YANGON ROCKS

I HAVE A NEW FAVORITE BAND

Last time I was in Myanmar, the frequent music videos I'd see on TV, or playing on TVs in overnight buses or market stalls, caught my eye and ear. I called a rock journalist of a local paper on my last day and asked him to tea and to shop-around at local CD stores. I wanted to know who was 'the Stones, the Nirvana, the Madonna of Myanmar' and get some of the key releases. A few key names kept coming up – Iron Cross, mostly – but also Lazy Club, which I got to see for $3 the other night outside Yangon International Hotel.

Yangon concerts are frequent once the rains stop – mostly outdoor events with opening-act fashion shows, a few bands and giant posters advertising things like coffee mix or instant noodles. The audience swarm around the stage: mostly upper-class local kids, including drunk young men with shirts off, young punks with cobweb designs painted on their face and spiked haircuts and leather jackets that read 'Sex Pistols,' couples hugging while shouting out the lyrics.

Lazy Club (like Iron Cross) is a band with rotating singers. Their CDs are labeled not only as 'Lazy Club' but also with the individual singer featured, such as the outrageous Phyu Phyu Kyaw Thein, a 30-year-old (or so) Catholic Burmese woman who has delighted many with her strong voice, but alienated others by her stage persona. 'A bit too confident,' one Yangon local said. 'No one is used to seeing that.' Her set began as all sets should: with Lazy Club's guitarist doing Eddie Van Halen finger-lifts on a triple-necked guitar blasting through a Marshall stack. Nearby the pudgy bass player in glasses and a pea-green shirt shyly looked down at the frets of his six-string bass. A keyboard player hid behind a rack of synths, the drummer behind the cymbals. As the guitarist started into a chugging death-metal rift, on walked the Grim Reaper, in a full black cloak, face obscured by a black veil. The Reap held a mic and belt out words in Burmese, as leather-jacketed kids up front showered the stage with middle fingers and 'hang loose' signs they see on Malaysia TV. As the song wound down, Reap ripped off the cloak: and Phyu Phyu stood in shiny gold pants and top, with gold streaks and sparkles in a faintly bee-hive haircut. She straddled monitors and held the mic out for fans to sing along. The drunk guy next to me yelled 'I love you' in English, a mosh pit appeared briefly behind. Women with dyed blonde hair shouted out lyrics or fist-pumped along.

The next song was a cover of Bonnie Tyler's 'Making Love (Out of Nothing At All).' Celine Dion and Bon Jovi songs followed, somehow the guitarist found innovative ways to get chugging, distorted riffs into everything. The hour set never got old. None of this would fall flat in Brooklyn. Except here the sponsor is Mama's Instant Noodles.

Throughout the set, four middle-aged people sat stone-faced in chairs to the right-side of the stage, and in plain view of everyone. Three gray-haired women and a pudgy balding man. Censors? I asked a kid next to me with a outgrown buzz cut who they were. 'I don't know.' What did he think of the show though? 'She is everyone's favorite Myanmar singer.' Mine too.