Top5 with Rizwan of King Ly Chee

We decided to ask our good friend Riz his top5 as he’s a good representative of HK’s underground music scene.

Yes, it’s a long one but, my man had some venting to do…

We forgot to ask him “Top5 reasons he gets mistaken for Andre Agassi”

Who are you Riz?

Yo…my name is Riz (full name: Mohammad Rizwan Farooqi) born in Karachi (Pakistan) but have lived in Hong Kong my entire life. I’ve been skateboarding and playing heavy music since I was an obnoxious and incredibly angry little kid. Who would’ve thought that later on in life this angry and bitter little Pakistani-born but Hong Kong-raised kid would go on to front a hardcore band called King Ly Chee (in a city that doesn’t pride or support arts that have “zero” profitability), touring with NOFX, playing in front of 32,000 heavy music fans in the Philippines, opening for Terror/Comeback Kid/Envy/Himsa/FC Five, release a record with the love and support of Hong Kong’s “godfather of rock” Paul Wong, and then become a teacher of young awesome children (a teacher who, by the way, gets excited to dress up as ridiculous animals at the drop of a hat)?

That’s me in a nutshell…

Top 5 raddest bands of all time

That is IMPOSSIBLE for me to do!!! I’m 33 and I have only found solace for all my personal issues through 2 things: skateboarding and music. So to name just 5 of the raddest bands on this planet is soooooooo hard dude! I’ll try my best…

1. Sick of it All – hands down THE band that got me into hardcore…we ALMOST had a chance to open for them last year in Malaysia. I was giddy with delight of finally being able to meet my hardcore heroes, but the show got cancelled last minute and so we never got to meet them nor perform on the same stage with them. It’ll happen one day…

2. Slayer – this band came in my life at the most perfect time possible…like I said above, I was an angst-ridden kid growing up and really used music and skateboarding to vent all my frustrations and confusion that I was grappling with being a Pakistani Muslim growing up in Hong Kong attending a Western-Christian based school. I just wanted to fit in but by my teen years I knew that wasn’t happening. I began to understand that I need to be who I am – and that was a fan of heavy fucking music like the almighty Slayer!

3. The Odd Numbers – dude in terms of skateboarding for me, this is the one band that I will always remember. My little crew of skateboarders was raised on skate videos that had punk, hardcore and metal on skate video soundtracks (later on it became hip-hop which actually was awesome even though I was a full-fledged metalhead by that time). One of the best videos was New Deal’s Useless Wooden Toys and they had this one incredible band that got in our heads – The Odd Numbers…awesome AWESOME band…

4. Run DMC – One of the best tapes (yes kids, I’m that old) I ever bought as a young kid was Van Halen’s 5150 (the very first piece of music that I ever bought) and Run DMC’s Raising Hell. I still get giddy listening to the opening rhyme of “Peter Piper” before they kick into that CRAZY beat…I didn’t eventually become a huge connoisseur of hip-hop but have always respected it because it had so many similarities to the ideas behind hardcore, but that beat still stands the test of time I think.

5. Iron Maiden – When I got into music I knew that all I wanted to do was play the guitar. This is one of the band’s that inspired me to want to play and get better and better…I’m so amazed and inspired that this band is still around doing things as huge as they were during the heyday!

But there are so many others too: Asian Dub Foundation (A band full of South Asians! Hell yeah!), Minor Threat (I’ve been straight edge my entire life), Beastie Boys, Metallica, Pantera, Bane, Mineral, Terror, so many dude…

Top 5 craziest things you’ve done on stage

1. Nothing beats stagediving into the crowd with my guitar…I’ve done this on countless occasions and have always been brought back on stage safe and sound! Thanks kids! Hehehe…

2. Playing in front of 32,000 screaming Filipinos at Summer Slam this past April has to be up there for sure…

3. Touring with NOFX for 2 weeks through Asia! That was definitely a what-the-hell-is-going-on-here occasion that I’ll never forget. They were cool cool dudes…

4. Touring Asia countless times…to all those of you who are “jaded” with what’s going out in the West, move out here and live during these exciting times where kids here are so excited about their bands and their scenes. It’s such an inspirational time out here in Asia where all these amazing things are happening all over the place, things that we couldn’t have imagined would EVER happen.

5. Having Paul Wong perform with King Ly Chee on stage at our 2003 album release show…what a fucking HONOR!!!

Top 5 craziest things you’ve seen people in the audience do

Well, it’s been 10 years so it’s really hard to remember everything…these are what stick out in my mind:

1. When we played in Taiwan kids would stagedive from the second floor balcony into the pit! CRAAAAAAAZY!

2. At a huge concert in Hong Kong called “Let’s Fight” when we played the audience opened up one of the biggest circle pits I’ve ever seen in my life. It was later broadcast on the news channel on local television.

3. When we opened for NOFX in Kuala Lumpur, the audience was split right down the middle with all the punk kids on one side, and all the hardcore kids on the other side. When we got on stage the punk kids kept screaming “NOFX NOFX NOFX NOFX”, but then the hardcore kids would scream back “KING LY CHEE KING LY CHEE KING LY CHEE KING LY CHEE”! Then when we started playing the whole place just exploded – literally! Soooooooo awesome! Yes, we LOVE Malaysia!

4. Any time the audience gets so into it that you can no longer see a separation between band and audience. Whenever we play in Laguna (Philippines) and Guangzhou (China) this is what happens…kids get on stage so impassioned by our music and lyrics that they grab the mic or just scream the lyrics at the top of their lungs all on stage so you can no longer actually find the band members. This IS what music should be all about…ALWAYS…

5. We played at an X-games/music festival in Shenzhen (China) once and the bands performed right on the ramps. I had a wireless-pack on my guitar so I could walk around without any wires holding me down. So I walked right on to one of the ramps and got one of the bikers to do a huge fucking flip right over me. NUTS…

Top 5 reasons why you love/hate HK?

1. This is home. Enough said.

2. When I go into places like Chung King Mansions in Tsim Sha Tsui and see all the different kinds of people who inhabit, shop, do business, in this little place it reminds me that no matter how Sino-centric Hong Kong is (An example is that for the past 10+ years you don’t even see a hint of English on almost all of the advertisements around the city. This leaves all of us minorities in HK with no idea of what deals are out there…), it has always welcomed people from all over the world to come live and do business here.

3. Hong Kong’s education system is probably the biggest joke of any civilized and developed city on this planet. 40 kids to a classroom with one teacher and whose teaching style is based on rote-learning, is it any wonder that when a lot of these kids get to their 20’s they’re still mostly ignorant, immature, narrow-minded, and shallow? An example is when a friend found out I could speak Cantonese and we had the following conversation:

Friend: “Hey Riz, I’ve always wanted to know…”

Riz: “Sure – ask bro!”

Friend: “I’ve always wanted to know, why do you Indians always smell like curry?”

R: “First of all, I’m Pakistani, secondly, are you serious?”

1. TRENDS TRENDS TRENDS!!! It’s no surprise people think of Hong Kong as being one HUGE shopping mall because it is. People like me really don’t fit in due to the simple fact that I don’t give a fuck about fads, trends and what’s cool. I believe in what in believe, listen to what I want to listen to, play the music I want to play because it moves ME, if it’s no longer a “cool” style of music then I really don’t care.

2. You think mainstream music is bad in the West? Come out here and listen to our so-called mainstream “artists”. If you don’t want to puke after hearing 10 seconds of any one song, I’ll give you a medal. If you really want to kill yourself then actually go watch these mainstream artists perform live. Their lack of any musical talent becomes painfully apparent, their lack of rhythm becomes painfully apparent in their ridiculous lack of fluidity in their dancing, but the most painful part is that these “artists” can still be so huge in Hong Kong because the public here just doesn’t put enough emphasis in an artist actually being GOOD at their art. All that matters is the packaging:

3. First and foremost, they must be Chinese

4. Good looking and young

That’s it. That’s the criteria in Hong Kong to become hugely successful. Can they sing? Can they write music? Can they dance? Not a concern.

Top 5 reasons you can still continue doing King Ly chee after 10 years (which is 20 in HK years….)

I don’t know about 5 reasons…King Ly Chee is a hardcore band – that to me means commitment, sacrifice and persistence. We have had so many ups and downs in this band (these past 4 years have mainly been down and further down), but this is the culture I love and belong to. I’ve been doing this band for so long that it’s become just an extension of me. How does that ever really stop? Even if I’m 40 or 50 years old this band will be here in some form or another. I’ve always used the music as a forum to vent and there is enough stuff that goes on in Hong Kong and around the world everyday that I will continue to be venting through this music.

Honestly though, the support King Ly Chee gets OUTSIDE of Hong Kong also really helps continue to burn that flame…I deeply thank everyone that supports this band wholeheartedly and not because we’re the “cool” band for the time being. We definitely don’t play any games or make any adaptations to our sound or “style” to fit in with the “times” – we are a hardcore band pure and simple.

Top 5 most embarrassing shows?

1. We’ve played a lot of shows. I think the one show that was super weird was when we were invited to play a fashion show at the Poly University in Hong Kong. I have NO idea how we got invited and why we eventually agreed to play! I mean King Ly Chee is not synonymous with fashion! Hahahaha…I remember we were invited to do something for Diesel in HK once, and we turned it down. That’s just not what we’re about. (If it was Know1edge inviting us – that’s a whole different story! Hehehe…) Anyway, something must’ve transpired in the run up to this that made us think this was a good idea. WRONG. Only when we got there did we realize we were playing right after one of HK’s most popular boy bands called EO2. I couldn’t believe it. There was a catwalk, models, stylists, groupies, insane-obsessive HK fans (you know the ones that hold up those stupid lit-up name boards)…and us.

2. I think there’s nothing more embarrassing then showing up to a show with all your gear (when we play we bring EVERYTHING – our ampheads and cabinets – for people in the US reading this, in HK bands play with whatever house equipment is available at the show) and finding out there are only 2 people there watching because the promoter did a terrible job promoting it or people just don’t like your band anymore. But we love playing this music so we went nuts regardless…

3. Annie will be interested in this – in 2000 we were invited to play in Seoul as part of a youth festival. They thought we were a high school band! I was a university graduate and 22 years old at the time! So when we arrived in Seoul we played a weird hall in Seoul in the day time (like 2pm I swear) to an audience of moms and dads there cheering their children’s musical journey. It was RIDICULOUS. Later on we played a huge music festival still as a “high school band from Hong Kong” and the stage had cars on it as props that we could jump on if we wanted. Good times…

4. Playing any high school show is really just weird. We’ve done it twice and after the second time I was like that’s it – NEVER again. Something about playing a venue where they have teacher chaperones and 12 year old pubescent kids doing crazy shit because it’s their first “real” night out! Not for us…I know we’ve all been there – but at my age, I don’t need to be there AGAIN.

5. This might be weird – we actually played at the Peak Galleria once. I mean up on TOP where all the tourists go to take pictures of Hong Kong. We were there screaming our asses off! Imagine that…it was great for us because we were playing while the sun was setting on our beautiful city and it looked and felt amazing to be there singing about Hong Kong. I’m sure it wasn’t as romantic for the hundreds of tourists there having hardcore blaring at them!

**www.kinglychee.com and www.startfromscratchrecords.com.hk

HONG KONG HARDCORE

EMOTIONAL-PASSIONATE-HONEST-HARDCORE**

UPCOMING SHOWS/EVENTS:

由零開始START FROM SCRATCH RECORDS PRESENTS

**TERROR LIVE IN HONG KONG

Sept 26 - Terror - Hong Kong (China) - w/ King Ly Chee, Shepherds the Weak, Bridged**