Publication:
MaximumRockNRoll

Author:
Felix Von Havoc

MRR #212
For many of us the first exposure to hardcore and punk outside our local scene or a mall record store was the radio. In the early 80's I was fortunate enough to live in Washington DC tuning in every Wednesday for Tom Lyle of Government Issue's radio show and every Sunday night for the MRR radio broadcast. I went on to have a WMUC show myself in 1987 but was canned for repeatedly playing punk records with obscenities. Now I'm a DJ again, together with Abbi and Jason (THD records) every Thursday from midnight to 2 am on KFAI, 90.3 FM Minneapolis, 106.7 FM St. Paul and KFAI.org on the net. KFAI is a community radio station in Minneapolis. There hasn't been a punk show on KFAI since the late 80's. My new interest in punk on the radio brought me back to those days in the early 80's listening to MRR radio. Those shows were awesome, like a one hour comp record every week. Plus they used to interview bands on the air. I know I speak for a lot of people who got exposed to a great deal of incredible punk music, especially from overseas, by listening to MRR radio. So I asked Sean and Arwen if MRR had an archive of the old radio shows. The answer surprisingly was NO! That’s right, for whatever reason there is no archive of the MRR radio shows. I appeal to all the old DJ's and collectors out there to get in touch with me or Maximum if you have tapes of the old shows. I have located about 20 from 1982 from one of the old KFAI DJ's, but there are hundreds more out there. It is hoped that these can be converted to digital format and made available on the web for today's listeners. Recall that MRR had access to just about every punk record ever made. Looking at the playlists of the old shows, most of the songs played are from records that are very expensive collector items now. Making this music available again could help shed some light on legendary and obscure bands for today's listeners. The best thing is that it could be done for virtually nothing, the cost of reproducing old radio shows on cassette or MP3 are negligible. So please fill my mailbox with lists of old shows, they were numbered so send a list of which numbers you have to PO Box 8585, Minneapolis, MN 55408. Or contact MRR at Maximumrnr@mindspring.com Thanks!

We return now to the continuing adventures of Code 13 in Southeast Asia. Last month Thailand, this week, Malaysia and Singapore. For those of you who slept through geography class Malaysia is a country in SE Asia that consists of the southern chunk of the Malay peninsula and part of the Indonesian archipelago. Most outsiders only know of Malaysia as the home of the KL towers, the world's tallest buildings. (featured in the Sean Connery movie Entrapment)

Malaysia has the most active punk scene in Asia outside of Japan. At least as far as I can tell. I think gigs in Indonesia are a lot bigger, but Malaysia seems to have more of a DIY ethic with the accompanying infrastructure. As a result many Malaysian bands have 7"s, tapes and CD's out and these are starting to be readily available in the west. I'd have to say the Malaysians were some of the most organized, hospitable and dedicated kids I met anywhere on tour. Being punk in a place like Malaysia is more than just a fashion, its something that is taken pretty seriously.

Malaysia is a country filled with paradoxes. A former British colony Malaysia was the scene of a guerilla war in the years following the Second World War. The British effectively crushed a leftist guerrilla war in a conflict that foreshadowed the American involvement in Vietnam. Indeed, during Vietnam the Malaysian "emergency" was frequently studied to find out how the British had "won" a guerrilla war in SE Asia. Malaysia is a multi-ethnic country. The population is about 50% Malay, the other half is a mix of Chinese, Indian and indigenous tribes. This makes for a very exciting multi-ethnic culture. I think I ate the best and most varied vegetarian foods in KL than anywhere else I've ever been. Malaysia is technically a Muslim country and this was my first time in the Muslim world. However, since only maybe half the population is Muslim the country is fairly tolerant. There are however, religious police who enforce Islamic law. The punks drink mainly in the tourist district in China town as they cannot drink in the Muslim Malay areas without running afoul of the police. They can't have tattoos either! At least not legally. Malaysia is technically still a third world country. The government is trying desperately to make Malaysia into a fully industrialized nation like South Korea or Singapore. Malaysia's economy is now based on manufacturing rather than resources. Unlike the Philippines or Thailand, Malaysia makes its own cars, computers etc. There is a rather pathetic attempt to make the biggest city, Kuala Lumpur, into a sort of showcase of economic development. Hence the twin towers, world's tallest buildings. The futility of such a gesture is obvious. KL has no shortage of either land or office space (unlike say Midtown Manhattan where high rise office towers could be justified), there is no need for super huge office towers, especially since most of the rest of the city is two and three story buildings. Rather, the buildings stand as two giant pieces of propaganda, showing the world Malaysia is ready for the capitalist big leagues. The airport was the similar. Way bigger, and fancier than any airport needs to be. Yet it was built way out of town in the middle of a jungle. Another example was the mass transit system. A space age monorail running across the city, far nicer than most western cities. The transit system was deserted though, as it is too expensive for most people to ride. We didn't see much of Malaysia outside of the big cities, I have a feeling that there is still a great deal of poverty and inequality outside of the spruced up showcase city.

The faustian bargain here is that the progress is at the expense of the environment and the rights of the Malaysian people. The media is still controlled by the government and there is no free speech or freedom to organize labor as we would know it in the west. The rapid pace of development has also paid little heed to the disastrous affects on the environment. Furthermore, the rights of the indigenous peoples have been trampled to exploit resources in their homelands. The government keeps promising that sacrifices are necessary and that freedom will arrive after Malaysia is fully developed. I find that hard to believe. Like the state is some benevolent and paternal organ that will one day give up its control over the population. "OK, Malaysia is fully developed now here is your free speech" I think they will be waiting a long time for the state to hand that over.

Compared to the Philippines, Malaysia is much more technically advanced and prosperous. It really didn't feel like a third world country at all. More like a second world country. The standard of living is modest but comfortable. At least in the cities. The Malaysian economy was hard hit by the Asian collapse. As a result western currency goes really far here. As in Thailand, basics like food and drink were very cheap for us. Kuala Lumpur as the showcase city had quite a few western tourists. We even met an American student type who came to our show. Outside of the center of town though we saw no westerners. That said, Malaysia seemed more alive and happening due to its multi-ethnic character. There was a certain cultural monotony in Japan and Philippines similar to what you experience in the central Midwest. Every street in every town seems the same. Malaysia was much more conservative than other Asian countries. The influence of Islam meant no sex tourism, pornography etc. Drugs were available but more underground, unlike Thailand which seems to market sex and drugs as two of its major attractions. Kuala Lumpur is very clean and modern, with new construction going on everywhere. In the city center is a market where you can buy bootlegs of every American movie or computer software a day or two after it is released in the USA. Bootleg consumer goods are a major industry in SE Asia. KL and Hong Kong are full of fake Rolexes, bootleg CD's, and fake name brand sportswear. The punks all hang out at a restaurant in the Central Market Mall downtown.

We were nervous about entering a Muslim country, especially since out passports are all stamped from our visit to Israel. But customs was a breeze. In fact there was nobody working in customs when we arrived. We just picked up our luggage and guitars and walked right through. We were met by Ahmad and Weng the guys I'd been in contact with by e mail from the states. They and a posse of other local scenesters took us to the Central Market to hang out with the punks.

In Malaysia they can only have gigs on weekends. So we were here for several days before and after our shows. The Malaysian punks were all really cool, very dedicated people. Malaysia has one of the best punk scenes in Asia, I think because the DIY ethic has really caught on here. In Malaysia the mainstream of punk is crusty hardcore and grind. Malaysia has a huge death metal scene. I think most kids here get into hardcore from metal and grind. There are some older punk guys in the KL scene, notable Joe Kidd and the band Carburator Dung, who have really helped shape the Malaysian scene in a positive and productive direction. It would have been very easy for less scrupulous people to have built a scene here that was totally commercialized and superficial. Instead the scene here is politically aware and dedicated to DIY principles. The Malaysian scene could be a model for countries like Thailand with small, emerging hardcore scenes. Few western punk bands have played here. Fugazi and Rollins played Malaysia and Singapore in the early 90's. Warsore from Australia has played in Malaysia. Unholy Grave from Japan has toured Malaysia and Power of Idea was on tour in Malaysia the same week we were. If you are in a band and touring Japan or Australia I would really recommend trying to play in Malaysia. Especially if you can arrange it as a stopover from Japan to Australia at a low price.

Our first show was in Johor Bahru (JB) which is Malaysia's second largest city, on the border with Singapore. We played JB in the afternoon, Singapore at night then back to KL to play the next day. It was a pretty wild ride, we left KL at midnight and took a night bus to JB, took a cab to a guys house and slept for a few hours. Drove from there to the gig in JB, before the show was even over we drove to a bus station and took a bus to the border. At the border we took another bus to the border checkpoint. There we stood in line forever got our passports stamped and boarded another bus which took us across the causeway into Singapore. There we got out and waited in another line to get our passports stamped on the Singapore side. We then boarded another bus, then a taxi to our gig. We played the gig then boarded a taxi and repeated the three-bus ride border crossing in reverse. Back in JB we took a taxi to the bus station and then boarded another bus back to KL. We were back in KL taking a taxi back to our crash pad at 6 the next morning, slept for a few hours and played again. I don't think I'll ever see the inside of so many buses and taxis in such rapid succession ever again.

The JB show was at like 1 in the afternoon at a club decorated in a "jungle" motif. The club was on the third floor and we played in front of a big bay window that overlooked a golf course. A few times while we were playing I turned around to look at the drummer and busted out laughing at the peaceful golf scene outside the window. There is something of a quarrel between the JB and KL scenes. Which leads us to a discussion of another paradox in the Malaysian scene. Many of the punks have difficulty rationalizing punk values with Muslim values. Therefore you have crusty DIY hardcore bands with anti-war lyrics and graphics yet thank Allah on their records and have conservative Muslim views. Abortion and gay rights are hot issues in the American scene, but even more so in conservative Muslim country. I don't want to get in between JB and KL in their quarrel, but one of the main issues the KL crew keeps bringing up is the more conservative nature of the JB crowd and their refusal to take a stand on abortion or gay rights. I think a lot of bands in Malaysia do like Oi bands here and just try to stay away from political issues in general so they don't have to defend their conservative views to a largely leftist/liberal punk media. I know some people think that's a tragic violation of the right wing bands free speech, but since I’m part of the left biased punk media I have little sympathy for right wing punk in general. If they don't like the biased punk media they can start their own fanzines. Back to Malaysia, Power of Idea who had played with us in Japan and helped set up our tour there had booked a tour through some guys from JB, we had gone through some guys from KL. It was only at the last minute that we got these guys on the same page and managed to play the show. It was a great gig, very high energy. Like I said the kids here are mainly into crusty hardcore. As far as I can tell the mainstream of punk here is Doom, Extreme Noise Terror, Resist, Disrupt and local crusty grind bands. They were really into our set and it’s a shame we had to leave before Power of Idea played.

We arrived in Singapore later that afternoon following the bus and taxi rides outlined above. For those who don't know Singapore is one of the two truly rich city-states in tropics, the other being Hong Kong. These two cities are like outposts of western style capitalism in a belt that circles the globe of poverty and subsistence agriculture. Singapore industrialized very rapidly and is now one of the richest countries in the world. It is very uptight and conservative and has lots of stupid laws. It is illegal to chew gum, litter, not flush a public toilet etc in this country. There are stiff fines for every breach of public etiquette. Singapore was very clean and modern, more so than anywhere I've ever been except the central business districts of a few US cities. Punk shows are very hard to book in Singapore because slam dancing is illegal. Not wanting to deal the police and stiff fines most pubs wont do punk gigs. Our gig was in of all places, the atrium of an upscale shopping mall! This has to be one of the strangest shows I've ever played. The place was packed, over 600 kids. The sound and stage were very professional. The whole shindig was sponsored by some sort of dotcom. These guys virtually brought the show to a stop by throwing free hats and t-shirts off a balcony to the side of the stage. On minute I'm standing in front of 600 kids. The next minute, five kids, as the other 595 jump for the free whatever dotcom shirts. The other thing that was fucking strange was that there were all these skinheads there. These guys were all dressed in the traditional UK skinhead style, boots, braces, bleached jeans, snapcaps etc. I haven't seen so many skinheads at a punk show since the late 80's. Some Oi cover band played before us. And in the true skinhead tradition a bunch of these guys had to stand on stage while we were playing and scowl. These guys kept starting fights, the last thing I expected in uptight Singapore. I guess in such a conservative society shows are the only place kids can cut loose. I expected the slamming and stage diving but not late 80's style skinhead violence. I hope those guys all go to England and get beat up by real skinheads. Skinheads aside the show was a lot of fun, due to the big enthusiastic crowd. This show was what I imagine playing the warped tour or opening for Rancid or Green Day must be like. Playing punk music in front of hundreds of kids who've never heard your band but are into it because someone told them it was cool. I hope some of those kids open their eyes to the DIY hardcore scene and are exposed to an alternative more substantial that OI covers and Limp Bizkit type bands. I did actually talk to some of the more educated and observant people I met in all of Asia that afternoon in Singapore. Lets just say they were in the minority. We got paid really good for this gig, about 500$ and headed back for KL. Singapore does have an active hardcore scene, I think it tends to lean more towards commercial US "hardcore" like Victory and Revelation type bands but there are some cool bands and zines from the Lion City. Oi fans can check out the local cover bands too.

We got asked the same questions about 20 times a day, by different people. Not bad questions on their own, but over and over you got to memorize a response. Q: How is the scene in Minneapolis? Q: Has the scene died since PE quit? Q: How many bands are there in Minneapolis? Etc. etc. At the gigs we were given the star treatment by the local punks but on the streets we got hard looks from the locals. I had to convince myself not to have the "what the fuck are you lookin' at?" attitude reminding myself that we are the only tattooed white punk guys these people had ever scene and therefore something of a curiosity. What pissed me off the most was people on the streets trying to fondle my tattoos. I mean Americans are rude but we generally don't touch people without asking them. I know we were exotic to them, but I don't go around looking under dudes turbans and shit over here. There were girls at our KL gig wearing punk t shirts and patchy pants but wearing the Muslim scarves over their faces. I didn't think it was my role to criticise their culture, I mean I have western imperialism and Christianity to answer for, but that Muslim shit is pretty wack.

A lot of people were interested in our merch but we sold very little. Actually by this point we had very little to sell. Most of it had sold in Japan. I wish we had mailed more ahead. Especially to Singapore, where the kids had plenty of money. A lot of people didn't know what 7"s were, only CDs and tapes. Ahmad of ASAS distro had released an excellent local version of our discography on tape with a nice lyric booklet. Seriously, his tape was better and more complete than the CD we did ourselves. So in Malaysia most of the kids knew our songs pretty well. If you are a band planning to play over here, definitely get your Malaysian friends to do a cassette version of your releases locally. Most kids here can't afford imported records and CDs and vinyl is not a very common format. Most of the small distro's here depend on trading. Therefore the kind of music that gets distributed is on small DIY labels from the USA, Japan and Europe as opposed to Epitaph or Fat. A lot of kids in the third world do fanzines, distros or tape labels as a way to get music from abroad. It seems like the only people who write back and want to trade are from small DIY labels. The internet has probably helped a lot of kids here learn about hardcore scenes outside Malaysia. I'm really glad PE is back in action. This magazine has been really important in spreading DIY ideas in SE Asia. PE and Heart Attack were quite well known but the PE aesthetic and politics seemed to prevail. MRR was a distant third, due to its high price in Asia (it costs a lot to ship). I hope more of these kids get access to the internet and can check out free versions of PE and other zines this was thus eliminating the need for shipping paper zines around the world.

Our gig in KL was one of the biggest and most energetic of the tour. KL has a pretty big scene and all those kids packed into a small theater in an underground shopping mall to see us. This gig was super hot and the walls were dripping with condensation. It was really hard to play since there were so many people on the stage. I know its cool to stand on the stage, but it sucks when every song the guitars get knocked out of tune and people keep stepping on the pedals turning off the distortion. We had a great time and the kids got really into this gig. There were tons of stage dives and I just about went blind from camera flashes. We played a long set and I think the crowd actually started getting worn out before we did, as the stage dives dwindled in frequency as the heat increased. There were a few kids with mohawks and leather jackets but most of the kids here looked pretty clean cut, like American hardcore kids. I'd have to say Malaysia is one of the only places you can be punk as fuck in flip flops! Also in town when we played were four Swedes, two of whom were in Counterblast. It is really cheap to travel in SE Asia for westerners right now. If you are a pot smoker there is the added bonus of lots of cheap weed. If I could afford it I'd drop everything and backpack around SE Asia, you could go a long way on little cash once you got over here. (and I'm not even a pot smoker) The next day we went swimming at a waterfall deep in the jungle, which was quite relaxing after all the travel back and forth to JB and Singapore. That night we boarded the plane for Australia.

We had a really good time and made pretty good money towards our travel expenses in Malaysia and Singapore. I'd have to say I like Malaysia the most of the SE Asian countries. The scene here is right up to the level of most European countries as far as bands and gigs go. The people were great, organized and dedicated to hardcore. In fact I'd rather play Malaysia than some European countries like Italy or France. If your band plays crusty hardcore or grind you should start trading with the kids in Malaysia. Remember these kids don't have much money and it trades very poorly against western currencies. If you are going to write to Malaysian kids, send some IRC's. Don't be afraid of demo tapes from Malaysia, most of the bands here do a better job on their cassette releases than most American bands do on their records. I hope in the future Malaysia can be more integrated with the US, Japanese and Australian scenes as far as trading records and touring bands goes. It would be great to see a Malaysian band tour the US or Japan someday.

Publication Date:
January 1, 1988

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