mega low manya

Starting last summer I felt the need to seek out some good live music in Bangkok.  For various reasons it didn’t happen last year, mostly due to my laziness and general homebody tendencies.  This time I’ve renewed my goal of seeking out something that could be considered original music in the city, preferably performed by a Thai band.  Bangkok has plenty of night-life venues that feature live music but inevitably they are cover bands playing hopelessly meandering versions of Western or Thai hits.  These bands have their place, and they can even be enjoyable if you approach them with the right attitude, some fun friends, and the right attitude.

But I know there must be something out there a little more inventive, interesting, even dare I say Indie?  I came across a website called Bangkok Recorder that gives listings for different trendy acts around town, most often clustered around an entertainment district called RCA.  Last week I noticed a listing on the recorder for this show.  The concert featured four locally based acts, and it was to be held at a small art gallery in the RCA district.  I was intrigued, and after listening to songs from the perspective bands on their myspace pages, I heard enough things I liked to convince me that it was worth a try.  I showed up with two friends a little before 10 to avoid the cover charge and we sat against the wall in the tiny art/music space being used for the show.  It was a very very small room, maybe 20×40 feet.  There was room for maybe 15 people seated against the wall and that put you less than 10 feet from the music.  The first group came on which consisted of a farang guy and a thai women.  They both had laptops and other assorted electronic music tools that I don’t really know how to describe.  They proceeded to make a horibble mix of screeches, disjointed noises, and god knows what else at extremely loud levels.  Behind them, on a blank white wall, projected abstract images flashed between different non-aligned shapes and colors. I know I sound like an old man when I say this but it seemed like the kind of music you could only enjoy with a fair amount of some sort of recreational drug in your system, and this is coming from someone who I like to believe has very open and all-accepting taste when it comes to music. I can handle loud music if it remotely resembles good music but this was just god-awful horrible.  In fact, I think I am being too generous calling it music. I covered my ears and after a few minutes had to retreat to a small room closer to the front door.  Within five minutes I was outside again with my friends and I made the decision to call it a night and head back to my apartment, it was really that bad.

I know I should have stuck it out until the the next acts came out.  I had really liked some of the things on the other groups myspace pages but I just couldn’t do it.  I usually love tiny venues but in this case it was just too small to have to sit jammed up against the kind of horribleness that I was faced with.  It makes me laugh now thinking that I seem to have found one extreme (ubiquitously lame cover band) and the other (electronic noise making ear hurting) and have yet to find something in the middle.  I know it’s out there in this very large city. I’ll be sure to let you know when I find it.

Postscript-I just found a clip of the performance that I described to you above.  Maybe some of you will not be as offended by it as I was.  But remember, take the loudest volume your computer can produce and multiply it by 100 and you have MEGA LOW MANYA in all their abject glory.