Leng Pleng

Let’s go you back to a time when the only rock’n’roll stage in Phnom Penh was at the Sharky Bar, and most gigs were held in shotgun-dimension girly bars or tiny cafes with amps against the wall and audiences walking through the band to get to the toilet.  It’s 2009, the major bands in town were Mekong Pirates and Bum’n’Draze, the hardest working performers were a duo called Stiff Little Punks, nobody knew who Scoddy was, and out of the murk appears the Lazy Jazz Drunks.  Flash forward 14 years (three drummers, two singers and a couple of bass players and a shortening of the name later) and they make their return on Saturday night at Oscar’s on the Corner.  LengPleng cautiously tiptoed out to capture the history and take the temperature of the current version of the band.

[Full disclosure: your correspondent, Scott Bywater, was the first drummer with the band in 2009, and in 2012/13 did a full 12 months as the front/lead singer.  In fact, this interview took place on a Saturday afternoon at Golden Home after a rehearsal, with all four of the current band (Tom Baker, Todd Anderson, Stewie Ramone and Andy Potter), and another former Lazy Drunk Dave Zdriluk happened by on bicycle and joined the conversation – total six current and alumni members around the table.]

SB:                 Usually bands disappear and they never come back again (unless they are The Schkoots or Cambodia Country Band).  And yet here you are.

TOM:             Now I feel old.  New Year 2016 was the last gig we did, with Stewie.  I literally haven’t picked up a guitar for over six years.

DAVE:          That makes you perfect for the Lazy Drunks.  Keep it fresh.  I remember there was one time when the Lazy Drunks regularly sold the most beer of all the bands that played at Sharky.

TODD:           That could have been the night they made us pay for our own brews.

TOM:             I may have had a couple at rehearsal today.

TODD:           One of them was a warm one and you found it on an amp somewhere.

TOM:             As I said, you have to replicate the gig conditions as best you can.

SB:                 As I recall we started up jamming at the open mic at the Cavern on Street 104, where I’d organised the famous Abbey Road tribute night in September 2009.

TOM:             The Stiff Little Punks [vocalist Ian Anderson and guitarist David Maybe] were booked to play at a girly bar, 136,  before there were many girly bars on Street 136, and something happened with David, he wasn’t able to play.  So Ian said to me hey, I heard you play guitar, we need to form a band, and we bundled something together.  He named the band Lazy Jazz Drunks, because it sounded similar to the Stiff Little Punks.  We stumbled through the gig, and it was okay, and we never really looked back.  There was a very small collection of musicians back then.  There was about four people, so he collected all of them together and made a band out of it.

[Note: Predictive text on the old phones brought up ‘jazz’ before it brought up ‘lazy’, as your correspondent discovered one day trying to text the name of the band to someone.  So I assume that was part of the invention.  The ‘jazz’ part of the name was abandoned before too long as there was obviously no jazz going on.]

TOM:             Who was our first bassist?

SB:                 Swedish Dan Ogren.

TOM:             Was he our first?  It’s so long ago it’s almost impossible to remember.

SB:                 Dan used to tune your guitar for you.

TOM:             Someone had to.  It wasn’t going to be me.  Couldn’t afford a tuner back then.  It would have been me and Ian to start with.  Dominic would have been there in the first year.  He arrived here in Cambodia in 2009.

SB:                 Dom must have replaced me when I quit, after a gig at the Pickled Parrot in early 2010.  It was partly the angst of being a drummer – load the kit into the tuk tuk, load it out, set it all up, blah, blah, blah.  Also I had recently joined the Cambodian Space Project.

TOM:             I haven’t heard of them.  Are they doing all right?  So Dom would have joined then.  And how many bassists did we have?  Dan, Dave, and then Todd, the permanent one.

TODD:           You had someone else too, another guy.  I can’t remember his name.

TOM:             The Danish guy, Miguel.

SB:                 The repertoire was very much driven by Ian at the start?

TOM:             Ian was was very limited by what he knew, and he wasn’t really able to learn much new stuff without using lyric sheets.  It was an interesting experience.  And it was nothing I ever expected to do in my life, to be honest, I was just a guitar player at home, never really imaged myself being up on stage.  It was fantastic.  And thankfully the standard was so low in Cambodia in 2009/2010 that we could get away with it.

ANDY:          And you still are.

TOM:            Not much has changed.

SB:                Then I returned to the band, taking over as lead singer after Ian’s incident in late 2012.

STEW:           And I filled your void as lead singer at the end of 2013.  I did two New Year’s Eves at Sharky, 2014 and 2015.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From the last gig they played – New Year 2016 at Sharky Bar

TOM:             Scoddy had never been a front man before, and that was the main motivation for joining.  And a chance to wear the wig….

SB:                I’ve got photos of me on the far side of the pool.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Scoddy out front at Sundance and Slur Bar.  What was he thinking learning?   Photos: Ziad Samman, Kristina Yanko

TOM:            That’s the night I got electrocuted.  Flew into a bush, landed there, with burn marks on my arm and everything.

TODD:          I joined in 2010 I think, when Dan went back to Sweden.   Tom just told me to have 40 songs by next week, and that’s why a lot of the songs were done incorrectly, because I thought there’s no way I’m going to learn them note for note.  Just play it as I want to play it, it’s the only way I’m going to learn it in time.  I’ve just gone back recently and realised, man, I just completely rewrote that, didn’t I?  Just through necessity.

STEW:          It’s got the jingle jangle.

TOM:             There were no real music venues back then.  There was Sharky, the Velcommen Inn.  And then there was the gig at Rory’s Bar on 178.

[This is an event that has grown to mythic status, involving a ramshackle line-up, a drunken bar owner and a neighbourhood noise complaint in the form of a gunshot.  A contemporaneous report can be found on this live music blog that was running at the time.]

SB:                 Do you remember playing Huxley’s?

TOM:             We played upstairs, it was very empty.  Obviously Facebook was around but there was no marketing strategy, nothing.  Whether anyone would have come if there was, who knows?  We played and then he said I’m going out of business.  Then it became Candy Bar.  So it all worked out well.  When we played I perforated my eardrum in the first set and I was just crying all through the second and third set.  Ian wouldn’t let me stop.

TODD:           Most of the gigs with me were pretty crap, dull stuff.

SB:                 I remember Dominic had a very small bladder, and he was always wanting to finish the set early.  One time he was quite desperate and we insisted on playing Louie Louie – he’s gotta go now.

TOM:             In my opinion the best gigs we did were the New Year’s Eve parties at Sharky.

STEW:          Scoddy did one and I did two.

TOM:             They were excellent gigs.  It was back in the day, way before COVID – maybe it was just part of being younger, but there’s a big network of friends, everyone was into live music a bit more back then, we filled the place out.  Silly string and streamers all over the place, champagne.

TODD:           Remember we used to play at those house parties at that mansion across the river.

TOM:             That’s a good story as well.

TODD:           The first time Ian was there, the second time you had to sing.

TOM:             If my memory is correct, what I think happened was there was an NGO couple that really liked our band, and came out to watch us, and we played once there with Ian and they really loved it, all dancing around, right on the riverfront, their own private swimming pool and everything.  And then the next time we said we have no singer and they said just play anyway.  So we did it as a three piece.  Luckily the crowd was jumping up on the microphone as well, getting involved.  To me it was great, I don’t know what anyone else thought.

TODD:           The sort of the gigs where the crowd surrounds you, so you’re in the middle of the party.  I think that kind of scene.

SB:                 At the end of 2012 I had just arrived back in Phnom Penh, I think even the first night I met Tom outside a place on Street 51 called – seriously – Chuck Norris Dim Sum.  He said the band was doing well, had heaps of gigs, including New Year coming up, and they were playing Sharky on Saturday.  So I popped in, sung some backing vocals and tapped some congas.  Next thing you know Ian is gone and they needed a singer.   I knew the songs, so that was me.

TOM:             It was a really interesting dynamic change.  Ian was great, but I think for us personally – some of the songs you introduced helped to change it up.  We went from being more of a 60s/bluesy rock’n’roll sort of thing, put in a bit more funky and lighthearted stuff, a transition into more modern stuff.  You were in some ways responsible for that.

TODD:           I remember when you joined it wasn’t a lurch into something different and new, it was very smooth.  Got to give you credit for that.  I don’t remember there was a huge period of you learning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From the last gig they played – New Year 2016 at Sharky Bar – Big Mike makes his standard 20 minute oration

SB:                 [Legendary Sharky owner] Big Mike would come up with ideas for us to make the show more of a visual experience.  Like the time when he got us to learn Macho Man and YMCA and play behind a couple of body builders who he knew from the gym.

TODD:           The most surreal experience ever.  Standing behind these body builders, they’re all flexing and being muscley, and we’re looking at each other and going what are we doing?

TOM:             We were once hired to play at a little girl’s first birthday party in a girly bar.  99 Bar.  I had a drum kit at the time, I was trying to learn out of interest, and I took it all down there.  I don’t think I even knew that it was a first birthday, only that it was the owner’s daughter’s birthday party.  They wheeled a cake in at set break and out comes a baby.  I thought why are we doing songs like Mustang Sally, massive loud rock tunes for this little girl’s party?  We tried to do Happy Birthday, messed it up chronically.  And then I left my drumkit behind for about two years.

SB:                 There’s a certain shambolic energy – this is somehow happening despite all the effort.

ANDY:          It’s getting a bit serious now.

STEW:          But we are enjoying what we do.  We do like the songs.  We’ve all got our own taste in music, and we try to fuse it all together.  I love the indie scene, we’ve got a few of those, although we dropped a couple.

SB:                 Is the current repertoire much the same?

TOM:             It’s moved on.  There’s a good few new ones.

STEW:          Two new songs.

TOM:             We’ve got 31, I would say ten of them are new.

ANDY:          But they’re different every time.

STEW:          We do it different.  They really funk it up, and put some speed into it, and it’s sound really good.  Especially with Andy on the drums.

ANDY:          Thank you.

STEW:          Don’t quote me on that.

TOM:             We’re still a four piece, which in some ways it limits the songs we can do.  We have to pick carefully, because obviously especially a lot of modern songs have a lot of layers that we can’t replicate.  I wouldn’t say many of them are the same as the original, and that’s mostly due to negligence.

ANDY:          You would recognise the songs.

TOM:             Hopefully.

TODD:           But it does come across as a bit more raw, when you break it down to the bare bones, it’s a bit more funky.

ANDY:          What I like about it is it feels like a British rock band from that era when British rock was, well, good.

TOM:             Change it up to suit yourselves, I guess.  And just have fun with it.  And when we started learning again this time, it was only about six weeks ago, we listened to some of the originals for the first time and realised we don’t do it even close to the original.  But we’re sticking with what we’re doing.

ANDY:          It sort of makes it funnier.

TOM:             A challenge for anyone to guess what the song is.

TODD:           I’ve always been more of a fan of covers that are done in a unique way.  If you want to hear the exact sound as the original, you either go and see the real band or you put the record on.  And people genuinely appreciate it – okay, I know this song, but I haven’t heard it done like this before.

STEW:          I think this is probably the best band I’ve ever been in.

TOM:             It’s the only band.

STEW:          No, I’ve been in quite a few actually.  But for my genres, what I like, this is right up my street.  I love the dynamics of Tom and Todd – even though I’ve been in the band six year we’ve only gigged about three times.  Andy and I are looking at each other over the mic stand and realising this is coming really good.  Because the two young monkeys are funking it up.

TOM:             Do you remember the first gig with us?

STEW:          Late in 2013.  And we were booked for New Year’s Eve, and I had to learn a shedload of songs, and do what Ian did, have the paper in front of me.  And now coming back I’ve had to relearn 7,000 words.

TODD:           Did you count them?

STEW:          It’s taken me longer to count the words than learn the songs.  We’ve introduced a few new songs which we’ve all agreed aren’t super-bad soundwise, and these two production managers, they just do what they do best, and make it sound really good.  The louder they are the better it is for me, because no one can hear me.

TOM:             That’s what we’re aiming for.

STEW:          I know a lot of the words, I’ll need a book of lyrics just as a guardian angel.

TODD:           Andy’s probably got the strongest kick drum in the business.  As a bassist it’s refreshing to have that.

ANDY:          I’ve just got the heaviest leg.  What I love in rehearsal is watching Tom and Todd dancing.

STEW:          They get in that groove.

ANDY:          We just turn the sound off and watch them dancing, it’s get on its own.  Especially Todd when he gets into a really good bass riff.

STEW:          Todd’s probably the best dancer.

ANDY:          He does wriggle his bum rather a lot.

STEW:          Tom does it like he’s doing aerobics, stepping over bricks and that, it’s pretty funny.

TODD:           If you don’t enjoy yourself, what’s the point?

ANDY:          I don’t think you can help it, you just do it.

TODD:           I think I’d make more mistakes if I wasn’t dancing.

ANDY:          You’re a vessel for the bass.

TODD:           God’s vessel.

ANDY:          I’m really interested to see how the audience reacts with the dancing, because it’s real danceable.

STEW:          It’s not about us, it’s about the people outside watching us.

Find the returned, renewed, revamped and likely just as drunk Lazy Drunks at Oscar’s on the Corner on Saturday night.