Leng Pleng

As the touring schedule reopens for the first time since COVID days, Cambodia is continuing to see the return of performers who haven’t made if for a while – now it’s time to welcome back Miserable Man, who will be running around the kingdom for a few weeks for a long string of gigs.  A one-man band blending styles and sounds, weaving together songs out of tunes, vocal riffs, guitar, percussion, effects and humour, his love of the music is infectious.  A rich stew, or perhaps soup is a better metaphor – a variety of succulent morsels floating in a tasty broth. He sat down with Leng Pleng after a well-received show at The Vine to talk about why.

“What I’m doing is trying to sound like a band while just being a skinny Italian, using all my body,” he says.  “I started with a guitar and a tambourine – the tambourine I use is the only piece of gear that has been with me from the beginning.”

After a rebellious childhood, an agricultural education and years of doing seasonal work between periods of travel, he transformed his musical instincts from hardcore and punk into a more upbeat entertainment style, but without losing the punk DIY attitude.   “In 2010 I started busking on the streets in England.  I had left Italy at the age of 34 and arrived in London with 100 quid in my pocket and started playing in order to survive.  Being slightly older I understood the need to act professional – show up on time, reply to emails, have a plan.  Whether you’re a plumber or a musician you’ve got to follow certain rules.  Despite the Italian reputation for being laid back in the north east of Italy we’re pretty work-oriented people.”

Never having been a one-man band, he had much to learn.  “I had to learn a lot of cover songs for busking – no matter how good your originals are you’ve got to play music people know.  I never considered myself a singer, so I had to get comfortable with my voice.  I listened to a lot of singers that I felt are natural talents – Nat King Cole, Ray Charles – and I absorbed all the things that make me happy in music to condense into my own sound.  The humour, the groove, the love for Jamaican music, old jazz, obscure Calypso songs.  Lots of lo-fi, punk attitude.  I grasped that ska and reggae, and even swing jazz and bossa nova, are more than genres: the time signature defines the song.  So my formula was to play a classic song with a different style.”  From a shaky start, making the bare minimum to survive, he slowly added in gigs in pubs, weddings, anything, and soon was playing enough that he didn’t need another job after all.  And the rest flowed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So why “Miserable Man”?  “If I had a dollar for every time I was asked.  There’s a slight translation error in here.  When I chose the name I was travelling, the last time I travelled and went back to seasonal work.  We need time to understand what we’re good at.  One day I had a vision of myself sitting on a trunk in a colourful shirt, big glasses and a guitar, the one-man band idea was here, singing fun songs in a sunny spot, making people happy.  In Italian, miserable, which was my initial idea, means pitiful – I have nothing left, God, I am in your hands, it’s not up to me anymore.  A little bit of self-deprecating humour.  Maybe there’s a better word in English to define that.

And then shortly after taking on the name, the big change came. “I wrote my first four or five songs in Italy in the summer before my departure for England.  On November 26, 2010 I got on a bus to London with all my belongings – the rest of the passengers were Romanians, Pakistanis and Nigerians, other people like me looking for a new life, not headed to take pictures of Picadilly Circus.  Within a month I could open a bank account and rent a room.  So if misery paid the bills, I decided to stick to the name. At the end of the week you go to the pub and the entertainment is a skinny Italian called The Happy Man?  You’d want to punch him.  I like the idea that you can still give a message, with a little bit of humour, and major chords and an upbeat tempo.  That’s pretty much my job.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He tells the story of how he first came to Cambodia.  “It was in the days when everyone was talking about the Mayan Prophecy, the idea that the  world was going to end on 21 December 2012.  My friend and I got the idea to spend that day at Angkor Wat, where we had never been.  If aliens and shit are going to happen I want to be there, that would be epic – I didn’t want to be sitting in a bad flat in Norwich when the world ends.  So we flew to Kuala Lumpur on Halloween 2012.  At the time 90% of my money was coming from busking, so I’d researched about permits in KL and everything, and sorted out gigs in places like Sihanoukville.  Out of the hundreds of thousands of rooms I could have chosen in KL – while I was tuning up my guitar the cleaner came to me saying oh, your neighbour also plays guitar, on the streets, makes a lot of money.  My neighbour is a busker?  Yes. Is he local?  Yes.  Wow, what are the odds?  So we make friends straight away, and next day I’m busking, by the third day I got a gig, and ended up playing there for one month.  Then I came straight to Cambodia, playing at Otres Market and other places.  So that really cemented my idea that this is possible, I can follow the Banana Pancake Trail.

“I started getting gigs in Asia before I started being considered as a recording artist or singer-songwriter in England, being invited to festivals and so on.  So I thought this is the way I’m going to go, I can do it everywhere.  The act got tighter over the years, and I am still 150% independent.  I’m proud of what I’ve achieved, and I’m thankful to the people that from the beginning said when you come back to Cambodia I’ll give you a gig.  Hard work and person-to-person connections.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These days he’s based in Goa, India, and has built a touring circuit around the region.  His apparent eclecticism can create difficulties describing what the act actually is.  “The music I play is not easy to put in a box.  If I say I play reggae, in some Muslim countries they think that means marijiuana.  I try out phrases like tropical jazz, island music.  I basically want to play catchy pop music – people remember songs of mine like CocoBanana and Yoga Mamma.  People think: okay, this guy is having a good time, and he wants us to have a good time.

“I think there is not enough humour in the music business, and musicians can take themselves too seriously.  I play upbeat, major chord songs.  The Miserable Man act is someone who has rediscovered their inner child, who has got back to the crazy kid that he once was.  By my age you might have a family, a mortgage, restrictions, responsibilities, self-judgement – I lost it all at 34 and in a way it was the biggest luck in my life.  Miserable Man is a way of laughing in the face of problems.  So what do I play?  Miserable Man Music.”

“The covers I play today are pretty much the songs I learned to make money in England in 2010.  To quote Dave Grohl, black people dance to rhythm, white people dance to lyrics.  Wonderwall makes people move.  Experiencing British culture gave me the tools to make a show as an Italian guy with no experience as a one-man band.  A boom-boom box machine with two legs, and I try to make happy, punchy music.   People like Italian food for simple reasons – the flavours are open, not too spicy, but yummy, made with a lot of love, and we’ve been eating the same things for centuries.  And we don’t try to impress people with food, we cook food to make people feel at home.  And I think this is reflected in my music – I’m like aglio olio e peperoncino pasta: a few humble ingredients, carefully sourced and mixed with love, passion and respect of their origins.”

Miserable Man is at Craft on Friday, Back Street Bar on Saturday, in Kampot at Tiki Garden on Monday and Karma Traders on Tuesday, before heading to Siem Reap for the following weekend and then back to Phnom Penh.  And that’s just the start of it.