The dearth of new ideas makes us wallow in our shame (The Chiang Rai Alternative Hour #16) – 14th December 2019

December 14, 2019November 27, 2023 ~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 1 Comment

I’ve been considering what content I can put here as some of my personal thoughts and feelings about this particular place I am now living (and enjoying) could cause me trouble. It’s funny how Thailand is known as the Land of Smiles but often times it feels like the Land of Fake Smiles. Having a couple of years experience here now, I understand these reasons but cannot fully support a positive attitude towards it. This is the balance I am trying to find in my world.

Perhaps that balance has always been there even in the other places I have lived but I haven’t noticed it so much and oftentimes found myself in difficult or at least odd situations. I don’t ‘play the game’ very well still but I’m getting there. If this sounds like generalised waffle, I apologise. I will try to make an orderly composition of my thoughts at some point.

Out of one of the most difficult times I’ve had in Thailand I found myself keen to focus some energy into something personally (and somewhat selfishly) fulfilling. In what little downtime I had when I was pushing myself too hard preparing lessons for my grade 5 English class I would throw my iTunes playlist on shuffle and found myself quite enthralled at the collection of digital music I collected.

The randomness reminded me of those late school nights furtively listening to John Peel’s radio show under the covers, falling asleep as I lay hoping to hear the latest and greatest punk tunes in amongst all the other genres being pioneered. This exposure to many different styles of music laid the groundwork for events many years in the future when I was organising shows for bands in Sydney and subconsciously decided on mix billed being the best way for people to hear new music. Never a way to a successful financial business model, it kept my brain satisfied and able to calmly appreciate music I didn’t particularly enjoy, anticipating music that I would.

So it was that iTunes on shuffle kept popping up a classic tune (classic to me), a dodgy old punk demo, an experimental noise soundscape and a 60s garage rocker, with many things in between. Nothing really modern mainstream though. It’s amazing some of the music from my youth was considered mainstream back then. It shits all over what is mainstream now.

Anyway, digging this vibe I even ended up downloading a bunch of reggae and African music that Peel always used to play – just to try and get that reminiscence in full force. Things I may not listen to as a full recording of suddenly make a lot of sense squished in between things I was more familiar with. I ended up down many paths of discovery of experimental music from around the world – as opposed to ‘world music.’

With need of some distraction, I decided to put together a ‘radio’ show and upload the result to the Mixcloud platform. I mostly take the tracks as they were shuffled through iTunes and do a bit of back announcing. I also decided to play around a little with some of the songs and introduce some moments where I could read a paragraph or two from books from my shelves.

To give this odd mix a little focus I decided to target my audience to the university students at the local uni which is less than a kilometre away from where I am. I roped in a few of my student friends from there and also from my favourite local coffee shop, to do a bit of speaking and to have their pictures taken. So was born The Chiang Rai Alternative Hour and the push for musical world domination.

The tenzenmen music library — Gus, Mink, Nu and Aing – in the music library.

Understanding that my tastes are almost niche beyond niche I would not expect a huge audience for what I’m doing but really that is not the purpose. I do it for myself. I really enjoy putting it together and messing around with things, trying to come up with some new ideas for presentation. I’m contemplating how to do this mix in a live setting and finding a place to do it but I don’t have much time to practice that part as well as not having a completely reliable equipment setup. A new laptop is a little out of reach at the moment.

So, if you’ve read this far you may be curious to hear what these shows sound like? Or scared to find out. Either way, it seems like this is a good vehicle to post links to each show and also force me to write at least once a week as new episodes appear.

“Remember life on earth is but a flash of dawn
And we’re all part of it as the day rolls on”

Music from Ween, Magic Mushroom Band, No Babies, The Ebonettes, goat, Andy Partridge, Acanthus, Banned, Hebosagil, The Yellow Payges, Bad Brains, Daniel Striped Tiger, Martin Archer, Teenage Depression, Mudhoney and Donovan.

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful that I could do so many things yesterday and keep going even though I was so tired by the end of the evening. I kept a good attitude and wasn’t so anxious about things that I wanted to do compared with some things that I had to do.

Did it list

Encouraged Fern to learn to make my coffee at Utopia.
Got my haircut.
Uploaded TCRAH podcast.
Recorded new TCRAH podcast.
Prepared and executed a quick fun game for my two students today.
Got through a little of the never-ending sorting of music, on computer and CDs.
Wrote another blog post and enjoyed the process of writing.
Got passport photocopies done.
Rosie offered to do quick drawings and send them out as postcards. What an awesome idea so I asked her to do Jochen, Lachlan and Kyaw Kyaw.
Finished reading Lonely Boy

The Week That Was – 25th February 1979

February 25, 1979September 30, 2022 ~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 2 Comments

23rd Nov 2021 – Trevor Brooking – I hated Trevor Brooking!

Record of the Week: Just a Gigolo – The Village People
Highest Entry: Gary’s Gang – Keep On Dancin’ – 23

23rd Nov 2021 – The Village People! I had not converted completely to punk rock just yet. Perhaps my attraction to them was the happy, fuck-you attitude they projected. Well, their upbeat gay anthems were (and still are) part of the western zeitgeist.

25th February 1979
The other lot came round today. All four of them.
Blurp!

23rd Nov 2021 – Hmm, so now I’m confused about the ‘first lot’ I mentioned and ‘this lot’, ‘the other lot’! If there were four of them…..perhaps my Aunt Shirley, Uncle John, my cousin Sharon and her husband Ken. It’s possible though I think my Uncle John may have already passed away by this time and maybe Sharon and Ken’s first son, Mungo, was already born. My uncle John was a competent carpenter, or at least that is in my memory bank somehow. Perhaps just some weird association with fresh-cut wood? I know I liked him.

I was ambivalent to my Aunt Shirley as she always seemed so strict but I really came to dislike her over the next few years as she would often tell my mum that she was doing a bad job at raising me. I tried to avoid her as much as possible, which wasn’t that difficult really.

I wasn’t very family-oriented really, possibly due to the fact that I never had a father around as he had passed when I was too small to even have any memory of him, and even though we were living with my grandparents I think I resented that in some ways, as other families of friends were just the more traditional family unit of parents and one, two or three children living together. There were times when I wished for my mum to remarry. I was always hopeful whenever some man or other came into our lives but I appreciate that my mum was happily self-sufficient.

By calling my extended relations, that lot and the other lot I’d already made my mind up about certain things.

26th February 1979
Didn’t see the eclipse today
Da! Da!
Ipswich 6-1 Bristol Rovers

23rd Nov 2021 – February in England. Well, it’s no real surprise that I didn’t see any eclipse.

27th February 1979
Had five pancakes
Did games today!
Even though my foot hurt

23rd Nov 2021 – My foot is hurting right now. I can still poke into the arch of my left foot and feel something isn’t quite right. But it’s mainly the joint of my big toe that is painful now. I’m considering going to get it checked out. I’m not sure what to expect from the Thai medical system here in Chiang Rai. It feels like we are a long way from where folks with real expertise might be. I’m sure whoever I see will give it their best shot though. At least I could get an x-ray done that might give a better idea of managing it.

By fuck, did I love my mum’s pancakes, covered in sugar and lemon juice. What a treat. I could never replicate them though.

28th February 1979
Went to orchestra at school

23rd Nov 2021 – I guess I was playing the clarinet. Mr Broadway was my science teacher and music teacher. He had curly brown hair and was quite fun to be around. But I gave up the clarinet when it started to get more tricky. This was quite a common behaviour through my teenage years. Too hard? Give up. Sometimes I still do this. And I see Hayden do this too. What is it that makes us give up so easily when things become more difficult? When I get stuck learning to play the guitar now, I just keep trying until I finally get it. I don’t put the kind of pressure on myself that I used to.

1st March 1979
1. Bee Gees – Tragedy (2)(1)
2. Blondie – Heart of Glass (1)(3)
3. Elvis Costello – Oliver’s Army (5)(2)
4. Gloria Gaynor – I Will Survive (7) (-)
5. Abba – Chiquitita (3) (4)

24th Nov 2021 – Oliver’s Army was great as were some other early Elvis Costello tunes but I stopped listening after listening to the “Carry On Sex Pistols” album where Steve Jones continually shits on him, so I thought I should too. I’ve more recently bought his first two or three albums as they are often revered in certain circles but I haven’t given them a listen yet. It’s only been about 5 years….one day, one day.

Writing this post is making me want to go home and listen to this and the Birthday Party (Mr. Clarinet). Not the Village People though.

2nd March 1979
Get REV homework
Soap was on at 11:40
Only my second whole week at school

3rd March 1979
Do bricks 2p
Didn’t do them?
X – Ipswich 1-1 Forest

24th Nov 2021 – Outside our back door was a small bricked patio area that needed to be cleaned every week or two as it would get a little mouldy and slippery. I hated cleaning them, although I can imagine the first time I did it I was really trying to do my best but after a while, I just resented the time I had to spend doing it and I would attempt to do it as quickly as possible and sometimes I would be made to do it again because I had been too careless, which of course meant losing more precious time.

I’m curious about the X, and various other codes that appear more often throughout the year. I’m thinking that this was some secret indication of my masturbatory habits as it would have been around this time I discovered the pleasures of touching my dick. More on that later.