Vintage Thai pop and other audial obscurities

(Totally unrelated Thai LP artwork via lpcoverlover.com)

Wherever I’m at anywhere in Asia, there’s 5 different types of taxi drivers.

*The silence loving dude

*The talkative conversationalist

*The bluetooth talker

*The sports channel bro

*The musical chap, listening to weird pop songs in his native language and singin’ along  while doin’ the finger dance on the steering wheel.

I’d usually go with number 1. Whenever I ain’t got any dope new shit on my iPod though, I defs prefer number 5! At times I’m even willing to give my iPod rotation a break to curiously listen to the curiosities coming out of their taxi tape decks.

Upon my last visit Thailand, I went to check out street markets in the outskirts of Bangkok to see if I can find some CDs with vintage Thai pop jams- the garage recording type, with 808 presets, traditional percussions and screechy vocals. Epic megafail, all the CDs I bought turned out as total karaoke crap.

Then I stumbled upon this live mix lately via Lowdjo’s blog:

Honestly, parts of it I do find annoying. I have to admit that it’s tough for me to let this thing run without any skipping at all invlolved. But theres definitely some gems mixed up in there.Wish there was a tracklisting.

This twisted selection of Thai pop, Pakistani poppywood, North Korean commie funk, Haitian voodoo drums and Syrian techno made my neighbor knock on my door like a berserk this morning while I was taking a shower. Fuck y’all. use earplugs. Often enough did I tolerate your Nickelback/Fall Out Boy escapades. There’s hardly anything I hate more than the constant awareness of having my tasteless neighbors co-listening to all the marvelous jams I’m bumpin’.