On my way back to my guest house, I hear laughter and loud live music up ahead and I find an open sided bar half full with people laughing and watching a few older people totally wigging out to two Thai men playing The Rolling Stones. It is seriously like witnessing your drunken relatives dancing at a wedding. The dancing man is definitely the proud owner of a Freedom Pass and sweating profusely, but having a good time. I decide to stop in for a nightcap. I grab a beer and sit down in the back of the bar on a table next to a couple of younger local guys who look like they are in a of Thai version of Guns & Roses. No sooner do I sit down, than one of them offers me a shot glass and a bottle of tequila. I smile and thank him, but decline.
The two older men are proper hipsters: Fu Manchu beards, long hair, round, David Hockney, horn-rimmed glasses and flat caps. (Tianjin ‘Jims’ people, think older Mr Zhou but not into lift muzak!) They are also quite good. They run the gamut of 70’s rock and do it well. The young guys next to me are using their table as percussion to play along drunkenly and the tequila guy leans over and shouts to me that one of the guys playing is his father. “He’s cool”, I say. “Oh, fuck him!” he says. Oh… “Sorry, so sorry, I’m drunk…”. It’s clear there are some Daddy issues going on here. I discover that these two guys are also in a rock band, but they don’t play in the bar (his fathers). Meanwhile, the Dad has been watching our conversation guardedly and makes a face to me as if to say “Sorry, my son is a drunk”. I am beginning to get the picture. The son actually seems quite nice, but just a little worse for wear and his friend is really nice and coherent. As we talk about what kind of music they play, the son looks really very sad and is clearly slightly embarrassed at trying to hold a sensible conversation with this sober foreign woman so far under the influence of the tequila. During his table drumming he manages to rattle a small bottle of what seems to be a kind of vitamin drink off the table and it smashes on the floor. At this point, he just slumps in his chair and puts his head in his hands. The Dad gives a withering look and I feet quite sorry for all involved.
They wind up the music and the Dad comes over to talk to me. He is very sweet and friendly and as the other people start to leave the bar, I end up chatting to him and another local guy; his friend who makes acoustic guitars. The friend tells me that the Dad is an artist and university lecturer and taught the Kind of Thailand painting…. I am a little sceptical, until he pulls out the guy’s catalogue, with an introduction by the King himself! He is actually pretty good, most of this stuff being paintings of jazz musicians and instruments. I’m told that the King of Thailand was in younger days also quite the musician and has jammed with the Dad! Now I understand the father - son dynamic to a tee… it’s the same story the world over. What a pair of shoes to walk in, eh?
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