Wednesday, November 14, 2007

If It's Sunday, This Must Be Kâmpóng Saôm










Continuing through my breezy social calendar of "highbrow faggotry" (a term coined elsewhere)...

On Sunday night I dragged J. to a concert by Long Beach band Dengue Fever at Goleta's inimitable Mercury Lounge. That link to the band's MySpace page includes music clips, including the infectious Sni Bong, for which you can also see a video here.

Dengue's brand of resurrected 1970s "psychedelic" Khmer rock is just plain fun, and it was enjoyable to see them perform in a bar rather than in the somewhat sterile auditorium or theater setting that I'm used to seeing most "world music"–type acts perform in.

I need to finally pick up a CD by Dengue (eBay and Amazon.com truly love me). The concert also prompted me to do a little bit of research, and it's always interesting to discover (hail, Wikipedia!) information such as the tragic biography of Khmer diva Ros Sereysothea.

Update: An interesting article from the UK Guardian that details Khmer rock and includes references to Dengue Fever, lead singer Chhom Nimol, and Ros.

6 comments:

Ladrón de Basura (a.k.a. Junk Thief) said...

You can never have too much Khmer rock. However, having the actual dengue fever not the band twice is much more than I ever hope to have again in this lifetime.

Dave said...

Wow, I love these guys. Thanks for bringing them to our attention.

Hold me closer, Sni Bong...

Joe said...

ldb: sorry to hear you've been stricken with the fever twice. I was lucky to have only a tinge of malaria when I was in Africa.

dave: glad you love them! they're great fun live, so you should see them if you ever get a chance.

Ladrón de Basura (a.k.a. Junk Thief) said...

Fortunately I've had malaria only once too, and I got it in West Africa. Huh, is it like a problem there or what? I remember locals saying over breakfast "I feel a touch of malaria this morning" with no more concern than people here would say they felt a slight sore throat. When I came back and it recurred, my local clinic went insane as if I'd brought home the plague. I was a star patient, and I had a lot of nurses and techs that were excited to meet me since I was the first live case of malaria they'd ever met. Their over reaction was quite interesting. We really should swap Burkina tales sometime.

Joe said...

ldb: I keep meaning to write you an email and chat about Burkina, but... you know.... distractions. ;-)

The truth is, of course, for "locals" in areas of the world where it's a problem, 98% of the time "a touch of malaria" is as commonplace as a touch of flu. BFD -- go get some pills at the chemist's... haha.

Ladrón de Basura (a.k.a. Junk Thief) said...

Okay, Kusala/Max/Joe -- next time I'm in SB or you're in SF we should chat over a cup of Taureg tea and compare stories of Burkina, Mali and points beyond. Though I'd settle for tapas too.