An Account of the Pianobabbler's Asian Adventures- vol. 1
December 16 2009

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The Pianobabbler is touring Asia for 6 weeks with vocalist Irene Atman, managed by The East West Entertainment Groupt. This is an ongoing record of his adventures.

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Our first performances take place in Pattaya, Thailand. A former red light city, Pattaya has embarked on a remake in a less licentious direction. More later.

To get to Pattaya, we travel 26 hours. Twenty. Six. Hours. Plane from Toronto to Hong Kong. 4 hour layover. Plane to Bangkok. Bus ride to Pattaya. 26 hours. We'll be playing for a total of two hours.

Like the razor/ razor blade model, we should perform for free, and only charge for travel.

***

We arrive at our hotel. It has just opened. Construction continues in some areas. The sound of sawing and drilling.

Thai culture exudes welcome and warmth. No sooner do we step into the hotel, than the staff invites us to the bar for a (non-alcoholic) drink. Lemongrass juice. Thank you. Thank you.

On leaving the bar for our rooms, we notice The Lives Jazz Trio will be performing in there in the evening. Promising.

We won't be playing for a few days. We have time to settle. The Pianobabbler acquires two indelible memories.

***

Memory 1: The 2-man trio

7:00 pm. We descend to the bar. One guy plays sax and trumpet. The other controls tracks on his computer.

A two man trio. Ladies and gentlemen:The Lives Jazz Trio.

The notes issuing from the sax and trumpet are approximate. They bear the same relation to the melody that a chunky dot on a map bears to a specific address. In the neighbourhood, at best. I swoop and waver along with each vertiginous note-like object.

The accompanying computer bring the opposite energy. Synthetic perfection, devoid of human throb.

But wait, that's not all. They sing, our two man trio. They cannot, in truth, sing. But they do.

I can't claim to know the truth about jazz. But nothing the Pianobabbler heard The Lives Jazz Trio play, sounded like any jazz he'd ever heard. Any more than that cheese-dough thing in the freezer preserves the Tuscan roots of pizza.

If Laurel and Hardy were music, they would be The Lives Jazz Trio. Trying their best. Surpassed by the world. Incompetent but winning. All the more comic for not intending to be so.

And in the background, as The Lives Jazz Trio plays, the drills and saws grind intrusively on.

***

Memory 2: Sex and the Shirtmaker

We go for a late night walk on Pattaya street named, really, Walking Street.

Pattaya, I understand, is working to become less of a sex city. It has a way to go.

Lit up like a summer fair midway, Walking Street stretches on and on packed with people, bursting with clubs. Music assaults with thumping relentlessness. Lights flash. We walk in a dense atmosphere of cheap lust.

Greeters, young women dressed for sex, invite.

Dancers, young women dressed for sex, dance.

Hostesses, young women dressed for sex, host.

Some of the young women are actually men.

We pass a club named Don't Tell Mama. And another named Lollipop Girls.

Older men wearing young Thai women- girls really -or boys stroll everywhere. Russians. Germans. Arabs, many of them in open cafes drawing on hookahs.

Street food. Street sex.

Music sheds its art here. It becomes a tool of applied psychology. Played at jackhammer frequencies, the music means to blugdeon you into Lucifer's Disco Den, or another bar. In this world, I am not a musician.

I cannot call this a red light district. Mixed in with the sex spots, I see a gelateria filled with families. Legitimate clothing stores. Real restaurants.

The Pianobabbler walks into one of the tailor shops. He has fine wares on display. We speak. He is as refined as Walking Street is not. We chat.

He offers three custom-tailored cotton shirts for $60US.

The Pianobabbler, not dressed for sex, has three new custom-tailored cotton shirts.

***

The Pianobabbler has babbled.

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