Asian progressive music from the 60s and 70s

December 8, 2005 10:13 AM

60s/70s psych, crossover, beat, and a go-go from Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Burma, Cambodia and Vietnam with band/music scene histories, streaming audio, cover art, etc. Part of a large site devoted to 60s/70s progressive music around the world.
posted by carter (15 comments total)

*waits for jonmc*
posted by sgt.serenity at 10:40 AM on December 8, 2005

Is there some physiological reasons why 60s/70s psychedilic is so associated with these colors (orange, turquoise, fuschia...)?

I mean: are these the colors you see when taking 60s/70s style drugs or what?
posted by enakaja at 10:50 AM on December 8, 2005

Oh . . . thank you . . . thank you so much.
posted by mikrophon at 11:09 AM on December 8, 2005

Dengue Fever are a stateside group that seems to fit into this genre. 60's 70's garage-y stuff with a Khmer (Cambodian) lead singer. On Mimicry records.
posted by sharksandwich at 11:24 AM on December 8, 2005

Really amazing how international psychedelic music was. Cambodia, who seemed pretty isolated from Western culture, has tons of it even after Khmer Rouge killed off all the singers.
posted by destro at 11:40 AM on December 8, 2005

Man, stupid streaming. A lot of this is out of print, even the reissues. I've got the Cambodia Rocks (though with the cover that he hasn't reviewed, even though it appears to be about the same as the first volume listing he has), along with the Roady Music, and the Cambodian Cassettes.
The others he's missing are things like the Princess Nicotine and Radio Phnom Pehn, also available through Sublime Frequencies.

What I don't like about these is that they're always so hit and miss, and that a lot of what gets billed as "psychedelic" is really just gogo music sung in foreign languages.
posted by klangklangston at 11:46 AM on December 8, 2005

I've hade a Cambodia Rocks volume for a couple of years now. Even made a copy for my local watering hole where it is in steady rotation.
posted by sourwookie at 11:55 AM on December 8, 2005

I mean: are these the colors you see when taking 60s/70s style drugs or what?

I certainly recognize the orange, the purple and the fuscia. There was generally a kind of neon electric green in there as well, somewhere.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 12:04 PM on December 8, 2005

Cambodia, who seemed pretty isolated from Western culture

Cambodia was a French colony for years.
posted by the cuban at 1:57 PM on December 8, 2005

Cambodian independence was in 1953. This music is from late 60s through the 70s. There was that much of French culture there after independence and the Khmer Rouge to be an influence.

Most of the music being imitated was American psychedelic stuff anyhow (Santana, Janis Joplin).

if anything it was American Armed Forces Radio from Vietnam.
posted by destro at 2:10 PM on December 8, 2005

"There wasn't that much of French culture left..."
posted by destro at 2:11 PM on December 8, 2005

Well, there were a couple of things going on. There were American influences, through GIs in Vietnam, but there was also a vibrant expat society there (French, Brit, etc.) In fact, if you listen to the songs that are played on a lot of these, the American influence is much more on the go-go side, and the repetoire is much more British on the psych side. That happened pretty much everywhere. It's fun to hear songs like Tutti Frutti redone, knowing that the version being aped is the British reinterpretation of the American, being sung by Hmong or Bolivians.
posted by klangklangston at 4:11 PM on December 8, 2005

Cambodian Funk Yodeler Scroll down a bit...

My favorite song from the 365 Days Project.
posted by blasdelf at 4:38 PM on December 8, 2005 [1 favorite]

"There wasn't that much of French culture left..."

When I lived in Cambodia (2000-2001) the French influence was apparent - food, architecure, language etc.
posted by the cuban at 5:52 AM on December 9, 2005

I caught a Dengue Fever show when I was in Phnom Penh last week. I picked up a copy of their CD to give to a friend in Bangkok who had also caught Dengue fever recently.
posted by soiled cowboy at 12:32 PM on December 9, 2005