Irreverent, informed and downright eclectic books and reportage from Southeast Asia and beyond
Had the pleasure to hang out with Italian writer, traveler and former punk rock impresario Marco Ferrarese. Marco, who has lived in Asia for four years and is currently a resident of Penang in Malaysia, runs the website Monkeyrockworld, which focuses on young people’s travel and alternative youth culture in Asia, or as its author [...]
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 [...]
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.
Swedish photographer Gerhard Joren has produced a short documentary on the birth of Bangkok-based band Pussy & The Learjets.
The two and a half minute film documents the Rock’n’Roll band’s live debut at The Overstay on January 15th.
The four piece, formed in late 2010, is currently playing dates around Bangkok, Thailand and will record a first [...]
Bangkok is not a rocknroll town, at least not in the literal sense of the word. And the city´s burgeoning punk scene is a modest affair - a tiny conglomeration of young bands, some good, some bad, some ugly, who have few venues to play and no one to play to, except each other.
Last night, [...]
Bernd Manis Enders and his gang of surf punk reprobates, the Klong Riders, returned for the all night Psycho Mama concert to the Overstay, Bangkok’s skuzziest hotel and most informal music venue, last night.
The Overstay, in Thonburi, has all the characteristics, both positive and negative, of a crusty squat in Barcelona, Leipzig or Zürich in [...]
Visited the Les Rencontres monster photo exhibition in Arles. Some 60 exhibitions show a huge variety of photography from reportage to conceptual art and everything in between.
This years highlights, for me at least, included Taryn Simon from New York who shot a serious of stunning images called The Innocents, which document the stories of individuals [...]
The excellent instrumental surf guitar punk band The Klong Riders recently performed a nostalgia set at The Overstay, formerly a brothel, currently a squat, scuzzy guest house and sometime concert venue in Bangkok, Thailand. Plenty of beer spilled on the cracked linoleum floor, plus sonic terror and an audience as enthusiastic as a castle of [...]
The crowd surges forward. The singer, a 40 something skinny white guy, screams into the microphone, which has been taped to the top of a camera stand. The room is so hot that water drops from the ceiling. The linoleum is coming off the floor in long torn rolls of dirty plastic. The drums thud [...]
This story goes back a bit…to the 30th of August, 2005, to be exact.
“The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.” - Hunter S Thompson
The early evening light is dying across the [...]