Vina Rock - ROCK HET MINH!!

Well. Last night was my first introduction to contemporary Vietnamese music culture. And all in all it was pretty interesting. Buc Tuong, "The Wall" Vietnams biggest rock band played their last gig.


Whats to say about it? Well, certainly they were very good musicians, thats for sure. I am not familiar with their repertoire, but they are certainly capable of some really high energy rock music. It was a little heavy on the ballads, but the Vina-folk really do get a kick out of touchy-feely warm and fuzzy lovey dovey stuff. So maybe thats an unavoidable aspect of Rock culture in Vietnam. Also, a lot of the ballads had interesting funky-Metal breaks. If they left the Ballad stuff in cheezy Karaoke bars (where it belongs), and just turn the funk-Metal stuff into whole songs - they'd easily be doing international gigs.

Volume. Too damn quiet. It needed to be about 30% louder - the speakers were really well positioned to blast the crowd immediately in front of the stage, however there was simply not enough power to provide the entire crowd with the feeling they were wrecking their hearing at Vietnams biggest rock bands goodbye concert - I'VE played through bigger speaker setups than that.

The ground WAS actually shaking - however I get the feeling that was more to do with construction shortcuts when building the exhibition centre - it was a bit weird actually, I don't know if there was an underground carpark beneath us or if the properties of the substrate beneath the concrete were responsible for the movement, but not wanting my TV debut to be on Discovery Channels "Blueprint for Disaster" I moved away from the central crowd.

Ummm what else.. oh Vina people! So little! So cute!! Of course mosh-pits in rock concerts get hot. For people with light builds, it can get a little too much, because it becomes difficult to regulate body temperature. I remember a few of my friends at the Faith No More concert having to take time out occassionally. They needed a proper sick bay at this one!! hehe People were passing out everywhere!!

Conclusion: Great band! but turn down the "class" and turn up the "arse" -all the way to 11.

As you can read in the news, they are leaving rock to pursue careers in Civil Engineering.





More information about this band can be found right here.


http://vietnamnews.vnanet.vn/showarticle.php?num=01MUS011206