Dengue Fever is the Best Living Band
I miss many things about living back in San Francisco: Mexican food, buying pizza by the slice, the smell of bookstores, good ole' Americana ice cream (none of that New Zealand bs they have here) and live music (please no more French rappers or British DJs who play that awfully depressing dystopian sack of rubbish Dubstep - it's almost as bad as Chris Daughtry macho emo rock: 5 o' clock shadows and barbed wire tattoos).
Yes, the one thing I sorely miss about living back in San Francisco is krunking out at Dengue Fever concerts. I absolutely ruv Dengue Fever with a passion best explained by the sores and blisters on my feet post concert. The breadth of my music knowledge lies with hiphop naturally, so I cannot claim this as the best Psychedelic rock or anything as specific as such: what I can say is, as a glorified animal with ears and nerves, it's locomotive.
Listening to the catalogue and more importantly, seeing the band play live, I am imbued with the sense, deep down for Dengue Fever, its all about the music preceding them as its more important than getting this into the Top 40 rotation (as nice as that would be), its music that can...well, since I can't think of a softer word...empower.
When I used to perform, I loved it because it made me feel good and (hopefully) made others feel good. That was the reason I created the art that I did: to make it so I felt comfortable in my own skin, and hell, if I shared it, hopefully somebody else felt comfortable in their own skin, and simple as that, life became a bit more bearable. But oh boy, it's hard and stressful to be an effective artist, to remain relevant without falling into the pits of desperation, doing whatever you could to keep up your status (reference Dancing with the Stars), so I wanted out, which is partly my reason for leaving - the fame was addicting but the means to get to that end, well, "'Give me the fortune, keep the fame,' said my man Louis."
What Sleepwalking Through The Mekong shows is that Dengue Fever's music isn't imposing itself on Cambodians (like how American Top 40 always feel like an invasion with its auto-tuned sensibility...I do still appreciate the hard-kicking drums of Rihanna very much), because well, most of Dengue Fever's catalogue are actually covers of old school Cambodiana and the Dengue Fever sound, in terms of its original material, is informed by the music and spirit of that bygone 60's era (...funny thing because if Cambodians weren't introduced to Californian surf rock, the sound wouldn't exist so I can't bag on Top 40 too much now).
I know, this is my long-winded way of saying I heart Dengue Fever, I'm not saying Dengue Fever is out to save the world - just, wouldn't it be cool entertaining this thought that, the statement Dengue Fever is making with their music is, here was this sound from Cambodia, which was influenced by Californian surf rock, which we'll borrow back to make it known and cool again because, if this remains in the dusty crates, we'd be doing the citizens of the world the disservice of keeping this from them. We'll take this music, bring it back to Phnom Penh so the older generation can wig out to it in swaying reminisce, so the youngins can toss away their Hannah Montana CDs and go, hey, Khmer rocks - hence I rock.
Not only to feel comfortable being yourself, being proud of your heritage, your mother tongue - to own it, love the hell out of it, to walk around everyday feeling like a million dong - to quite simply, rock.
That said - Dengue Fever, please come back to Cambodia and do a country-wide tour. I will be there krunk and center, ready willing and able to do whatever your guitars tell me to do.
