Publication:
MaximumRockNRoll

Author:
Felix Von Havoc

MRR #211 Code 13 tour diary
Greetings, I think this issue will come out right before the USA holds its election. All I got to say on the subject is this. Whoever you vote for the system wins. Whichever candidate you choose the USA will still by run by and for big corporations and the rich. Those of you liberal types who think Gore would be better than Bush, remember one thing. Tipper Gore was the woman who headed up that whole PMRC bullshit in the 80's. They've dusted that stuff off again talking about censoring "violent" video games, movies and yes music. As Ice-T once said "You wanna see some violence, check out the news." If you have to vote (like your mom or boss makes you do it) vote for some wacky joke candidate like Bozo the clown or something. The choice we have been offered is no choice at all.

I've been submitting some novella length columns lately so this month I'll be brief and just discuss Code 13's visit to Thailand. For those of you not following along with our adventure Code 13 had already played the Bay Area, Japan and the Philippines. The way our air-fare worked out we were flying Thai Airways from Manila to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. This meant we could stop over in Thailand for free. National airlines do stuff like this all the time to try and encourage tourism in their home country. This is one of the things that made our air fare relatively cheap, flying local national airlines in a series of one way trips.

In Thailand we had a mad hook up in Chris Luppi, late of Brooklyn, NY. Chris was travelling in Asia and met a Thai woman. He finished his travels and decided to stay with her in Thailand. He teaches English outside of Bangkok and has been really active in pushing forward a DIY hardcore scene in Thailand. At first I didn't know if Chris would even be interested in helping us as he was more into New York Hardcore sort of a scene. But you know, I think we let these labels divide us up a lot more than we need too. Chris turned out to be really helpful and one of the nicest people we met anywhere on tour. We arrived in Thailand pretty sick and disoriented from the Philippines. Bangkok wasn't nearly as polluted, crowded or dirty as Manila. The standard of living (at least what we saw) was much higher than in the Philippines. That said, Bangkok is really heavily oriented toward sleazy western tourists. Sex tourism is a really big business here. All over Bangkok you saw really old German and American men with super young Asian prostitutes. There are of course several famous red light districts with sex shows and so on. Personally, I got enough of that sort of thing in Amsterdam and Hamburg. I'm into sex as much as the next guy, but the manner in which these sex tourist places commodify sex repulses me. I felt ashamed to be American every time I passed one of these sleazy old dudes walking around Bangkok looking for fresh meat. It really pisses me off when I'm in a foreign country and these street hustlers come on to me with this bullshit "I can get you pussy, I can get you weed, I can get you dope." Hey fuck you dude, not every American is a sicko drug addict or pervert. OK, if you can see past that decadent bullshit Bangkok is a pretty cool place. Like the rest of SE Asia the US dollar goes a long way, food and lodging was very cheap. In Bangkok there is a western tourist area Khao San Road (or something like that) which we didn't visit. From what I understand it's sort of like Tijuana or Can Cun, an expatriate sort of area with lots of bars, where you can go and pretend you are still in the USA while getting fucked up on cheap foreign beer. Chris lived a ways outside of the city and his only transportation was a motorcycle so he met us at the airport and we took a taxi to a hotel. As sick as we were after the Philippines an air conditioned hotel with showers and toilets was a real morale boost. Since we'd never really stayed in a hotel before the band felt like real rock stars hanging out by the pool. Bangkok is full of expatriates and tourists. Unlike Japan and Thailand where we saw few or no western people Thailand was full of European, American and Israeli tourists.

Before I proceed with the story of our gig a few words about the Thai scene. Unlike the Philippines, Malaysia or Indonesia, Thailand still doesn't have much of a punk or hardcore scene. There is a small scene but it is all very new and not nearly as developed as the scenes in neighboring countries. The kids in Thailand into "hardcore" listen to a bizarre mix of what to us is totally mainstream music like Biohazard, Korn and Limp Bizkit mixed with more commerical hardcore like Earth Crisis, Snapcase, and Hatebreed. Most of the local bands play covers, although there are some bands playing their own material such as Cough, Plahn and Ebola (yes, now there are three Ebolas one in Germany, one in England and one in Thailand). Chris is working very hard to instill some of the DIY ethic into the Thai scene. More on his efforts later.

Chris had a hard time finding a place for us to play. No foreign hardcore band had ever played in Bangkok, the local bands weren't very helpful. At the last minute he lined up a gig at a place called the Metal Zone. Now the Metal Zone has to be one of the most bizarre places I've ever played. It looked like the dudes from Gwar designed this place. Out front was a 30 ft. tall flying V guitar. The inside was done up with huge viking warriors, demons, chains etc. Not tacky either, really high quality movie prop looking stuff. The drum set was something Motley Crue would've played in the 80's. There were two whole walls of speakers for a club about the size of ABC no Rio. Of course there was a light show and smoke machine. When we arrived the place was packed with Australian tourists. Due to a mix up with the club (we didn't find out about this til later) we started playing a half hour before the time advertised on the flyer. We played a few songs to these drunk Australian businessmen and I started to think it was kind of lame. Suddenly the place started filling up with Thai kids. The next thing I knew there were about 100 Thai hardcore kids tentatively watching Code 13 play hardcore in a glitzy metal club. With a little encouragement the tables and Australian tourists were swept aside and the kids started going crazy. We thrashed through our set as I watched kids doing what must've been their first stage dives. By the time we were done the kids were totally into what we were doing. We hung out for a while met the local kids and sold a few t shirts and CD's. It's really too bad we didn't get to play with local bands, but the show was still pretty wild, especially as it was the first of its kind.

We spent the next few days checking out tourist attractions like the Buddhist temples, palaces and such and gorging ourselves on killer Thai food. We went to a Thai boxing match at Lumpini stadium which was quite a spectacle. Chris showed us around quite a bit and was all around a super cool guy. Chris is working hard to bring a more enlightened form of hardcore to Thailand. The Thai scene is at a crucial crossroads right now between a mainstream commercial attitude and a real DIY hardcore scene where music and ideals come before big business. Chris and some local Thai kids have published a bilingual (English/Thai) zine called ARISE which is sort of a primer for Thai kids on DIY hardcore. Chris also runs a distro, WreckAgeAsia, which is helping to bring more hardcore music to Thailand. Here's how you can help. If you have demo tapes, promos etc. you can send them to Chris to give away in Thailand. I think this would really help to expose Thai kids to something other than RoadRunner and Victory's idea of what hardcore is. Also, if you or anyone you know is going to Bangkok you can bring a suitcase full of stuff for Chris's distro. The Thai post is very corrupt and he has to pay an import tax (bribe) every time someone sends a package. Its much easier to bring a bunch of CD's in your luggage through customs and hand them over to him. Not to mention the cost of shipping really drives up the prices for his distro. Keep in mind that for Thai kids to buy an import CD is like their whole wages for a week. And of course everything over there is on CD and cassette, vinyl is virtually unknown. You can contact Chris at wreckageasia@hotmail.com here is your chance to really help spread the ideas of DIY hardcore into what might be the next hot scene before commercial hardcore gets established.

Lastly Chris is helping set up the Asia tour for Himsa who will be playing a lot of places Code 13 went to and some places not even All You Can Eat has played. Hopefully, we'll be reading about their adventures somewhere in the future. OK, next month Malaysia.

Publication Date:
January 1, 1988

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