Ok….
hello dilli haat
everything is ok just want to inform u ur one mirror of the front wall upstair is broken which is not good for goodluck please repair it soon . when i pass by bus trough ur restarant i always see i dont have ur phone number otherwise i could have called u an informed u
best of luck
Posted by charan, on 01/22/2008 at 19:43
If you’d pulled me aside thirty years back and told me that this year I’d be watching the The Buzzcocks in Bangkok, likely I’d be inclined to verbally slap you a bit to bring some sense back into the conversation. Of course I wouldn’t have as I’m not a violent person by nature ( the last person I hit was Nicky Hager in the 4th Form, and I’ve felt guilt since).
But tonight there I was, in the rather agreeable but still fairly rockn’roll surroundings of Club Culture near Victory Monument (which wasn’t actually a victory at all) grooving along to The Buzzcocks. The fucking Buzzcocks….
We used to laugh at the 60s acts in the 1980s touring their handful of hits around the workingman’s clubs of the UK and periodically making it to NZ. The likes of The Searchers and The Hollies. And I’m still one to sneer at the poor old Human League and ABC, or for that matter most acts from the ’77 batch doing the traps three decades on. The only Class of ’77 acts I’d cross the road to see would be Paul Weller or Elvis Costello.
And the fucking Buzzcocks.
I mean, they had the tunes, and if the 2009 reissues of the first three albums gave us anything, it was that those are likely the best pop records of their generation, bar none. Tell me a pop anthem from the last half of that decade that tops Ever Fallen In Love or Promises. And they came, they flared, and they burnt out in a fairly gracious way. And, of course Pete Shelley gave us Homosapien which, in it’s 12″ dub, was both a dancefloor monster and, forgivably, the prototype for everything electroclash, twenty plus years on. Tune indeed (and the album is no slouch). 
It was a mixed crowd of 1000 or so, about 50% UK expats, 30% Thai and the rest mixed. I loved the anonymity of it all, that being something I’ve enjoyed in Bali too. The nature of my history means that it’s hard to do these sorts of gigs in Auckland without some, admittedly often pleasant, closing in.
We had drinks downstairs in the open air bar before we went it. It was as much a show as the band was later one. Faded punks thirty years on are an interesting bunch.
And as Brigid said, being surrounded by the English on holiday does wonders for one’s physical self esteem.
There was a Thai Elvis impersonator playing to half a dozen people in the restaurant. We gave him a 20B tip and went in.
The support act, I have no idea what they were called, looked like Harry Potter and band but were actually really bloody good in a tight pop punk way. They looked like they had the legs to travel, and I mused that if they were anywhere in the Western world they’d likely be doing MTV & commercially rather well. They had the looks and the tunes.
A brief break, with some quite tastefully informed between band tunes (smatterings of 60′s punk, Big Star etc, plus a few 70′s and early ’80s tunes..there is something quite special hearing 500 increasingly drunken Englishmen, as they mostly seemed to be by that stage, singing Love Will Tear Us Apart as if they were straight off the benches at Old Trafford) and the arrival of the Thai punks and the confused blonde Swedish hairdressers, who, like about 30% of the crowd, would not have been born much before the band’s 1989 reunion. Some of the younger crew had their spiffing brand new Singles Going Steady or Sex Pistols shirts on (unlike a few of the more ancient folks who, despite the fact they’d doubled in size, had inadvisably decided to ignore any remaining style instincts left after all those Special Brews had done their work, and squeeze into that Adverts shirt one last time. Cheers for that..)
Then came the headliners. No fuss, no great announcement, they just wandered on stage, tuned up a bit, like the band at the local pub, and then blatted into Boredom which segued effortlessly, hardly surprising after all these years I guess, into the mighty Fast Cars.
I last saw the band in, I think, about 1990, and my first impression this time was that Shelley looked like a happy off duty bus driver (he seems to have shrunk vertically and grown horizontally..haven’t we all) and Steve Diggle, in spotted shirt, had something of the Bruce Forsythe about him. Who would’ve thought that in 1979?
And Brigid and I wondered too, what the very fat guys with cheap striped polo shirts tucked into their walk shorts would’ve looked like in 1979?
But, y’know, it was The Buzzcocks…..the fucking Buzzcocks, one more time.
And then the first Englishman crashed the stage and knocked over Pete & his amps and staggered up to a victorious meathead arms in the air yeah, before being politely, this being Thailand where even the punks say sorry, tossed off the stage by the bouncers. He deserved something firmer as the rest of the band hobbled vocals-less through the last half of Autonomy, and Shelley had to borrow an amp and swap guitars.
And the scouse wanker who had the poor Thai girl by the throat outside the toilets (people were intervening rather quickly, thank god) needed, and likely was, given the anger of the approaching staff, a swift explanation as to why his behavior was utterly unacceptable, which if he couldn’t understand, led to something sterner from the two cops standing outside.
Some people should not travel, or for that matter, leave their shitty council flat.
But, it rolled into What Do I Get and onwards, then Steve Diggle’s moment, a longish Harmony In My Head, where he had the same Man U fans singing the chorus en mass. It was well cool. I smiled and sang a lot.
We wandered out after the encore of Oh Shit, Ever Fallen in Love (in which the Swedish girls seemed to finally find a song to know..must be the Shrek effect) and Orgasm Addict, to get a taxi before the masses swamped them.
So, yes, it was nostalgia (which, sadly they didn’t play..and no Love Battery...no Love Battery), and it was a bunch of old folks mostly singing along with the tunes one more time.
But It was The Buzzcocks…the fucking Buzzcocks.
Yay.
Those promises..ohhhh…are made for us..ohhh….
I guess I hit a brick wall in Bali. After years, it was hard to see it going anywhere. And I needed some urban. So, we packed the bags and moved to Bangkok, where, insanely, we know almost nobody. But, we reassure ourselves, it’s rather close to a lot of people I do know, and rather more, for want of a better phrase, in the world.
For the reasons I touched on in my last post, and for the ongoing and increasing frustrations of doing business and the creeping pollution (garbage everywhere and ongoing raw sewage into the swimming beaches) and traffic gridlock, I’d really had enough. And I increasingly felt that driving on the roads of the island was an ongoing lottery with only one unhappy end result likely..through no fault of mine I was likely to end up in an accident which would kill or maim someone sooner or later. Everyday I got behind the wheel of my car it weighed on me, that the insanity and mayhem on the jalans would likely one day mean that I was held responsible for an injury caused by the irrational, deathwish driving of almost everyone on the island.
Or it was the batshit crazy expats..you’d start talking to reasonably rational people and then they’d wander off into some treatise about their recent journey through their past lives, or you’d meet some wonderful soul who, it turns out, has made a small fortune by paying far flung villages a pittance for their ancient artifacts, often ancestral gravestones or the like, which they’ve either shipped off to abroad for an obscenely inflated markup. Or there are the shysters and devolopers who are selling hugely overpriced property on dodgy landtitles or with fake guarantees of freehold (Indonesian law, regardless of whatever trick of the eye (or proxy) you may pull, is very clear: unless you are Indonesian you can not and likely never will be able to own land). Many of these are celebrated in the grimace inducing paean to insubstantiality, The Yak.
Yes it’s gruesome.
But oh so fabulous…
So we left.
For that, the one thing that the years in Bali, and the many other excursions in recent years into other parts of Indonesia, and across Asia have given me is an increased sense of understanding. Or I hope so.
I understand now that I was never really a foreigner in the UK, or Europe, nor in most of the US. I thought I was, but simply put, we were just variations on the same rules. In Asia however the rules are completely different. Confidence shakingly so. Nothing I’d learned, been told, or understood worked anymore as it was supposed to. You take nothing for granted, especially when living day to day outside the comfortable tourist routines. You want to set up a utilities account? Start learning… You want to pay that bill? Start learning…. and so on, and on.
I go back to New Zealand and the things I now, without a blink, regard as normal, may as well be from another galaxy. And I realise how much I’ve changed and, maybe, learned.
And Thailand is a slightly (make that substantially) more developed and sophisticated nation than Indonesia, thus the culture shock is radically less than that encountered by the naive New Zealanders arriving in paradise a few years back.
We thought about jumping back to New Zealand, but to be honest, after some years in Asia, we decided the culture shock for us would likely be worse on that return than when we arrived in Asia, plus the sense of isolation we sometimes feel there on our trips back would perhaps be suffocating for us right now, although it doesn’t stop me missing the place. I may retire, if and when, to some beach in NZ, but then, likely too, I may end my years in some part of China or South East Asia, but right now the ease of travel and the crush of millions of other souls pushes the right buttons. Did I mention the food…..
I guess irrational impulsiveness is both a personal strength and weakness, but without it I’d never have made a record or done large parts of what I’ve done and got such joy from doing over the past decades. The trip continues…
A few years back, on my first adult visit to Bangkok, we were hit by the normal scam merchants…the ones they now warn you about just about everywhere. On our first day we went up river to the Palace / Wat Po compex, as most tourists tend to. We were approached by a guy just off the boat. He was well dressed, charming, and very helpful.
The palace is closed today….it’s the King’s birthday and you cannot go in.
Back then, there weren’t the multitude of signs everywhere warning you about the scams and the seasoned guys who do this as a con. Now they say things like:
Indeed.
But back then we listened, and he drew notations and circles on our maps.
You need to go to the this temple instead, and maybe to this place, where they’ve got a massive sale on gems. Oh look, here’s a Tuktuk…this guy will take you for 10 Baht…
I may be the sort of guy who’ll buy a long playing album off anyone who tells me it’s a must have instant classic (and yes, I know you own it already, but it’s remastered, ok?), but I’m not anyone’s random tuktuk passenger, so we declined. The next guy down the road told us it was open but we were inappropriately dressed, the next guy said it was closed after midday, and so on….
The next day a very friendly, slightly overweight woman approached us in Siam Square…closed till 11am said she, flashing her Tourist Police ID…. the sort we were to discover you can buy anywhere in Khao San Rd… and suggested we go in a friendly taxi elsewhere until it opened.
The scam, of course, then develops in one of several directions, many of which involve fake gems or angry salesmen. Some involve doped drinks with removed wallets and passports, and so on.
The Thai police mostly have a policy of warning and then going ‘stupid bloody farangs’ if you don’t pay attention.
I wonder what the near future held for this happy couple, far below the Skytrain concourse we were on near Chit Lom Station last week. This extraordinarily helpful businessman (don’t you ask why they’re so helpful?) spent the best part of ten minutes drawing on their tourist map, pointing in directions before sending them on their way. By the looks of their ‘we’re in the tropics now’ dress and manner, they’d just arrived on a long saved for holiday after a trip to the city from whichever country town in Australia or New Zealand they lived in (note the very snatchable purse over her shoulders). The grandchildren and the extended family had all seen them off for the big OE.
And what an adventure was in store.
Shortly after leaving Mr. Helpful, the two, no doubt commenting to each other as to their luck in meeting such a decent, and thoroughly generous guy, likely a businessman out for a coffee, happy to assist a couple of Bangkok novices, conveniently bumped into another helpful local (gosh, they’re everywhere)-the woman in the photo below:
And oh yes, a little older, and a little chubbier, but it was her….the nice lady from the ‘Tourist Police’ a few years back, still helping out confused looking tourists. A few minutes after this shot was taken, she hailed a convenient cab, and sent these two on their way….to either, if they’re lucky, realising that the gems they bought are rather overpriced bits of glass, or, if they are less fortunate, waking up 24 hours later with empty pockets and maxxed out credit cards.
There was little we could do beyond wave and hope.
