SOTW: Dead Kennedys "Holiday in Cambodia" and Dengue Fever

Thanks for your patience, dear readers, as some of us here at Oh! have required the past few days to fully digest the United Nations-style delegation of meats we consumed this past federal holiday weekend.

In the meantime and in the shadow of Memorial Day weekend - a holiday with multiple valences especially for us who have looked at war "from both sides now" -, this week's SOTW selections include what I like to think of as an early 1980s punk protest song - "Holiday in Cambodia" - and a band whose popularity and possibility arise in the aftermath of the war dealt with in the Los Angeles-based punk band's anthem, a song that All Music Guide cites as "possibly the most successful single of the American hardcore scene."

I first encountered the Dead Kennedys' most widely known song throughout my teenage years (most likely during a Jed the Fish afternoon hour on KROQ) and, though I felt drawn to the anthem's dissonant sound, I wasn't quite sure if it was just another meat beat manifesto masquerading as political satire. Growing up near the cities of Brea and Fullerton and in an era when Oliver Stone-style politics reigned supreme, young angry little Asian girls like us turned a critical eye to angry white boys singing songs about Southeast Asian countries.

It wasn't until last summer's Paul Green School of Rock Music festival in historic Asbury Park, NJ (cue Springsteen's "Glory Days" at the Stone Pony) that I came face to face, however, with the brains and frontman of the Dead Kennedys - Jello Biafra.

Almost 30 years (and definitely 30 pounds) after the original release date of the single, Biafra took the stage at the legendary Baronet Theatre last June 2007 to perform overtly political spoken word, a form he is more famously known for with current generations of fans. Eyes opened wide by these live performances and the following video, I find it eerily ironic that this was the first song I heard waking up this past Monday morning:

Fast forward to UCLA, April 2008 for another convergence between popular music and the nation formerly known as Kampuchea -- the United Khmer Students' screening of John Pirozzi's rockumentary, Sleepwalking through the Mekong. (Thanks to fellow audiophile and ALOTR affiliate, Josh Kun, for tipping me off to this band). The film stars indie music festival favorites, Dengue Fever, an eclectic band featuring former Cambodian pop star, Ch'hom Nimol (found by the band while performing at the Long Beach restaurant, Dragon House) and 5 California-born musicians (Zac and Ethan Holtzman, David Ralicke, Senon Williams, and Paul Smith). Most famous for performing covers of 1960s and 70s psych and surf-rock-sounding tunes from Cambodia, Sleepwalking the band's first tour of a country most widely known for Pol Pot and the Killing Fields.

Although it had moments of dipping into the Ry Cooder-landia of third world hip veneer, the spirit of the film was balanced out by the ur-text of Nimol's own balikbayan (or return to country) story-- a narrative that played out more affectively without words-- as well as in an interview with a local music teacher. In one of Sleepwalking's more touching scenes, the teacher (a former musician who lived under and survived the Khmer Rouge regime) explains the historical and personal importance of this music's revival as a form of popular culture that was banned under the dictatorship, its most widely known artists (such as Sin Sisamouth and Ros Sereysothea) imprisoned and even killed. Physically and psychologically coerced into forgetting and even feeling a deep sense of shame, the film captures the sincere welcomes and even honest disbelief of modern-day Cambodians that a band of Americans could even care about their country, let alone this musical era (note grandmother's facial expressions in the following trailer):

In the season of a holiday that generally marks limited notions of patriotism (as well as the end of seasonal fashion faux pas), let these two American pop artifacts echo a different mode of war's remembrance. - (CBB)