So I’ve been a little lazy with this whole blog thing and quite a bit has happened since our last entry. We went for a bit of a band holiday on an island called Koh Samet and had a nice few relaxing days away. While I did at least, Haydn and Badger on the other hand had one crazy party hahaha. On our second night in Samet Haydn ended up passing out on a rock with only his boxers on, Badger found his clothes on the beach but not him. Luckily he didn’t drown! Thanks to Badger and Steve for doing the rescue mission.

A few days prior to that we played our second gig at a dude called Tee (or something a long those lines) birthday party, the Thai’s really know how to party! The whole time waiters just kept putting free bottles of whiskey and food on our table. At one stage the waiter came by with a giant fish and raw prawns. The gig was really fun and everyone seemed to enjoy it even though we didn’t play that well, we sold lots of CD’s and had a great time. Thanks Mezzanine (the venue), Ton for helping us get the gig and Tee for the crazy party.

When we arrived back from the islands I got a message on myspace saying that we were on for a cool punk/ska party happening at a venue called Suksabai Bar, near the famous Khaosan Road, (anyone seen The Beach?). So we were pretty stoked to be playing with 8 other punk/ska/indie and hardcore bands.

The Taxi drive there well that was a different story all together we almost had “to beat the taxi driver to death with his own shoes”. At the beginning he didn’t know where Khaosan Roadwas so I told him the original road, because the road we were playing on was just off Khaosan Road. So he said “yes yes Rambuttri I know where that is”, turns out there are two different places with very similar names. So after almost 2 hours in the cab we started to get a little suspicious, so we called Yui one of the organizers. Thank you so much Yui for getting us out of that mess. From then on the cab driver kept saying “oh no” and he just kept hitting his head over and over again besides for him being arguably the oldest taxi driver in Bangkok I think he also now had mild brain damage. So eventually we got closer to the city and had to get into another taxi. So over three hours later we finally arrived at Rambuttri Road near Khaoson.

Ready to hang out and watch some kiff bands. Everything is very touristy in that area but also super cheap I got Pad Thai (Thai fried noodles) on the street for 20 Baht which is around R5, have you ever! Got an omelet on rice at a market for 10 Baht which is around R2.50 so let’s just say food on the streets in Thailand is cheap.

So the first band we saw was called “Victory of a loser” they have a really cool innovative guitar player who had a very similar sound to that of At the drive in, the singer needed to work on his voice though but the band was generally pretty tight.

The other two highlight acts for the night were Predict from Star who played a very Fat Wreck Chords style of melodic punk with hints of hardcore screams, they also had a petite lady on lead vocals which gave that sound a bit of edge. They reminded me a lot of Belvedere and Strung out, very cool band and very cool guys and gal.

Donavan Street Rebels were the other band and they played ska/punk/oi similar to that of SA’s own Swivel Foot, Left Over Crack and Catch 22. Very cool stuff indeed, the show was outdoors with a cover for the stage and it started raining buckets when they started and everyone just carried on skanking in the rain, was really cool to see such an enthusiastic crowd. Thailand doesn’t have a huge punk scene but it has a really tight one. With some awesome people involved.

Our gig again went better then expected and by the first song people were dancing and screaming like crazy, so we were chuffed, looks like we got some other gigs lined up because of the show as well. 

After the gig we partied with Yui and a few of the other guys from Predict from Star and Fixation and had a really cool Thai meal and drank shit loads of local beer and listened to punk and ska until the wee hours with some of the punkers. They really are such good people. We would just like to thank everyone from New Destiny Records especially Yui and Gimme for giving us the opportunity and buying us beer hahaha, hopefully see you guys at the next gigs.

Mini Beard