Travels Soundtrack: Southeast Asia

There's certainly no dearth of songs about Vietnam, my first stop in southeast Asia. I can only think of like two right now, but I'm sure there's a ton. Anyway, 'Born in the USA' by the Boss gets my selection as the headlining song on my Vietnamese soundtrack. I like this video a little bit extra because it's in France.





Onwards to Cambodia, with an easy selection for 'Holiday in Cambodia' by the Dead Kennedys. I don't actually have this on my MP3 player, but I imagined listening to it while I was there. Another politically/socially critical song, but there's not much else to say in music about SE Asia. At least until you get to Thailand...





The above video was apparently made by some 10th grader. Thanks, kid.

Now to Laos. I don't know any songs that reference or are about Laos, but some of the Vietnam war protest songs might be appropriate since we dropped more bombs on Laos during the Vietnam war than we did on Vietnam. Anyway, this song is at least somewhat relevant to Laos, considering the government there is a bunch of commies, or close enough for all you people who know what these sorts of political terms mean.





I listened to this song a lot. I happily discovered in on my MP3 player in southern Laos as Adam was incapacitated when I chose a band at random to listen to; I have a lot of bands I've never heard of on my MP3 player, for just this reason.

Thailand is my final entry for southeast Asia. I was tempted to go with this little ditty by Steven Seagal. Seriously. Seagal has released two albums. I don't know if his video is actually supposed to be Thailand or another SE Asian country, but I think Thailand is the best bet. Either way, I feel pity for the poor girl that has to touch him in the video.

No, the clear choice for Thailand is Murray Head's 80s classic 'One Night in Bangkok'.




After I failed to hitchhike by sea from Thailand to India (so much for any sitars in this series of posts) I went back through Laos and China. Feel free to listen to 'Reds in My Bed' and 'China Girl' again.

Next up: central and western Asia.

Travels Soundtrack: East Asia

When I started traveling, early on, somewhere in Russia, I got the entirely novel idea to listen to songs about the places I was traveling through.

The natural choice for Russia is Back in the USSR by the Beatles, but I'm going to use that for all the ex-Soviet states, so instead my selection for Russia is 'Siberian Breaks' by MGMT.

I didn't embed it because I don't actually recommend that you watch the whole video. Like Siberia itself, this song is long and mostly boring. It's not really a great song, despite what hipster contrarians will tell you. The rest of their second album is masterful though.

Next stop Mongolia. This is a NOFX classic from my high school days - 'All Outta Angst'. It's not entirely about Mongolia, but there's a short verse about it. Close enough.



And then China. Good ol' China. I made a point to listen to 'China Girl' by David Bowie. Not really about China, but what the hell, it's a great song, and it beats 'Chinese Democracy' by Guns N Roses.




Rewinding a bit, I don't really know any songs about Korea. I was technically traveling in Korea, although I lived there long enough that I don't really consider it much of traveling any more. Regardless, I'll throw you all a great song that's about a certain neighborhood in Korea. I was going to go with the sublime majesty of Girl's Generation's 'Gee', but instead, you get 'Itaewon Freedom' by M/V, of which, for a long period of time, I just couldn't get enough.




Next installment: southeast Asia.

Trike!

Mother and I happened to be in the right subway car at the right time in Berlin. Although at first, when I saw this dude setting up his keyboard, I was ready to ignore him and the violin-toting chick he was with so I wouldn't have to hand over some change to buskers I had no interest in. Just a natural reaction to people that look for money from me, but these guys deserve a lot of credit, and a bit of money.

The song they played over the course of three subway stops was awesome. The video above is just a piece of Love is a Temperature Thing I shot on Mother's camera. The duo is Canadian and the dude played the keyboard and sang, and did both quite theatrically. The chick played the violin and tap-danced in heavily duct-taped shoes.

They go by the name of Trike. The guy had enough time to tell me about a show they were playing the following night, which I went to because it's Berlin, and if you don't see some sort of show here, you're not doing something right.

It was in a dingy garage of a shack. The first band played some stripped down but very excellent covers of such diverse acts as the Specials, Michael Jackson, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, and other shit I didn't recognize. The second band was four chicks, but I didn't really listen to them because my friend from Laos arrived and we were outside talking.

Trike was last and their whole show was as theatrical and entertaining as the subway song. They had little dances to go with some songs, and even their own dance and song called the Trikey. It's simple, but I still had trouble with it because I suck at dancing. It was possibly the most entertaining show I'd been to since I saw GoGo Star at some multi-venue AIDS benefit night in Hongdae.