The Plan
- Arrive in Viet Nam on Sunday, June 1st.
- Play one show at Apocalypse Now on June 3rd (which would be videotaped by James , who would fly in that morning)
- Leave Viet Nam on Friday, June 6th for six weeks in Cambodia.
Reality
On Sunday afternoon, June 1st, Flow touched down at H.C.M.C. airport exactly as planned. Thats pretty much where the original plan ended. After checking into their guesthouse, the band went to Apocalypse Now to check in with the club owner, Zip, who seemed very surprised to see them....."Didn't you get my fax?"he asked.
"What fax?"was the reply.
"The fax that said the show has been moved from the 3rd to the 12th,"said Zip.
"Shit,"said the band.
On top of that, one of the sponsors for the event had pulled out, which meant Zip could not afford to pay the band the amount originally agreed upon. They would make enough to just cover their expenses thus far, but would make no profit ( which they had counted on to help finance the trip to Cambodia.) Furthermore, an extra 10 days in Saigon ( with no income) meant that the little bit of cash they had on them would be completely drained by the time they would next get paid, two weeks hence.
Luckily, The Apostle Todd came to their rescue and loaned them (out of his hard earned vacation money) enough cash to get them safely through the next few weeks. ( Todd......rhymes with God........coincidence? hmmm... )
With that problem solved, they turned to the next problem...James. They had to call James immediately and inform him of the schedule change. He was planning on flying to Saigon on the 3rd to film the show at the Apocalypse, but would have to leave again the next day to cover the British handover in Hong Kong. The change in schedule meant that he would have to miss the Saigon show altogether, since he would be in H.K. at that time. But he told Roland to contact him once they got to Cambodia and had a schedule sorted out, and he'd meet them there.
That left one last problem, how to kill time for 10 days on an extremely limited budget? For the band, the most obvious answer was to rehearse. This proved to be easier said than done. It took one week of searching before finally finding a suitable place. The first place they tried was called the Olympic Ballroom, an old Colonial-era dance hall where young Vietnamese kids still go to learn how to waltz and cha-cha. The equipment at the Olympic was rather....limited. In fact, the only equipment they had was a built-in, house P.A. ( the kind where tiny television speakers are built into the ceiling and look like air vents) and literally, a miniature, toy drum kit made entirely of plastic. The kick drum was about the same diameter as a pie plate. Since there were no amplifiers whatsoever, Roland, Rick and Pete had to plug their guitars directly into the P.A., which completely destroyed it in a matter of minutes. So much for the Olympic.
The second place they tried was a rehearsal space used by several Vietnamese pop groups. Once again equipment was the problem, or rather, lack of equipment was the problem. No drums, no amps, just a P.A. and five keyboards. Completely useless. The only saving grace of that wasted trip was that Flow got to watch a Vietnamese pop band rehearse, and it was.....five keyboards playing through a P.A.
At the end of the week, the owners of the guesthouse suggested they try the home of a family in the neighborhood who used to have a band years ago.This proved to be the best of the lot. The family ( siblings who were now all in their 40's and 50's) had indeed been a Rock band in the early 70's, playing western Rock and pop tunes ( they were big Grand Funk fans.) They had even toured Europe at one point and had many pictures and press clippings proudly displayed on their living room walls, which was also the rehearsal space.
Their equipment was ancient and practically rusted into place. It seemed like none of it had been touched nor moved since the fall of Saigon. None of the amps had plugs, the bare wires were either stuck directly into wall sockets or wired directly to the main circuit breaker. One of the brothers ( apparently the youngest and most foolhardy) would put on a rubber glove, flip the main switch and in a shower of sparks and blue-ish smoke the equipment would reluctantly sputter to life. Rick had to sit on a wooden chair and play because if his feet touched the floor he'd get a terrible shock from his guitar, and if it was raining or even too humid they'd all get shocked. In addition, their Grandmother had recently died, and so (according to tradition) one corner of the living room was a shrine dedicated to the deceased, which must have several sticks of inscense burning at all times for a month of mourning. So the constantly burning inscense filled the room with a thick cloud of smoke that reached from the ceiling down to about 3 feet above the floor.
But the equipment was useable and the people very nice, so the band continued to use the room to rehearse over the next week. At each rehearsal they would attract about a dozen spectators of all ages, who would all crowd around the doorway and windows staring fixedly at Mit as he played.
One of the most entertaining parts of every rehearsal was the walk home. The sight of four long-haired foreigners carrying guitars, walking down the back streets of a neighborhood where the locals never see tourist, attracted alot of attention. People would pop out of windows and doorways to wave, Young girls in school uniforms would giggle and whisper to each other, small children would run around shouting "Hello!"and "You! You!"Others would just stare, with a shocked expression of disbelief.
Another task the boys busied themselves with was promoting the show. The best method of advertising being word of mouth, the band found the bar where all the local expats hang out and spent most of their nights drinking and chatting with them, getting them excited about the show. Soon, word had spread throughout their entire network. Then Flow went to work on their other target demographic, the travelers. The way they decided to promote the show to the travelers was by employing the "Gum Mafia". Since all of the travelers stay basically in one part of town, that area is crawling with little kids selling gum and cigarettes out of wooden cases who follow, pester and hound you until you buy something just to get rid of them. Natural born promoters! Plus they all speak English really well and are irresistabley cute. So Roland gathered a group of them together and made a deal, if they'd each stick a flyer advertsing the show on their wooden gum-case and point it out to every foreigner they tried selling gum to, Flow would pay them each $1 per day (a furtune in the gum biz!) In a side deal, Rick agreed to take them all out for ice-cream if they'd stop trying to sell him gum.
Zip helped with promotion by distributing posters and flyers all over the city, as well as spreading word through his own "network"of friends and contacts. The posters were designed by Roland and Zip during Roland's visit in April, and are the reason why Flow became known as a Canadian band................. As he and Zip were designing the poster and organizing the details, the local officials insisted that any advertisements for the show must specify that it was a foreign band, and since Roland was Canadian, the posters read "Live! Direct from Canada!" so this is the reason why Flow has become known throughout S.E.Asia as "The Canadian Band".
During the 10 day period before the gig, Flow spent most of their "free time"around the guesthouse where they were staying. Since they couldn't afford to do much sightseeing, they explored the local neighborhood. Every morning they would start the day in the coffee-shop next door and chat with the locals over iced-coffee and tea, before everyone headed off to open their shops along the street. They befriended the family that ran the local noodle stand and traded english lessons for vietnamese lessons. They were on a first name basis with all the motorbike-taxi drivers on the block, and made several mapping expeditions deep into the maze of tiny, twisting, turning alleys and warrens that ran through the heart of the neighborhood. Everywhere they went, they invited all the Vietnamese they encountered to the gig.
Hopes were high, and the growing sense of spirit between the four musicians filled them with a confidence that allowed them to flow...consciously and effortlessly... through all the challenges they were presented. Since this kind of "tour of Viet Nam"had never been attempted before, nobody was quite sure how or even if it would work. Once again, it was up to the flow.
But just how well it did work, nobody was quite prepared for....
THE GIG
Apocalypse Now , Saigon - June 12th,1997
On a normal night, the capacity of the Apocalypse Now is about 300 people, 200 in the main room and another 100 in the outdoor patio/beer garden. On thatnight however, there were 800 people crammed into the club! The pool table had to be moved out onto the sidewalk. Tables and chairs were removed from the main room as more and more people continued to arrive. Hundreds of Honda Dream motorbikes lined the street, like the Asian version of the "Brighton Beach"scene from Quadraphenia.
At about 10pm Flow's taxi pulled up to the venue. After navigating through the morass of people outside, they were ushered into a side door next to the main entrance, where they were led upstairs to a private room so they could "prepare"(Musicianspeak for drink, smoke, drink, vomit, drink etc...) before going on.
Downstairs, the crowd was being entertained by a group of Vietnamese blues musicians led by Keith Nolan (an Irish expat living and working in Saigon) on keyboards and vocals. They played a "Commitments"-style set of Soul and R&B tunes.
At about 10:30 pm they finished playing, and Keith came upstairs to tell Flow to get ready. He explained that the amps had all been returned to where Flow had set them during sound-check and the keyboards had been moved to the side of the stage. Roland invited Keith to sit in, since the keyboards were still on the stage, and Keith accepted. Then they helped Keith "prepare", everyone swallowed a handfull of guarana with a beer chaser, made a quick power-chain, said a small prayer, grabbed their guitars and headed downstairs.
When Flow entered the main room they were faced with a bit of an obstacle. The stage was on the opposite side of the room, and between the stage and Flow stood a solid wall of about 600 people. Luckily, a big, burley New Zealander named Mike happened to be standing nearby. Rick asked Mike if he had ever played rugby in New Zealand? Mike proudly responded that indeed he had and that New Zealand rugby Rules! So the band formed a chain, put Mike in the lead and told him to clear a path to the stage...a distance of about 15 yards that took at least 15-20 minutes to cross.
When the band finally reached the stage, a cheer went up from the audience. As the band plugged in their instruments and faint sounds began to emerge, it felt as if some kind of spirit had been roused and was descending on the room, and everyone sensed that something magical was about to happen ...
Whats the setlist?"Keith asked Roland.
"There isn't one,"he replied.
The faint sounds became a low rumble which slowly grew and built in intensity until it developed into what Flow calls Noise...
"What key are we in?"shouted Keith.
"E!"Roland shouted back.
The screaming drone of that E chord exploded into waves of feedback and crashing cymbals, creating a living, breathing sonic wash, out of which the opening riff to CCR's "Born on the Bayou"began to take shape and emerge. As the drums and bass began to coelesce around the riff, Keith once again turned to Roland and shouted, "Whats happening to me.......?! "
With one solid "crack!"from Mit's snare drum, the whole band instantly locked on the groove and launched themselves into the song. Although there was no official set-list, there was a basic framework that the show would be built around. The show was divided into 3 sections;
-The first section would be high-intensity, high-energy rock from beginning to end, in other words...hit 'em hard, lift 'em up, keep 'em up and then slam 'em down.
-The second section would slow things down a bit, change the mood, get weird, challenge the audience...basically, shake things up and see what happens.
- The third section would be the free-for-all jam out to the end.
The order of the songs was incidental, as long as they fit into the framework of each section. The next song would be chosen in the moment, based on the response to the previous song. The only other criteria they imposed upon the show was during the first section. As an experiment with subliminal reinforcement , they decided that each song should be in a key higher than the song it followed (so a song in G would be followed by a song in A etc...) to see if it would help build the energy in the crowd. "Born on the Bayou"( in E ) was followed by a pumping version of The Band's "The Shape I'm In"(in G. Rick realised he didn't know any songs in F, so skipped to G) Then they cranked it up another notch for "The House is Rockin'"(in A ), which they stretched from a 3 minute Rock-a-billy stomp into a 15 minute, butt-shaking frenzy. Next, they played one of Rick's tunes, "I Won't Be Around,"(in D. Again, they didn't do any Rockers in B orC and so,had to skip.) Phish's "Chalkdust Torture"brought them back to the key of E and capped of the first section.
From the second section onward, its impossible to say the exact order of the songs played, everyone was too involved in the moment to keep track. Suffice it to say that the evening flowed... and the crowd response was tremendous. The original material was as well recieved as the "Classic"faves. There were moments of chaos and moments of brilliance. There were moments when people were bouncing off the walls and moments when they stood so transfixed and quiet that you could hear ice-cubes melting in the beer.
They were only interrupted once, when the sponsors sent some bikini-babes onstage to raffle off some t-shirts and mugs and alcohol. It seemed to take forever, and noone onstage could figure out why the audience was apparently ignoring them, nobody was coming up to claim the prizes. What those onstage didn't realise was that the soundman had left the stage monitors on but turned the main speakers off, so the people onstage could hear themselves but the people out front couldn't hear anything! Then he left to go to the toilet during the "commercial break".
Fearing that it may go on all night, Rick took over and used his incredibly loud voice to shout over the din of the crowd..."Okay! 7436...We got a t-shirt for ya! Where the hell are ya, 7436?! Okay...You! Catch!"
"7559! T-shirt! 7559!"
"Over here!"
"Catch!""6997!.....6997!...."
"Me! Me!"
"Well heeellllo 6997! Why my darling... why don't you just... step right on up here so I may present you with this fine, fine...form-fitting... t-shirt, you lovely thing. Here, have a mug too..."
"Last but not least is this big jug of expensive Moonshine!...Which goes to....
7268!...7268!"
"Back here! Back here! Thats me!7268!"
"Is that you, 7268, waaaay back there?!"
"Yeah!"
"Here....take a swallow and pass this back to 7268... ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR!..."
...and back they went to the music, launching into "Payday"by Jesse Winchester, while the soundman came running franticly out from the toilet to turn on the main speakers.
The last section turned into what amounts to a one-hour medley of non-stop music. The Beatles' "Get Back"morphed into "Crossroads"which turned into "Not Fade Away"that featured snippets of "Got My Mojo Workin'", "Bo-Diddley", "Magic Bus", an a capella section of vocal madrigal/beat-box/doo-wop, all culminating in an explosive reprisal of the original theme, "Not Fade Away"...which did not fade away...but came back as the Alman Bros.' "One Way Out", which ended the set.
As the audience cheered, the five musicians, drenched in sweat and staggering from exhaustion, wandered aimlessly about the stage....milking it, of course, for all the applause they could get. Rick leaned into the mic stand, panting heavily, and in an incredibly exagerated rasp, said "More?........We couldn't possibly play any more...."
"...ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR!"Instantly, the band snapped to attention and dove headfirst into "Wine"by Jerry Lee Lewis, at runaway train speed. They medley'd "Wine"with Chuck Berry's "'Round and 'Round"bringing it down to a whisper before exploding back into a roar. And on the last "Wine...wine...pass that bottle to me!"Rick collapsed into a heap on the floor as the last chord fell. After a few moments Roland walked over to Rick and started trying to revive him, Keith came over with a towel and started fanning him, Peter took a glass of water and dumped it on him.... then they slowly got him to his feet and propped him up against the mic stand, which he held tightly for support as he staggered and swayed back and forth while the audience cheered him on....."
"I think...I...think I..... think......ONE-TWO-THREE-FOUR!...Wine, wine, wine...elderberry!..."
Okay, so its an old routine. Springsteen has done it, Jim Morrison has done it, James Brown has done it....but it still works. And when that "one-two-three-four!"came down and and the band kicked right back into "Wine", those Vietnamese didn't know what hit 'em, and the place went berserk for one last round of mad dancing, screaming guitar solos and choruses.
Afterwards, the house lights came up, the DJ came on and the crowd began to clear out. Mit was drooped over his drumkit, Pete was sprawled out on his back, Rick was in the bathroom dumping buckets of cold water over his head, and poor Keith was just a mess. Roland still managed to have enough strength to chat up the vietnamese girls at the edge of the stage, collecting numbers and making appointments. All in all, around 800 people were in that club at any given time. And with a small but steady turnover rate throughout the 3+ hour show, nearly 1000 people ( expats, sexpats, locals, tourists, travelers, good-girls, bad-girls, working-girls, foreign dignitaries, noodle vendors, taxi drivers and little kids who sell gum) experienced Flow that night.
Saturday, June 13th, Roland went back the Apocalyse to see Zip, find out "the numbers"from the previous night, and get paid. Zip handed Roland a buisiness card and said "The Canadian Ambassador wants to talk to you, heres his number."So Roland borrowed Zip's phone and gave him a call. It turns out that the Ambassador, Ian Burney ( actually, the Consular General, Ian Burney),was at the gig, loved the show and wanted to meet them. Roland explained that they'd be leaving for Cambodia the following afternoon, and wouldn't have much time, but that the band would love to meet him. Ian suggested they drop by his home in the morning for brunch, then go to the airport from there.
The next morning, Ian sent a van to Flow's guesthouse to collect the band and their things and deliver them to his hotel. Ian met them in the lobbey and introduced himself to Roland, saying "So, I understand you're Canadian?"
"Well, actually.....not really...you see..."and Roland went on to explain how he managed to be a Canadian citizen without ever having actually lived there.
Ian turned to Pete, shook his hand and asked "So then...are you Canadian?"
"I'm his twin brother,"Pete replied.
Moving on to Rick, he said "Surely you must be Canadian."
"No..."Rick answered, and with a grin added "...I'm Quebecois!"Thankfully, Ian laughed.
At last turning to Mit he said "Don't tell me you're Canadian?"
"No, I'm Thai...but I have dis!"and Mit pulled his Canadian flag keychain out of his pocket , showed Ian, and gave everybody a good laugh.
During breakfast Ian explained that he was a big Rock and Roll fan, he had been really impressed by the show at Apocalypse Now, and since the band was at least sort of Canadian he was wondering if they'd be interested in playing at the Consulate's Canada Day party on June 25th? They were. The only problem was that they'd be in Cambodia on June 25th. So Ian said he'd try and find some money in the party budget to fly them in for the gig and back again, but couldn't promise much since most of the budget had already been alocated (for a DJ no less!) In any case, he said, if this didn't work out maybe they could still do something in the future...those Canadians like to party.
After the Canadian Breakfast Summit Meeting the band once again loaded into the consulate van, waved good-bye to Ian The Consular General and headed off to the airport, to meet their fate in......
Cambodia.
-Be sure and tune in again next week for the thrilling episode...
Gig called on account of WAR!
or
I survived a bloody coup and all I got was this stupid T-shirt
or
Khmerijuana Blues