City Songs - Bangkok

City Songs... There have been musical compilations about New York and other places, but Bangkok? Not as far as I know, but why that Asian capital? Well, the fact I've been living on its edge in the Nonthaburian countryside for donkey (monkey?!) years probably has something to do with that. 

To pre-empt the obvious question, how on earth did you end up there, here we go:

It must have been some day during the first week of January, 1985, when my bus entered Bangkok’s suburbs; my first impression was overwhelmingly negative: “What a massive place, I don’t like big cities very much, so will probably only spend a few days here”…

I got off at the old Southern Bus Station and took a red bus (Nr. 68) to Banglumphoo, an area with some budget guesthouses for backpackers, I was told. In those days Khao San Rd was just an ordinary street with lots of shophouses, no guesthouses or hotels, and only a few restaurants catering to foreigners. If you walked there around 9 pm, everything was closed, very different from the tourist ghetto it has become since then!

A little later I was wandering around some quiet back alleys and found the place I was looking for: Central Guesthouse. The place was very quiet, almost deserted in fact, except for one pretty Thai lady behind a desk. As she spoke English well, checking in (60 THB a night!) was a piece of cake. As there was nobody else, we chatted a bit. She asked me how long I was planning to stay and whether I was interested in working here. That last part intrigued me as - after almost a year already on the road - I had slowed down; instead of 3 days here and 4 days there, it had turned into 1 week at this place and a month in that one. I asked her about the kind of work she had in mind, which, to my great surprise, was teaching English! As I had never studied teaching English (or any other subject, for that matter), I sadly declined her suggestion, explaining that I wasn’t qualified for this. Her reply made me laugh; “But you can speak English, therefore you can be a teacher too!” I politely tried to change the subject as it didn’t make any sense to me at all, but she obviously ignored my explanation. Anyway, we chitchatted a bit more until suddenly the telephone on her desk rang. She answered it rapidly, speaking Thai, which I couldn’t follow, of course, before handing over the phone to me, saying: “You just got a job; it’s the owner of a language school on Silom Rd and they need a teacher urgently!”

To say I was flabbergasted was an understatement, and I tried to explain to the owner about my total lack of qualifications, but like her, he just brushed that away and invited me to come to his school the next day! As I had zero other plans, besides some sightseeing, I accepted his invitation…

Long story short, this in a nutshell is how my ‘few days’ turned into 4+ months, working as a teacher and extra in movies (Good Morning Vietnam, a.o.), before flying to Hong Kong, which was still British at the time! And of course this also led to me moving to Bangkok (Nonthaburi actually) late 1987 and made this place my new home…

Bangkok is a weird place, a massive, sprawling city which houses 9+ million people (and probably unofficially many more), capital of Thailand, featuring skyscrapers, congested roads, quiet back lanes, shopping malls, temples, and Buddha knows what else. It has various nicknames; Thais call it The City of Angels, but some foreigners (especially detective authors!) prefer The Big Mango… Late at night in certain areas it can make you feel as if you're in a Blade Runner scene... Even so, it is one of the safest cities I know!

Fact is, the name Bangkok is considered unique and memorable, as it was once ranked by The Guinness World Records as having the longest capital city name. 

In Thai, the full name of Bangkok is written as follows:   “Krung Thep Maha Nakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Ayutthaya Mahadilok Phop Nopparat Ratchathani Buriram Udom Ratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Phiman Awatara Sathit Sakkatattiya Wisnukarm Prasit”.

But let’s return to the real focus of this blog: music!

The only Bangkok song that I knew at the time was, not surprisingly, the 1984 one from the musical Chess by Murray Head, of which I wrote a bit here on my other blog last year. 

In 1989, a Thai pop duo, Asanee & Wasan, scored a massive hit with Krung Thep Maha Nakhon, whose lyrics consisted of Bangkok's full name!

My Thai wife liked it a lot too; consequently, I bought a cassette of their "Fak Thong" album for her.

Last year I posted something called Congo Chants on Jonky Blog which featured several songs which had nothing to do with Congo music in reality, but were more examples of how foreigners identified Congo as a name for anything exotic!

Quite a few songs about Bangkok (or mention it in the song title) follow that same 'exotic' idea, which is kind of acceptable to me, but I drew the line at hardcore techno, a genre I care absolutely nothing about.

Even so, the worst offender here is pretty well known; Alex Chilton, whose 1978 self-written single starts as follows: 

"Here's a little thing that's gonna please ya / Just a little town down in Indonesia / Bangkok..."

I doubt if Alex ever traveled to Thailand, which is just as well because he would have been refused entry on the spot due to those awkward lyrics!

An even better example was made by Martin Denny (the Exotic Sounds man!) who released Bangkok Cockfight in 1958.

This Krungthep collection kicks off very, very Thai with the one and only Paradise Bangkok Molam International Band, and they perform a Traffic Drama in traditional Molam style.

Back in Thailand, a popular musical genre in the 1970s & 1980s called 'Phleng Phuea Chiwit' (which means Songs for Life) was practiced by various bands, including Hammer, whose 1981 Krungthep song is featured here.

The Manic Street Preachers' 1994 visit to Bangkok apparently left deep scars, resulting in their harrowing tale of Bangkok's Novotel...

Brazzaville go deep, down, and dirty while exploring Bangkok's sewers...

Nicolas Cage was the main character in the Bangkok Dangerous movie (yawn) from 2008, which had Brian Tyler composing the soundtrack.

Canada's Rational Youth's 2nd self-titled album included Holiday in Bangkok, a song of which I was totally unaware at the time...

Same for A Passage to Bangkok by Rush; it probably was played on Dutch radio in 1976, but never made any impression on me... I found a decent Dutch radio live broadcast version from Rush's Pinkpop appearance in 1979!

Ronald Shannon Jackson and his Decoding Society celebrate a jazzy morning in Bangkok.

A Dutch contribution comes from Frank Boeijen Groep with their Transport from Bangkok.

A much earlier Dutch tribute to a Thai lady was made by an obscure band called Human Orchestra in 1969.

Raphaël Toiné from Martinique recorded only 1 album in 1986, which featured an instrumental called Bizness À Bangkok.

A 2016 Japanese/Thai collaboration by Shintaro Sakamoto + VIDEOTAPEMUSIC resulted in A Dream in Bangkok.

From Germany we get Streetboys with their instrumental song from the 1986 German movie Abenteuer In Bangkok. 

And from France comes alternative rock band La Souris Déglinguée who made several songs with lyrics about South East Asia...

My favourite Norwegian trumpet player Nils Petter Molvær has just released a lovely moody album called Be Quiet which includes an atmospheric Bangkokian instrumental!

Of course, the earlier mentioned Asanee & Wasan are here as well, same for Murray Head, no Bangkok post could be complete without these 2!

We end this collection on a surreal note with John Lurie's Lounge Lizards, who seem convinced that there are Monsters Over Bangkok...

Enjoy and stay tuned for the next City Songs compilation!