN: Thursdays from 8pm (Riverside Birsto) and Sundays from 6pm (Rubies)
WHY: He’s extraordinary

The colour of music

The artist sweeps one arm over a canvas unrolled on the studio floor like a psychedelic welcome mat – a vast technicolour mash-up of lively forms and textures. From the next room, the dull rhythmic thud of bass bins threatens to stir the sticky air. “I will do something connected to his music, to show the rhythm of the sounds, the movement,” she says, nodding towards the door. “I use colours to express emotions and shapes to show the mood. You can see the DJ’s hands moving here, and over there is the sound.” An index finger jabs at enamel that’s been dribbled over acrylic like the zigzag of a hospital heart monitor. “And here you can see the equaliser, like the sounds that come out of the speaker when Warren’s playing.” More pointing, this time at a bright swirl of paint: “This sound here is like a DVD spinning. Each shape expresses an emotion: happiness, excitement…”

Chhan Dina and Warren Daly are daring to tread in some of history’s most well-heeled footsteps. The duo – one a classically trained Cambodian artist; the other a DJ from Ireland – are redefining for the 21st century the complex relationship between sound and vision. They’re in fine company. In Book X of his 4th century BC Republic, Plato describes the ‘music of the spheres’ – the poetic notion that the spinning of the planets generates a sort of celestial harmony. Pythagoras went a step further, musing that these heavenly tones had “a visible equivalent in the colour spectrum”. At the time, only seven planets had been discovered. Two hundred years later Aristotle applied seven numbers to the seven tones of the musical octave, the distinguished foundation of the sound-colour relationship. By the 18th century, Newton’s experiments with prisms seemed to prove its existence through the laws of physics.

And that was just the theorists. Legend has it that Leonardo da Vinci was the first to experiment with the projection of coloured lights, which spurred would-be inventors into trying to make instruments that could spew out coloured lights and sound at the same time. By the time the 20th century rolled around, Alexander Wallace Rimington’s ‘colour piano’ had been seen in public, spawning new oddly named contraptions: Thomas Wilfred’s Clavilux, the Optophonic Piano created by Russian painter Baranoff-Rossiné, and Alexander László’s Sonchromatoscope. Their creators had just one thing in common: they were trying to create a new artistic genre.

Dina and Daly, who met three years ago when he trampled her foot during a swing dance class at Equinox, are 21st century László’s, merging electronic dance music with live instruments and artists and audience participation to create a multisensory experience – a trip without a trip. Led by Daly, who in 2000 co-founded online record label Invisible Agent, they’re building on the work of 1960s San Francisco arts collectives that used disco balls and light projections on smoke to produce trip-like sensations (The Brotherhood of Light, which toured with The Grateful Dead, was inspired by the Beat generation and Ken Kesey’s ‘expansion of consciousness’ Acid Tests).

From acid to aciiiiiiiiiiiiiiiid: enter electronic dance music, 20 years later. It’s had a hard time matching the visual spectacle of screaming singers, windmill-armed guitarists and feral drummers thrashing about on stage. In 1992, British chart show Top Of The Pops hit a record low when The Orb’s ‘performance’ amounted to nothing more than the pair playing chess while their single Blue Room was piped through speakers. With more DJs using software to play mixes ‘live’ on computers, there’s been criticism that the act (some might say art) of physically choosing and mixing records has been replaced with someone simply pressing play and standing back. But as Peter Walker writes in The Independent, “For those acts that can’t get away from being a couple of blokes twiddling knobs – Underworld, The Chemical Brothers, Daft Punk and Orbital – an arms race has ensued to offer fans something to look at while they play. The art of visual entertainment has come a long way, with all of the above using successive albums and tours to test out new on-stage theatrics, from Daft Punk’s pyramid to Underworld’s towering tubes of light and the Chems’ song-specific graphic spectaculars.”

Daly, who has played at Ireland’s famous Temple Bar Music Centre, is well aware of Orbital, famed for their visuals (“The visuals are kind of our lead singer; they’re the lead singer jumping around and pulling faces”, Phil Hartnoll has said). “I was just in time for when Orbital and all the parties were happening in the early ‘90s in Western Europe,” says Daly. “We were putting raves on in fields and getting chased around by the cops.” (Did they ever get caught? “Yes, quite a lot, but let’s not talk about that.”) “You’d have quite a mix there: people DJing; people doing poi; tents, people making food. There was a real community feel to it. You didn’t just come along and watch one guy banging tunes out; there’s a number of different activities going on. We’d make fluoro backdrops, back in the days when fluoro was still cool – the days of glow sticks and Vicks VapoRub.

I started to do visuals at these events in the late ’90s, going out with a camera, making videos of the city and countryside, things happening and people doing things, cutting them all up and splicing it live on screen – putting effects on it, exploding and imploding it, putting colour layers over it; effects that would probably look really cheesy right now, but back then it was like ‘Wow! How’s this guy doing that?’ Now you’ve got software you can just download with all the clips already installed, but we were using two VHS recorders with a cord plugged into the decks.”

In a new series of events at Meta House, December 22 being the soft launch, Daly is fusing pop culture, high culture and low culture by hooking up painters, musicians, graffiti artists, digital artists and DJs into one big psychedelic show. “There will be three DJs playing back to back, each with our own set-up. It’s going to be like a nerd’s dream: a table full of flashing lights and different equipment, but we really want to take it away from where it’s just people looking at us. It’s not about me. I want to play quality tunes, expose some artists and get a buzz going out there in the place. We want to hang canvases up on the walls and get people in the crowd involved; give them a paintbrush.

“We want to mix it up. One example would be Scott Bywater, part of the Cambodian Space Project. He made some electronic tracks and we released them. He played guitar and read poetry over it and some of us have done remixes. When I first heard it, I wasn’t sure – guitars, poetry; am I going to be able to listen to this? Then I heard it and was like ‘Wow, this is ace. This guy really knows what he’s doing.’ He’s using Garage Band on a Mac and asking me all these questions about getting new sequences in there and putting drum beats over them. I thought ‘You’re the singer, you’re the guitarist; you’re the glue on stage for this band and now you’re interested in all these things that DJs and electronic producers use.’ He’s really starting to harness it, too.”

Such experimental fusion is, he says, the future of live electronic music. “There’s a huge lull. You had this massive surge starting in the late ’80s right up to the millennium, when dance music was at its peak. You had big names filling out stadiums – The Prodigy, Leftfield, Massive Attack; commercial, but with underground sounds bubbling up underneath. Then live bands took over for a while and now people like Scott Bywater are saying ‘I’m going to get a laptop.’ And the people with laptops are saying ‘There are guys over there who can play instruments. I’m going to talk to these guys, take some samples and reverse them, and do stuff together.’ We want to make a new form of music.” And it sure beats the hell out of watching two blokes playing chess.

WHO: The sonically and visually open-minded among us
WHAT: Swagger
WHERE: Meta House, #37 Sothearos Blvd
WHEN: 9pm December 22
WHY: It’s the future, man

Manic impression

“When I die, I want people to play my music, go wild and freak out and do anything they want to do.” – Jimi Hendrix

The greatest electric guitarist in the history of music was just 27 years old when he was found on the floor of his girlfriend Monika Dannemann’s home in Notting Hill, London. And it was at precisely the same age that Darrell Young, better known as Niki Buzz – founder of 1980s US hard-rock power trios Vendetta and M-80 – picked up a guitar for the very first time. It would not be the last. “I’ve been imitated so well I’ve heard people copy my mistakes,” Hendrix once said. What his Rock Hall biography describes as ‘the greatest instrumentalist in the history of rock music’ would make of Play Like Jimi, an Amsterdam-based tribute band fronted by Buzz, can only be imagined. For as John Mayer writes in Rolling Stone magazine’s 100 Greatest Artists Of All Time, “Hendrix invented a kind of cool. The cool of a big conch-shell belt. The cool of boots that your jeans are tucked into. If Jimi Hendrix is an influence on somebody, you can immediately tell. Give me a guy who’s got some kind of weird-ass goatee and an applejack hat, and you just go, ‘He got to you, didn’t he?’” As Hendrix devotees celebrate what would have been his 70th birthday on November 27, days after the news that previously unreleased Hendrix material is due out next year (People, Hell and Angels will be the 11th posthumous Hendrix album), The Advisor corners Play Like Jimi’s flamboyant front man, who plays 13 instruments; won a James Brown-sponsored music contest when he was 13; has performed with everyone from The Ramones to Patti Smith, once formed a band with the only man ever to get thrown out by Ozzy Osbourne for being too badass (Ozzy himself once bit the head off a live bat on stage), and, yes, has got some kind of weird-ass goatee. Joining him are bass player Martin Seij, a Dutch metalhead, and former Wailers drummer Winston Scholsberg.

What would Jimi be doing if he were alive today?

Niki: At this point, he’d probably be doing jazz fusion of some sort. He was going in that direction; he was already jamming with Miles Davis and a rap group back then, a group called Lost Poets. Jimi would have been at the forefront of rap.

The new album has been described as pioneering what became Earth, Wind and Fire’s sound.

Niki: Toward the end of Jimi’s career, he wanted to experiment a lot but his manager didn’t want that at all; he wanted the original experience. The last thing he wanted the world to see was Jimi as a black man. He wanted the world to see Jimi as a white rock star with a good tan, and the blacker Jimi became the more it upset him.

How much of a political force was Jimi?

Winston: The way he used his music, the way he spoke about the war, the way Machine Gun talked about the injustice of the war – that was the most political statement he made. If you listen to Machine Gun, you understand how deeply concerned he was with what was happening.

The song Machine Gun has been described by musicologist Andy Aledort as ‘the premier example of Hendrix’s unparalleled genius as a rock guitarist.’

Niki: I was a drummer when I first heard the Band of Gypsys album. I’ll never forget the first time I heard Machine Gun. It completely changed the way I looked at guitar – and I wasn’t even a guitarist then. I didn’t start playing guitar until I was 27, which is strange because Jimi died at 27. When I heard the sound of his guitar crying and wailing, just like a mother or father watching their child being shot down… On top of that, he made the guitar actually sound like a machine gun and bombs dropping. I never thought such emotion and visualisation could come out of any instrument. There’s no way you can listen to Machine Gun and not feel every ounce of the pain of war. It’s probably the best song that’s ever been recorded in the history of music.

You’ve said before the only way to play like Jimi is to let the guitar play you.

Martin: If you let the instrument play for you, instead of struggling with the notes to make the song sound like it sounds; if you let the music flow through you and let the guitar do its thing, that’s when it becomes like Jimi.

Niki: Most people, especially guitarists, believe that playing like Jimi is putting on the record and learning it note for note. Any moron can do that; it doesn’t take any talent. If you want to play like Jimi, first of all you have to be in touch with nature then you have to be in touch with your emotions. Jimi played in colours and he played completely from his emotions. He was very shy so he expressed all of his feelings through his guitar: his love, his anger, his hopes, his dreams.

Curtis Knight, who was close to Hendrix, has described you as the best guitarist he’s ever played with since Jimi. That’s one hell of a compliment.

Niki: I really love Jimi Hendrix, but didn’t play him at first. I had a band in 1982 called Vendetta. A dream come true for most guitar players would have been being produced by Eddie Kramer, who produced Hendrix. Kramer came to me and said ‘I want to produce you.’ And I said no. I chose Max Norman to produce the album, because I didn’t want the stigma of being Jimi Hendrix. Everybody was comparing me to him anyway. I should tell you about how I met Curtis Knight. He used to manage Pure Hell, the first black punk rock band. I was the resident Dr Fix-it sort of guitarist at Planet Studios. I came in one day to play and Curtis was sitting on the couch. He looks at me and says: ‘Yeah, you look like you can play.’

That’s how he gauged your musical ability: ‘You look the part!’?

Niki: [laughs] So he says ‘Come listen to this!’ and he took me into the studio and played a track. I then played it and he goes: ‘OK, you’re my guitar player now.’ We mostly just did studio stuff, and he owned a limousine service. I finally talked him into doing a couple of gigs down in South Carolina and we were on stage, playing, and there was a guy in the front row who was weeping and sobbing to the point where it was disturbing. I told someone to bring him back stage and he’s on his knees, sobbing. He thought Curtis Knight was dead and I was dead because he was a big Vendetta and M-80 fan, and I hadn’t been on the scene in a while. He couldn’t believe he was seeing two of his biggest idols on the same stage and they were alive.

You’ve rubbed some extraordinary shoulders: Joan Jett, Patti Smith, The Ramones. Who stands out?

Winston: [laughs] That’s a good question. Answer that, brother! Come on!

Niki: Since you’re a punk vocalist, I have a great story for you. Do you know The Dead Boys? OK, so me and The Dead Boys’ lead singer Stiv Bators were best friends. He was an absolute intellectual; we’d sit in a coffee shop and discuss politics for hours. The drummer, whose nickname was Beaver, he was a normal guy but he really wanted to be a punk. The Dead Boys were down near Avenue A, Avenue B – we call it Alphabet City. At that point in New York, Alphabet City made Beirut look like Beverly Hills. The only people there were Hells Angels and drug dealers; it was serious. Anyway, the drummer decided to earn his punk badge by going into Alphabet City and throwing some racial slurs at the Puerto Ricans there. He ended up getting stabbed 32 times. That’s a hell of a way to earn your punk badge.

And what was it like in M-80 working with Don Costa, the only man ever to get kicked out of Ozzy Osborne’s band for being too much of a badass?

Niki: Oh, Jesus. OK, I’m going to tell you about the most famous M-80 gig ever. We were at The Troubador in LA, going to the gig, and Don Costa says: ‘Look, I can’t go in the limo with you. I’m going in my own limo.’ Alright, whatever. So we arrive at the gig and Don Costa is wrapped up like The Mummy; he was taped up head to toe, there was nothing but his eyes showing, and he had smeared cat shit all over himself.

Oh no.

Niki: Oh yes! [laughs] And the drummer sat down and played in an LA jail cell. He literally went to the LA County Jail, where they were replacing the cells, and reconstructed a complete jail cell as our stage set. He had to go into the cell to get on the drums and when he went in he took one of Costa’s extra bass guitars, which I thought was his own. Here we go: we start the concert, and of course there’s this girl on her boyfriend’s shoulders and she starts flashing the band with her big tits. Costa leans over and starts sucking them while he’s playing, which the boyfriend didn’t take too kindly to. So he puts the girl down and starts to swing at Costa. Costa then goes to the back of the stage and comes back out with a pickaxe and starts swinging it at the guy. So now we don’t have a bass player any more because he’s too busy swinging a pickaxe at this guy he’s fighting with. I’m saying to myself OK, I’m the lead singer and the guitar player; I’ll carry the show until he quits this. All of a sudden the drums stop. Sam opens up the case for what I thought was a spare bass guitar and it’s a 12-gauge shotgun…

No!

Niki: …and he starts blowing holes in the ceiling of the club! Now I’m the only one left actually playing music here, and at that point I was only wearing a chamois – I’m part native American – and so you’ve got this guy in a loin cloth playing guitar; one guy blowing holes in the ceiling, and another guy swinging a pickaxe. That was M-80. Costa was certifiably insane. This wasn’t an act. You know why he got kicked out by Ozzy?

Something to do with a cheese-grater…

Niki: Worse. He used to bring live bunnies on stage and gut them. And he had a cheese-grater on the back of his guitar, which would grate his stomach while he was playing until there was blood everywhere.

And you thought forming a band with this guy would be a good idea why?

[laughter]

Winston: Yeah, Niki. Why?! Thank you for asking that question, Phoenix. We’ve been waiting for him to answer that for years.

Niki: He was the best bass player ever. I just got a fan mail the other day asking if he was still alive and someone told me they think he’s dead, because no one’s heard from his since. Last time I saw him was at The Rainbow, where he showed up in women’s lingerie, motorcycle boots and smoking a cigar.

So how does one go from shotguns, pickaxes and cheese-graters to recording the soundtrack for The Personals, a documentary about the sex lives of the elderly in New York? Just how kinky ARE old people in Manhattan?

[Laughter]

Niki: Every time I land at JFK, my phone starts ringing. People just know I’m in town. This time, it was Planet Studios. I go down there and am just shooting the shit when this guy comes running down the stairs with complete panic on his face. ‘I need a drummer! I need a drummer!’ Everyone pointed at me. It was Miles Davis’ road manager; we hadn’t seen each other in ten years. Miles used to have a recording studio next to mine and would come in and watch me play. Anyway, this guy was recording the soundtrack for a documentary but his drummer hadn’t shown up. So we played through it for about 45 minutes and then I took off the headphones and said OK, I’m ready to do it. And the guy says: ‘No, you’re done. Don’t touch it.’ They had four days to do it; I did it in 45 minutes, first take – and holy shit, it won an Oscar! You know what my wife said to me? ‘That’s good. What are you going to cook for dinner?’

So your Oscar-winning experience will forever be wedded to the visual of old people having sex?

[More laughter, none of it Niki’s]

Niki: No! Let me tell you something: I have never to this day seen the damned film…
WHO: Play Like Jimi
WHAT: Hendrix resurrected
WHERE: Memphis Bar, St. 118 (Nov 30) & Sharky Bar, St. 130 (Dec 1)
WHEN: 8pm November 30 (Memphis) & December 1 (Sharky’s)
WHY: See ‘What’

Jailhouse rap

It had been a long time since I last went to the circus. The love affair started during childhood, under the travelling big tops that came to small American towns, bringing with them worlds of magic. It then progressed, later in life, to witnessing and taking part in extreme psychedelic sideshows, with glass eating, fire spinning and genital stapling – but it’s probably best not to ask about that. The experience was always a powerful electric shock to the subconscious; something that broke the walls formed by routine, expanded ideas about what it’s possible to do with the body and mind, and filled the soul with infant-like wonder, awe of the world. None of this, however, prepared me for Phare Ponleu Selpak.

The first thing that engages the viewer is the two musicians on stage, with an instrument-to-human ration of about 5:1. Then there’s how they interact and improvise with the circus performers, giving cues back and forth no different than a jamming band. Groups of acrobats work together as if they all occupy a single body. A young man speed paints as performance art. A young contortionist, bent over backwards, uses her feet to shoot a bow and arrow at a balloon.

Most impressively, the whole thing goes beyond the usual role of circus, gripping the viewer’s emotions and carrying them along for a wordless narrative, holding tightly all the way. As Francroix, communications manager of Phare Ponleu Selpak and an acrobat with a decade’s experience, explains: “The technique is there to explain something, to tell a story. In that way, we are similar to a French contemporary circus but it’s Khmer style – telling Khmer stories about how people are living in Cambodia.” Entranced, I decide to run away to Battambang to join the Phare Ponleu Selpak circus school.

The first step was to trace Khmer circus back to its roots. Was this just another export from Europe, carelessly left behind like litter in the late 19^th century? Not even close. Paintings in a 400-year-old pagoda in Kampong Chhnang depict circus acts, as do bas reliefs in Angkor Wat’s Bayon temple, which feature juggling, acrobatics, and acts with animals. All of this coming from a culture which couldn’t possibly have had any contact with the bloodbaths that passed for circuses in ancient Rome.

So where did it go and why did it lie dormant for so many years? Not even historians, the people whose job it is to work that out, have been able to work that out. What’s more important, though, is that it was revived. During the last throes of the Khmer Rouge regime, Cambodian refugees in Vietnam and Russia instinctively knew how urgent it was to preserve something of their culture. That something was circus.

One of these refugees, Narin, trained and studied with other orphaned youths in Russia. With the help of sympathetic Russian, Vietnamese, and Laotian harbourers, she brought her skills back to found the Circus School in the Royal University of Phnom Penh. Khoun Det, a graduate of the programme and fellow refugee, brought a similar vision to what had hitherto been a visual arts school in the Anh Chan village of Battambang province. After eight bumpy hours on a bus, I am finally here.

The environment is alien but soothingly so. A bizzaro campus set up, with a ceaseless jam session from the music school, gives the place a kind of folk festival vibe. The theatre school, animation studio, painting and drawing school, graphic design school, public school and playground are abuzz with children of every age deeply involved in their respective labours of love. Walking straight through, to the right of their home-field big top, leads me to the circus school.

Originally used as a self-defence and gymnastics space, the building still echoes that, albeit with modified equipment. Seven-year-olds from the on-site school cartwheel about gleefully as jugglers practice to the 4/4 timing of their coaches’ “Muy, bpee, bpaiy, bpowun…” Asked for a breakdown of the day, Alex, a volunteer aerials acrobat coach, says: “It depends on the age group. For the very young kids, they come in and they have classes with different instructions in acrobatics and juggling. They come every weekday, sometimes on Saturdays, from eight to twelve o’clock then from two to four o’clock.

“The teenagers, who have been there for quite a while, they train themselves. They’ve already got mad skills; they’re just helping out the younger guys. It’s a big family: they’re all brothers, sisters, uncles and aunties. Then from four to six, some of them have rehearsals depending on what shows are going on. When they’re working with coaches, it’s not really a structured class; they’re working on their own specific stuff for the shows that they’re involved in.” This particular circus stays in the family, too: most graduates come straight back to teach others and help keep the project alive.

Having asked nicely, I’m given free use of this extraordinary space – along with the thoughtful advice to stretch first – in order to try out my own circus skills. Spinning, flipping, climbing, and suspending, I taste the peace and clarity that lies on the other side of concentration and focus. But that doesn’t come before numerous entertaining pratfalls. An inexpertly mounted aerial silk can swing from side to side, nearly colliding with other gymnasts, as I learn. Back flips cannot be done on suspended rings unless immediately following a front flip: arms, as it turns out, simply don’t bend that way. It’s clear these guys are physically and psychologically light years beyond that.

Being naturally hypermobile (double jointed) in all four ball-and-socket joints, I thought I might have a natural advantage. While that isn’t entirely untrue, there’s a lot more to it than I’d expected. It requires years of practice and training, as well as upper body strength. Apparently, I have neither.`

This puts into perspective just how much discipline these young circus students have inside them. Since 2003, their first tour of Europe, they’ve returned there every summer and are today received with increasing enthusiasm in France, Germany, Spain and the UK. Their act has also graced the stages of Manila, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, China, Korea, Japan, Tasmania and Algeria. Here in Cambodia, they now plan to visit Phnom Penh once a month and are in the process of building their own tent in Siem Reap.

With the taming of all this talent, surely their parents must be beaming with pride? Actually, come to think of it, how do traditional Khmer villagers respond to so colourful a career choice? It wasn’t easy at first, say the students. Srey Bandoul, founder of the visual arts school, recalls: “People thought circus, for the girls,” he gestures with his hands around his belly, “they cannot get pregnant.” Says Francois: “At first, it was difficult for them to accept it because the circus is very close; it’s very touchy feely and they’re on the stage. We spent a lot of time explaining what circus is.” Today, smiling parents can be seen in the front row during every performance.

The next show coming to the capital, directed by the first generation of circus graduates, is being staged with the Philippine Educational Theatre Association. Eclipse is a dark tale of discrimination, alienation and divine retribution. “This is one of our most theatrical,” says Zoe, one of the circus administrators. “It’s also very Khmer; you don’t see the influence of Western cultures like in other shows that we have.”

WHO: The circus
WHAT: Eclipse
WHERE: Beeline Arena, Chroy Changvar Peninsula (2^nd right after Japanese Bridge)
WHEN: 6pm November 24
WHY: “Circus art is about courage, solidarity, and peace.” – Phare Ponleu Selpak founder, Khoun Det

The time it’s war

It is written by Chinese military tactician Sun Tzu in his ancient sacred treatise The Art of War that “if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.” The immortal words of this legendary general have been put into deadly effect over the millennia by some of history’s most accomplished warmongers, among them Mao Tse Tung, the Viet Cong, and the US Army. The odds of such tactics being deployed during Battle of the Bands II, however, are about as high as those of World War III being triggered by a ten-pin bowling match.

Or are they? Take The 33 Strategies of War: distilled nuggets of warmongering wisdom from the likes of Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexander the Great and Tzu, applied to the trials and tribulations of life in the 21st century. As eight of the capital’s maddest and baddest bands charge Sharky’s for the rock bar’s second annual bloodfest, they’d perhaps do well to remember a few of its most pugnacious gems. Worthy of note, for example, might be numbers 10: Create a Threatening Presence (Deterrence Strategies); 30: Penetrate Their Minds (Communication Strategies), and 22: Know How To End Things (The Exit Strategy). There may even be sufficient wiggle room for a spot of 33: Sow Uncertainty and Panic Through Acts of Terror (The Chain Reaction Strategy).

For as Jack Black, in the guise of music teacher/ frustrated rock star Dewey Finn, put it so eloquently in School of Rock, entering any Battle of the Bands will test “your head and your mind and your brain”.

At stake are more than just bragging rights. Says Sharky’s music manager, Dave: “It’s a stepping stone, especially for the younger up-and-coming bands. It’s a great showcase, there’s no doubt about that. Any band who wins it is gonna be in more magazines; get more publicity, appear on the radio more…” Last year’s winners, The Anti-Fate, walked away with $200 and a diary bulging with gigs. Judges will be on the lookout for, among other things, quality of musicianship, and stage presence. “It’s down to essentially the rapport they get between the audience and the band. It’s their ability to entertain the audience the best, for whatever reason.” Let battle commence!

The sound of silence

Ludwig van Beethoven’s legacy looms large over classical music: nine symphonies, 32 piano sonatas, 16 string quartets, a plethora of quintets, trios and concertos. Well aware of his prodigious musical abilities, the German composer once remarked of himself, “Beethoven can write music, thank God – but he can do little else on Earth.”

There is an underlying poignancy to this statement, despite its self-aggrandising third person iteration, for although Beethoven could indeed write masterful music, he could not hear it. In a cruel twist of fate’s knife, by the composer’s middle age he was almost completely deaf. Although he continued to compose until the end of his days, the distress caused by his condition was profound. At the premiere of his acclaimed Ninth Symphony, he turned to receive the riotous applause of the enraptured audience; hearing silence and nothing more, he wept.

Despite being deaf as a doornail, Beethoven is credited with having changed the face of classical music, in particular chamber music. Oft described as ‘rational people conversing’, chamber music was designed to be performed in palace chambers by a small group of instrumentalists to an intimate and, more often than not, aristocratic audience. Haydn, Beethoven’s mentor and self-appointed ‘father of chamber music’, was initially supportive of his protégé’s chamber compositions; that is, until the young pretender surpassed his teacher in skill and fame. In a fit of pique, Haydn took to ridiculing his former friend, and the two behemoths of chamber music parted ways forever.

Almost 200 years later, Beethoven and Haydn are being brought into harmony once more. The Kuala Lumpur Piano Trio will be playing chamber music by the two estranged maestros, as well as a selection of their contemporaries, as part of the InterContinental Phnom Penh Concert Series 2012. The concert traverses time and space, bringing the sound of Enlightenment Vienna to contemporary Phnom Penh, performed by musicians from Vietnam, Malaysia and the UK.

Diverse in nationality, the Kuala Lumpur Trio are nevertheless united in virtuosity. Violinist Nguyen My Huong is a fixture at the Hanoi Philharmonic; Bang Hean has played the piano in orchestras from London to Hong Kong; Steve Retallick is the principal cellist at the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra. Combined, such musical prowess makes for a ‘passionate collaboration – the hallmark of an exceptional chamber music ensemble’. Riotous applause is guaranteed to ensue. It’s just a shame that Beethoven won’t be able to hear it.

WHO: Kuala Lumpur Piano Trio
WHAT: Beethoven, Haydn, and contemporaries
WHERE: Intercontinental Ballroom 2, InterContinental Hotel
WHEN: 7pm September 1
WHY: You can still hear Beethoven, but Beethoven cannot hear you

The Elvis presley of R&B

Godfather of Soul; Original Disco Man; Mr Dynamite: James Brown, the ‘hardest working man in show business’, inspired almost as many honorific titles as he did devotees. From first hit Please Please Please in 1956, his transformation of gospel fervour into the explosive intensity of rhythm & blues determined the destiny of soul, funk and rap.

A child of the Great Depression, Brown picked cotton, shined shoes and spent three years in Alto Reform School, Georgia. It was there he first met Bobby Byrd, leader of a gospel group JB later joined before being lured to the secular scene by the slamming live sound of rock ‘n’ roll legend Fats Domino. As flamboyant front-man for the James Brown Revue, Brown reportedly shed up to 7lbs a night in sweat as he whirled around stage, theatrically donning and doffing his cape and feigning the occasional heart attack. The Elvis Presley of R&B, according to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, he racked up an astonishing 114 entries on Billboard’s R&B singles chart and amassed a total of 800 songs in his repertoire.

Also like Elvis, he’s inspired a legion of tribute ensembles – among them Supabad, a Bangkok-based ménage of mostly music teachers dedicated to the “super heavy, gritty funk” sound synonymous with the ultimate Sex Machine. A big band for a big man, their horn-rich homage to a musical and cultural revolutionary cuts it with the best. “James Brown completely revolutionised the world of modern music,” says guitarist, percussionist and backing vocalist David ‘DJ Kermie’ Cameron. “We’re just starting to see that. Michael Jackson wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for JB. So many dance moves, beats and riffs have been lifted off JB that it’s just impossible to imagine what any kind of modern music would sound like without his influence.”

What would JB make of today’s R&B? “He’d dig the more underground stuff no one hears, such as Goodie Mob, but he’d be appalled with all the processing and artificiality of much of today’s music. James liked it loud, hard and dirty – not too neat and clean, if you know what I mean. We’re really focused on the ‘larger than life’ aspect. The sequinned suits; jump suits; hairy chest; big hair – his time in the ‘70s, when he was truly becoming the Number One Soul Brother. That seems to work best for us.”

Making his debut when Supabad perform at The FCC in August is new front-man Mike Humble (their former front-man is hanging up his wig this summer “because he’s pulled the splits a few too many times”). “Mike is a respected blues and soul singer here in Bangkok and also plays a mean blues harp,” says the band’s founder, Mark Bourgeouis. “He’s British but has a classic soul voice… and has played many gigs in a variety of bad, brightly coloured suits, so he has the wardrobe and the attitude to fill the shoes of James Brown.” Supabad will also be unveiling a new tenor sax player, Anton Fenech. “Both are part of the Famous Blues Brothers Review Band here, so they’re used to performing in character.

“Funk is definitely about ‘feel’, and as white boys we have to work a bit harder at it, but we have a great rhythm section that lays down an excellent platform for our horn section and soloists. Reproducing this act in an authentic way has been a challenge, especially the music for the horn parts. That just isn’t available on the internet or anything. It all had to be scored out from the original recordings.”

Devotees can expect a mixture of James Brown standards such as I Got You; Sex Machine, and Get on the Goodfoot, as well as some of the more obscure tracks such as My Thang, from the Hell album, and Ain’t it Funky Now from Jungle Groove. Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag from 1965 is dedicated, of course, to the purists. “Fans can expect a high-energy funk show, and they better come ready to shake it.”

WHO: Supabad
WHAT: The super heavy, gritty funk sound of James Brown
WHERE: The FCC, Sisowath Quay
WHEN: 9pm August 10 and 11
WHY: Because you’re super bad too

Flash dance

For all the hype around modern technology’s supposed ability to bring us together, all too often it keeps us cut off from our fellow man, woman and the environment. We’re encapsulated in the little bubbles we create around us with our iPods, mobile phones, ear buds, song lists or podcasts. But on July 7, one group will attempt to use that technology to break down some of those barriers on a global scale.

“Our gadgets do more to isolate than to unite,” says Danny Silk, online media strategist with education NGO PEPY and one of the brains behind the Global Floating Dance Party, which will be celebrated locally. “But technology has come to the point where so much is possible, so we wanted to do something that would bring people together, along with their environment.”

What started as a late-night, trans-continental Skype conversation has since evolved into a worldwide shindig where folk will gather en masse to dance and party to the same tunes in 25 locations across 12 countries, from Buenos Aires to Beijing and beyond. It works like this: people download a playlist that was crowd-sourced and put together by a DJ from Ghana. Then they gather at a predetermined spot (here it’s Siem Reap, where party-goers have been asked to arrive at 6:30pm). Just before 7pm, the countdown begins. At zero everyone hits ‘play’ – and the party begins, with everyone listening to the same tracks at the same time.

The DJ has compiled an eclectic 90 minutes of music from around the world. “This is a chance for people in Jordan and Costa Rica to hear Khmer dance music for the first time,” says Silk, originally from Lowell in Massachusetts, which has the second-largest Cambodian population in the US after Long Beach, California. “It’s meant to be a celebration of space and technology and dance.”

The event might sound like a rave, but it’s not going to disturb the locals with techno blaring from loudspeakers in the middle of town. This is a silent party – except for those plugged in, of course. And that’s the point, Silk says: no one wants to anger the police, or the neighbours. All they want to do is bring people together through music. If you have headphones and an MP3 player, you’re welcome to join in the worldwide fun.

WHO: Groovy types
WHAT: Global Floating Dance Party
WHEN: 7pm July 7
WHERE: Royal Palace Gardens, Siem Reap
WHY: It’s a worldwide flash dance

Category: Music