Thailand gig raises a million

Thailand animal welfare charity PAWS, whose recent annual fundraiser in Phuket was headlined by The Lightyears, have announced that this year’s event raised a record THB 1 million.

Plans are already afoot for the band to return to Thailand in 2008. Watch this space for updates…!

A Truly Legendary Breakfast

Saturday 13 October, 9.30pm (PAWS Party, Laguna Hotel, Thailand):
Tonight’s show is the biggest gig of the tour – a headline slot at the annual fundraiser for local charity PAWS (Phuket Animal Welfare Society). There are around 300 people in the crowd this evening and they’re all up for a big one. The dancefloor is heaving and, weaving in and out of the boogying revellers, there’s a chap with an enormous camera who turns out to be here from Channel 11 – which means clips from the gig will be going out on Thai national television later in the week.

We end the first encore with Emily and initially resist calls for a second. However, our hosts are having none of this and we are spirited back onto the stage for another couple of tunes. I am sweating like a mariner. It is hot up here in my suit. Eventually we hang up our guitars and the evening draws to a close. PAWS have managed to raise THB 1 Million tonight, which is fantastic. Good work all round, I’d say.

Next stop is a local bar which is modest in size and utterly rammed full of big English blokes. They have, like us, congregated here for the Rubgy World Cup semi-final between England and France. I won’t pretend to understand, appreciate or even like rugby that much but I have absolutely no qualms about jumping on the glory bandwagon whilst the national team is actually winning games.

So, we triumph at the rugby, the bar erupts, the smaller members of the assembled crowd get thrown around by the larger ones, and everyone piles out onto the street. It is 3am. We are left with seemingly only one option – to retire to our rooms with a couple of bottles of Sang Som (Thai rum), pump up the Guns ‘N’ Roses on the stereo, channel all our discipline into not raiding the mini-bar and see the night through until 6am when we can go to breakfast.

******

So. It is now 6am. In the spirit of true British stoicism we have seen the whole night through and our reward is a delicious 5-star breakfast in one of the world’s top hotels at an hour so youthful that we have the entire dining room to ourselves. We each don a pair of shades and our official Laguna Hotel bathrobes and take our seats for a truly legendary breakfast.

In our heads we look like a rather suave amalgam of James Dean and Noel Coward. In reality, of course, we look like tools. This, in many ways, is what being in a band is all about. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Chris Lightyear

400 ladyboys… and us.

Thursday 11 October, 4.15am (McDonalds Restaurant, Patong, Thailand):
We are sitting in McDonalds. Eating burgers. In Thailand. “Tourists!” I hear you cry. But allow me to explain how we got here.

We played a gig tonight at The Green Man in Muang. Word had obviously spread since we announced the show two days ago and the place turned out to be almost full. Because we were using another band’s gear there were a few restrictions – Tony had to sit down at the drums, at the back of the stage, and I was playing an inexplicably quiet grand piano that I had to pound the hell out of to be heard (“Don’t go breaking my piano” the owner had warned me before we went onstage. He said it with a smirk but he’s a big guy and he’d seen me knocking seven bells out of it on Monday so I think he meant it). Nevertheless, the gig was a lot of fun and the crowd seemed to really enjoy it. Turns out they don’t get many British bands out here. Emily went down particularly well, I think – and we also chucked in our rocked-up version of Twist & Shout after the singer from the house band, upon spotting we had three vocalists, introduced us as “band from England, like The Beatles!”.

Once again, in order to leave people wanting more ahead of the climactic gig on Saturday, we graciously decline the crowd’s emphatic requests for an encore. Must stay focussed, must be professional. If people want to hear more they should buy tickets for Saturday – that’s the deal.

Which is why, four pitchers of Singha lager later, we are back onstage, sans instruments, lined up in front of the house band, singing into radio mics like some kind of beered-up imitation of Westlife and belting out three-part harmonies to Daydream Believer. What a bunch of nonces. The stage is invaded by drunk Australians and, shortly after that, everything goes a bit blurry.

When the smoke clears, we are in Patong. Patong is the party district of Phuket. The place is crawling – absolutely crawling – with prostitutes. I’m talking 400 ladyboys, and us. Patong has a fierce reputation in the area but even that couldn’t quite prepare us for the sobering sight that is Bangla Road (A.K.A. “Bang-A-Whore Road”). Oddly enough, however, despite the army of rent-girls dancing suggestively on the tables, the place doesn’t actually feel that seedy. Perhaps I’ve had too many Banana Daiquiris.

Five minutes later, we’re standing outside a bar being soundly thrashed by a group of ladyboys at a street game that basically entails trying to hammer nails into a severed tree-stump. It’s a popular night-time diversion around here – the idea being that the drunker you are, the harder it is to hit the nail. It seems like good clean fun although I can’t help but think that all this frantic banging is intended as a precursor to something else. Gulp. Time to move on, I think.

The next bar we visit has an in-house band. And, before I know it, Russell (our agent in Thailand) has persuaded them to let us jump on their instruments and bash out some tunes. This cannot be a good idea. And yet, somehow, 30 seconds later, I’m onstage, wielding a Les Paul guitar – the house band don’t have a keyboard player – and staring out at the assembled revellers. I haven’t played guitar on stage for about 12 years. This could be interesting.

If I’m honest, I have very little idea how we sounded. But the drunk people in the front row loved it, and if that isn’t a stamp of approval, I don’t know what is. “Good job mate,” Tony says to me as we step offstage. “Playing that guitar, you actually looked… cool. Maybe you should do that again sometime…?”. Cripes. I feel like I have betrayed the Worldwide Covenant Of Keyboardists.

After we’ve finished, Russell congratulates us heartily and presents us with another round of beers. “Well done Lightyears. These drinks comes courtesy of the landlord,” he explains, indicating a sharp-looking guy standing by the bar, “and he’s pretty important round here so he’s worth impressing”. I check the guy out. He looks a bit scary. “What does he do then?” I ask Russell. “What, the landlord? Oh, he’s the Head of the Thai Mafia”. That’s good then.

One more bar, one more round of cocktails, one more insanely loud band playing Hendrix covers. Everyone’s pretty whacked by this point so we head out to find some food.

…And that is how we came to be sitting here in McDonalds at 4 in the morning, unanimously inebriated following the consumption of one-too-many enormous Mojitos and eating crappy junk food out of polystyrene trays. In our defence, though, we did try and persuade the guys flipping burgers to serve us something local.

“Good day sirs. I would like to purchase a Thai Green Curry With Prawns. Post-haste. I don’t want a burger, I want prawns.”

Apparently the Prawn McCurry is still in development. Chicken nuggets it is then.

Chris Lightyear

There’s no excuse for Celine Dion

Tuesday 9 October, 9.15pm (Bang-Mud Restaurant, Phuket, Thailand):
The food in this country is stunning. Words don’t adequately describe it, to be honest, but… well… let’s just say that it’s putting “Ladies Eat Free” night at Abra-kebabra into serious perspective. Tony just ordered a groupa fish for his dinner, and shortly afterwards a chef appeared on the little jetty beside the restaurant, hoisted said fish out of the water and disappeared back into the kitchen. 15 minutes later the creature was lying on a plate in front of us, steaming away. The word “fresh” doesn’t even come close…

Today we went canoeing in amongst the caverns and lagoons of Phuket’s offshore islands. It was like being on the set of Peter Jackson’s King Kong. We were hanging out with monkeys underneath vast, craggy, richly-foliaged cliff faces and diving off the tour boat into twinkling, sapphire waters. In the past I’ve always found it extremely difficult to sympathise with “gappers” when they insist on dragging you picture-by-picture through their enormous photo albums of elephant rides in Mumbai and feeding endangered spider-monkeys in the Amazon rainforest but, after this, I understand. What a day. And the Thai boat crew who were running the whole thing were just brilliant. Their only slip-up, in fact, was playing the theme song from Titanicover the PA system on the journey back to the mainland. There’s no excuse for Celine Dion at the best of times, but an ode to a shipwreck? On a boat? Perhaps it was meant to be ironic.

The restaurant in which we’re currently eating is only accessible by boat. It’s basically a massive floating platform in the middle of the bay, which means that all the fish just come straight from the sea to your plate. When we arrived we were shown round the various aquariums where the chefs keep their more specialist catches – including one that housed a frisky-looking leopard shark (“No stand too close” was our guide’s advice – his reasoning being, I guess, that if you fall into a four-foot square tub with a shark in it then you’ve pretty much had it) and one containing an excitable gaggle of puffer fish. The Thai chap who was showing us round picked up one of the puffers and shook it around a little until it started to inflate. And it just kept going. Believe me, these things are hilarious. I mean, we’ve all seen puffer fish on Wildlife On One, but face-to-face they really are something else. They are the space-hoppers of the animal kingdom. I was marginally disappointed that it didn’t emit a farting noise when it deflated, but otherwise it was first-class entertainment.

Oh, and apropos of nothing in particular, yesterday afternoon in Phuket Town we identified our first ladyboy. What a moment. My mother would be so proud.

Chris Lightyear

The Ultimate Paradise

Sunday 7 October, 6pm (Poolside, Phuket, Thailand):
I am reclining on a sun lounger beside a lagoon-like pool, flanked by coconut trees and rich, exotic vegetation, watching the early evening sun set exquisitely over the Bay Of Bengal. It is nearing the close of our first day here and it has already become clear to me that our Lonely Planet guide to Thailand isn’t exaggerating when it calls Phuket “the ultimate paradise”. And coming from someone who has actually been to the Coral Reef Leisure Centre in Bracknell, that’s saying a lot.

Our hosts, Athena and Russell, gave us a champagne reception when we arrived at Phuket airport yesterday, and their hospitality has continued to be first-rate ever since. Athena is very kindly putting us up for a few days in her stunning ocean-view home on the south-east coast of the island, and has been diligently plying us with Thai beer and tea to keep us amused.

Today, everybody went to local bar The Green Man to watch British hope Lewis Hamilton emphatically not winning the Grand Prix. I’d like to tell you what happened but unfortunately I can’t because I wasn’t there. Thing is, when I woke up this morning, I felt awful. I mean, really awful. I could sense as soon as I opened my eyes that my glands were swollen and my cheeks were puffy, but even that didn’t prepare me for what I saw when I looked in the mirror. I had a face like a bag of smacked badgers. I immediately began to panic. What could this be? I was fine yesterday. Had I picked up some rare and hideous strain of Elephantitis on the plane? Would my head continue expanding indefinitely until erupting dramatically like the dude from Scanners? Cripes. I really need my head. I’m quite attached to it in fact. 

Fortunately, after a day’s ocean-watching from the vantage point of Athena’s terrace on the mountainside, I feel a whole lot better, and my face has returned to its customary shape and size. Plus the boys arrived back from their first excursion on the island with the news that they’ve booked us another gig – this Wednesday at The Green Man. Sneaky buggers. I’m supposed to book the shows. Will have to stick close by them from now on, lest this kind of behaviour continues and they discover just how easy my job really is…

******

As we head out in a taxi for a bite to eat and a few drinks, Tony leans over to me and asks “What are the odds, do you think, that we’ll end up singing drunken karaoke to the hits of The Monkees in some obscure bar tonight?”. I chuckle, reflecting that if it weren’t for the fact that we’re not going anywhere near a karaoke bar this evening, it would be a highly likely occurrence. This tends to happen quite a lot when we’re on tour in Asia, you see. I am reminded of our first ever experience of Norebang in Korea in 2006, when I sang my heart out to Rage Against The Machine and John sang Beat It an entire octave lower than Michael Jackson. Classic.

We are heading back to The Green Man because, ahead of our gig there on Wednesday, we’ve decided to have a quick chat with the resident band, who are very graciously lending us their equipment for the show. Well, I say “chat”. That may be a rather grandiose term for two minutes of enthusiastic nodding, confused squinting and the excessive repetition of the only thing we know how to say in Thai. “Thank you” is a useful term but it turns out that building an entire conversation on it is simply impractical.

An hour into their set, the resident band welcome us to Phuket, which is jolly nice of them. Next they welcome us on stage, which is odd, because we’re not playing tonight. We smile and pretend not to understand them, but it seems they really do want us up onstage. Athena gives her approval (she’s flown us over here so what she says pretty much goes!) and we jump up onstage and bang out a few tunes. It’s great to be playing again. When we’ve finished, the small crowd bay for more; however, we are under strict instructions not to give too much away tonight, so as to keep people hungry for the main show on Saturday. So we return to our bottles of Chang and enjoy the rest of the resident band’s set. A 5-piece Thai rock group playing Kylie Minogue’s Locomotion in a mock-Tudor English pub – it really doesn’t get much better than that, I’m telling you.

Oh, and before the night finishes we end up singing drunken karaoke to the hits of The Monkees. Old habits die hard, I guess…