***for full gig listings jump to the bottom***

Greetings,

Tonight, Thursday, in Phnom Penh there’s Takeshi Band at Craft, Scott Bywater at Botanico, Jared Bibler at  Sundance and The Extraordinary Chambers at Oscar’s on the Corner.

On Friday in Phnom Penh you can find Jared Bibler with Ernie Buck at Botanico@Odom Garden, a jazz night featuring Vanvannak Rose and The Broken Cymbal at My Way , Kiss Bang Bong at Lantern and Kevin Sysyn at  Duplex.  It’s solo sax night with Ilia Konstantinov at Craft , Woody Dares is at The Box Office and then Jam-Cha takes it late at Oscar’s on the Corner.

Saturday night young Khmer duo Sai & Sela are at Craft, Jam-Cha is at  Central Café and Woody Dares is at The Glasshouse.  Meanwhile, Frisco Tony & the Gangstas of Love take on the new stage at Meta House , The Broken Cymbal are at Seekers Spirits and Stiff Little Punks return to Sharkyz.  Oscar’s on the Corner hosts a cast of thousands for Written in my Soul – a Bob Dylan tribute night featuring 20 of Phnom Penh’s finest – first half acoustics and second half band with guest singers.

Popular Khmer music venue Yang Pov has opened a venue, Yang Pov Riverside, at St 110 and Sisowat Quay, with live music from house bands seven nights a week.  Well worth taking a look and listen.

**For the rest of the gigs check out the listings at the bottom of the page** As Wednesday is starting to grow as a live music night, remember to check the guide early next week, as many shows are not advertised early and so won’t be included until the last minute **

Passing Chords:  a few things you might not know about…

Photo: supplied

Frisco Tony.  A stalwart of the Phnom Penh open mic scene, Tony has a long history as writer, dancer and actor.  He will be performing blues and psychedelia on Saturday night on the new Meta House stage with the Gangstas of Love, as well as contributing to the Bob Dylan tribute at Oscar’s on the Corner later on the same evening.

Do you have a pet musical hate?
Wonderbread, white bread music that has no soul.

A private musical indulgence:
I love flamenco music, I like opera, and I enjoy jazz.

The year you first came to Cambodia :
Around 2012, when I was living in Bangkok.  On the second day I was doing a poetry reading, and I thought: this place is fantastic.  The first year I had here I met so many good people in the music scene and the arts scene.  There was a small film colony here at the time which has since disappeared.  I thought this is a great place for art and culture.

An early music memory:
Spanish language music, boleros and mambos and cha-chas, because that’s what my parents played in the house. I grew up in San Francisco, in The Mission District, a neighbourhood that was formerly Irish/German/Italian, and was slowly becoming a Hispanic neighbourhood.

The last thing you had to eat:
Brown rice and chicken.

A country you want to visit:
I would like to go to Brazil, it sounds so interesting.  Such a complex cultural mix of people and music and ideas.

A book or movie you keep going back to:
The biography of Graham Greene, it’s about 900 pages long, and it’s just incredible.  Greene is such an important author, his life was incredible.

What languages can you speak?
Spanish and English.  I also speak taxi and restaurant French and Italian.

Your primary instrument, and when you started playing it:
I never really played a musical instrument per se except for castanets, when I was a Spanish dancer during my halcyon youth, studying flamenco.  Castanets are considered in Spain to be a musical instruments, and there are artists who make a living just playing and teaching castanets.  It looks very simple but it’s an incredibly complex instrument. They probably originated in India and came to Greece and eastern Europe.  When the gypsy diaspora settled in Spain they became a standard instrument in Spanish culture.

Something people might be surprised to know about you:
My connection to the Beat culture.  I got the San Francisco end of it, we called it the West Coast Beats.  I was befriended by poet Michael McClure, who introduced me to writer Richard Brautigan, the actor Rip Torn, and to Freewheelin’ Frank, the Hells Angel poet. We did poetry readings and theatre at The Straight Theatre in the Haight Ashbury – where Santana and Janis Joplin and Big Brother & the Holding Company and the Grateful Dead all played.  Carlos Santana and I went to the same high school, three years apart.

You have a time machine and a magic ticket to one gig or festival in the past.  What do you choose?
I’d go and see Miles Davis when he had John Coltrane in the band.

A question from the last participant, Jet Odrerir: Do you ever get stage fright, and how do you deal with if you do?
Oddly enough I’ve never had stage fright.  I’ve always studied dance and performed as a dancer – you just get up and do it.  When I was acting it was the same thing, when I was doing little theatre, as they called it then, now they call it community theatre.  We just learned our lines, got pushed on stage and walk through the shots, as they say in the films.

Steve Porte Photo of the Week

At a previous Oscar’s on the Corner event, on 21 December, 2019, Scoddy begins selecting musicians to invite to take part in an eventual Bob Dylan tribute, finally happening this weekend.

Our sister publication, kumnooh.com, aims to provide a lengpleng.com service for the wider arts – painting, sculpture, literature, dance, architecture and classical music – across Cambodia.  Every Tuesday – to subscribe send a subscribe email to fabianhipp@kumnooh.com.

If you wish to receive LengPleng in your inbox every Thursday please send a subscribe email to gigs@lengpleng.com.

Musicians, venues, punters:  if there are things that you know that LengPleng should know, please tell us and we’ll do our best to tell the world.

See you around the traps.

your correspondent,

 

Guillermo Wheremount
LengPleng.com
gigs@lengpleng.com (mailto:gigs@lengpleng.com)

Weekly Gig Guide – week commencing Thursday 9 June 2022

** residency/weekly

For DJs and clubs, we recommend Phnom Penh Underground

Thursday

Friday

Saturday

Sunday

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

*Note that Wednesday events are often not announced until early in the week – check back here for updates*

Coming soon:

 

 

 

 

 

By Weekly Wrap