Irreverent, informed and downright eclectic crime fiction and reportage from Southeast Asia and beyond
In 1999, I first visited the Moken sea nomads/sea gypsies in Ko Surin Marine National Park in Thailand. I had been recording indigenous music around Asia for the British Library for some years. Thailand had not been on my usual routes, I spent most of my time in India, Pakistan and Nepal in the 90s. [...]
In 1998 I traveled from Kathmandu to Istanbul overland. At the time I was recording indigenous music across Asia in collaboration with The British Library’s National Sound Archive/International Music Collection. I recorded street musicians, folk musicians, religious performers and street corner drunks. I worked in Nepal, India, The Philippines, Thailand, Iran and Pakistan. In Pakistan, [...]
Bangkok based photographer Michael LaPalme witnessed many of the 2011 shows of Pussy & The Learjets, Bangkok’s loudest RocknRoll band. The Learjets have been defunct for more than a year with Pussy absconding to China and the rest of the band involved in other projects. Michael also shot The Learjets in the studio. Now he’s [...]
From the vaults…a new track by Pussy & The Learjets, who played Bangkok punk rock for twelve months and then crashed and burned, as any great band should. This is a cover on The Thirteenth Floor Elevators You’re Gonna Miss Me, a huge song. And yes, I played guitar for The Learjets. With Manis on [...]
Seems like British hip hop legend Gobshite aka Grant Mgc Massey, currently based in Phnom Penh, continues to get mileage out of my recent story on the Cambodian capital’s cultural resurgence. The feature, which first appeared in The Guardian in April is now online at Bangkok 101, the Thai capital’s most exciting English language magazine, [...]
Long time collaborator and documentary film maker Marc Eberle has released a new promo video of The Cambodian Space Project. Have Visa No Have Rice is the new killer song by Asia’s Greateful Dead, based on singer Srey Thy‘s struggle to get a visa to tour in France. The video is shot mostly in Phnom [...]
Bangkok’s loudest RocknRoll band, Pussy & The Learjets, featuring my alter ego, Tom Learjet, on guitar, may not be rumbling through the Thai capital’s music venues right now, but the band led by the amazing, incredible Om aka Pussy still has a pulse. Bassist Manis On Fire has been digging through our extensive back catalogue [...]
Punk‘s been pretty dead in Europe for decades and in the US, this particular counterculture never really took off. But in today’s South and Southeast Asia, young kids turn to anti-culture in an effort to distance themselves from ultra conservative pears who leave no room for personal expression. Punks in Burma playing secret concerts in [...]
When I first traveled around Asia in the early 1990s, I collaborated with the British Library on a long term recording project of indigenous music from the region. Hundreds of hours of recordings from Pakistan to the Philippines resulted from these travels and they are now deposited with the British Library’s International Music Collection part [...]
Tom Vater reports on Pussy & The Learjets – Bangkok’s loudest Rock’n’Roll band – in the February issue of Traversing the Orient Magazine, published in Thailand and the Philippines. For more info on the band, visit The Learjets’ Website. Images by Aroon Thaewchatturat.