Railway Station rocks, and other events: 3 - 6 June

Way back last Thursday, so long ago I can hardly remember, the Hellhounds played their last for a while at Sharky Bar - a break forced by the temporary departure of the Swedish Ambassador for a good two months.  This hardworking jack-of-all-axes will be sorely missed by the musical community of Phnom Penh.  We gave him a good send off from Sharky and know that the Hellhounds will rise again.

Friday night, back at Sharky again, was another familiar instalment in the saga of the Lazy Jazz Drunks, including line up changes within an hour of taking the stage, and a general shortage of traffic police on the stand.  Still, we saw - and heard - the highly entertaining bass debut of the Mythical Dude amid some thumping and valiant blues rock complete with false endings, a brief guest singer, and some weird and wonderful jamming on an extended Whole lotta love.   Some pics are here:  Sharky Blog

The big night of the week of course was Saturday, when the much unused Phnom Penh railway station was converted into a party venue, including a train trip off to a rice field, where the Phnom Penh Hot Strings delighted the delightable crowd, then returning to a great gathering of people who rocked out to the Cambodian Space Project on the platform.  This is well documented here and here.  A great night that was only hampered by the DJs coming on too early  ; )

Then on Sunday the public debut of Espresso Thmei took place at Paddy Rice.  And not such a bad crowd for a Sunday night either.  The pocket-sized version of the CSP mixes in a number of brand new songs with the regular CSP repertoire, and, through the different and more acoustic setting, brings the lovely voice of Srey Thy well to the fore.  And it's a pleasure to play.  And Thy's newest biggest fan wrote it up as well.

see you around.

FTA back on the beat ... 28 - 29 May

Friday night was a mixture of the new and the old.  The Velkommen Inn hosted Bayon Blues, with the acoustic blues fireworks of Little Duke, the sensational Kristin on vocals, and the everywhere-at-once Bong Thom squeezing and bending away on the harmonica.  Good old traditional blues, played damn well - a nice clean crisp sound.  You can be forgiven for wondering if you're in Phnom Penh at all.  Then it was a short step up the river to the Chinese House where the Mekong Pirates juggernaut were making their presence felt.  A huge crowd helped set the night alight, but it turns out I missed some serious wildness at the end of the night by succumbing to the need to sleep and heading home early.

On Saturday night Chinese House again the venue of choice.  The Bong Thom dot Com tenth anniversary party featured four bands:  Bayon Blues, the Hellhounds, the Cambodian Space Project and the debut of Espresso Thmei (technically just the CSP pocket-size edition, showcasing Srey Thy's vocals with acoustic guitar and a little harmonica).   The Hounds stuck to the straight and narrow with guest Canadian Dave on bass, and the CSP continued to refine its post-electric sound, with Bong Sak on a smaller but no less effective drumkit, and encouraging to the front the clarinet of Bun Hong. 

So here's the call, people:  please send in gig reports,  let us all know where it's happening and who's doing it.  It was great to see writeups from new contributors at the end of last month, keep them coming.   See you next weekend somewhere.