New York Times: Cambodians Take Back the Lens

July 1, 2009
Cambodians Take Back the Lens
By ROBERT TURNBULL

PHNOM PENH — While Pol Pot was still alive and civil war raged, it was a great time to be a photographer in Cambodia. That’s unless you happened to be Cambodian.

At the first scent of blood the testosterone-fueled pack, largely routine invaders from the safe haven of Bangkok, would assemble, all too appropriately at Phnom Penh’s Foreign Correspondents Club, a Mekong-side colonial watering hole straight out of a Marguerite Duras novel. They had tripods strapped to their backs and phallic zoom lenses at the ready.

Meanwhile the few Cambodians lucky enough to have access to a camera could be found snapping tourists emerging from the Royal Palace nearby or in Siem Reap, positioning honeymoon couples on the causeway of Angkor Wat. As one of Cambodia’s leading photographers, Mak Remissa recalled, “The foreign media didn’t really trust us to take pictures, but we needed to eat.”

That changed when the dictator died in 1998. With the Khmer Rouge vanquished, Cambodia was no longer a “hot” destination. The foreigners departed, leaving the handful of Cambodians with a modicum of technical competence to fill the vacuum. For Reuters, Agence France-Presse, the Cambodia Daily and the Phnom Penh Post, they represented a useful supply of cheap labor; for the Cambodians, it was a rare opportunity to learn on the job.

Cambodia is, of course, one of the world’s most photogenic places. Its abundance of ancient monuments, rambunctious street life and saffron-robed monks habitually silhouetted by crimson sunsets stirs even the most disinterested tourists to fiddle with their apertures.

Though it’s perhaps taken too long for Cambodians to stake their rightful claim on some of this imagery, a handful of recent events confirmed what many have long suspected: that given a chance, Cambodians have very personal stories to tell, both in artwork and photojournalism.

The opening in March of the Sa Sa Gallery on Street 360 in Phnom Penh trumpeted the first photographers’ collective to be run entirely by Cambodians for Cambodians. Six young professionals — Kong Vollak, Heng Ravuth, Khvay Samnang, Lim Sokchan Lina, Vuth Lyno and Vandy Rattana — aim to create a buzz around this new space by mounting monthly shows of work by both artists and photographers. “The gallery is open to any Cambodian with a serious body of work,” said Mr. Vandy.

Article continues here.

The Work in Progress

The turntable and around forty almost randomly chosen LP's seem to have arrived safely in Phnom Penh -- I say seem because it's not hooked up yet. It's a relief and a joy to have it back.



I feel I still have one more bar left in me and so the music accumulation goes on with that in mind. So in addition to the LP's, among the haul of CD's, vinyl rips and FLAC downloads (no mp3's here) these are some of my favorite additions for the "bar":

Flamin' Groovies - Teenage Head
Electric Prunes - Mass in D Minor, Release of an Oath
Strawberry Alarm Clock - Strawberries Means Love
Blues Magoos - Electric Comic Book
Chambers Brothers - The Time Has Come
Zombies - Zombie Heaven

Along with those there's around 40GB of other music to find room for. I'll manage.

The America Gene - Michael Nesmith

Mr. Nesmith has a new book, "The America Gene", available for download "a buck a chapter for the first six. 10 bucks for the last ten. Released over time" Michael twitters. Nez has been working on this one for a long time. He said about the book as he began work on it ten years ago "at a certain time, the America Gene wakes up in the life of all Americans, and starts to drive you to your own personal Las Vegas. And of course, by the time you're completely grown up, you're a moron."

I'm not sure I know exactly what that means but I have no doubt of its import.

Download "The America Gene" here.

Going Uptown in the U.K. with the Technics 1200

This month's issues of Tone Audio and Hi-Fi World both feature stories from Britain about Dave Cawley's (Sound Hi-Fi) adventures with upgrading the venerable Technics 1200 to never dreamed of status. The Tone Audio reviewer calls the Technics/Time Step Power Supply/SME 309 arm $2000 combo (assuming a second-hand arm) the one to beat among the Pro-Ject, Rega, Music Hall, VPI competitors in the under $3000 price range. Hi-Fi World comes to a similar conclusion with an even more exalted Technics/Time Step/SME V package.



I'm not quite there yet with my mods, just happy to have the turntable at all at this point. I'm still thinking that Terminator tonearm is the killer for the price.



On the platter yesterday, old favorites worth picking out of the $.50 bargain bins (do they still exist?), all from 1977: Greg Kihn's Greg Kihn Again, Tommy James' Midnight Rider and Dwight Twilley Band's Twilley Don't Mind. Great pop.

Sky Saxon

"Garage music is not bad, because Christ was born in a manger,which was probably like a garage of that time."
Sky Saxon


My best friend in 1966, Mark Sherman, whose dad Seymour had seltzer bottles and the biggest stereo I had ever seen, bought the Seeds' 45 "Pushin' Too Hard", so I didn't have to (we generally didn't double up on 45's if one of us had something we both liked). I bought "Can't Seem to Make You Mine". Mark bought "Mr. Farmer" too, though that was not nearly as good as the other two records. We had a garage, but alas no band (Mark's garage being full of seltzer bottles). But this was our music.

RIP Sky Saxon, who died Thursday morning in Austin.

R.I.P. Sky Saxon
Austin 360
By Joe Gross | Thursday, June 25, 2009, 10:18 AM

Sky Saxon, founder of the brilliant ’60s garage band the Seeds, died Thursday morning at St. David’s Hospital.

The newly minted Austinite, born Richard Marsh, was hospitalized Monday with what doctors suspected was an infection of the internal organs, but cause of death has not yet been released.

Saxon fell ill last Thursday, but performed at Saturday at Antone’s with recent Austin collaborators Shapes Have Fangs.

Sky’s wife Sabrina Saxon posted news of his passing on Facebook this morning: “Sky has passed over and YaHoWha is waiting for him at the gate. He will soon be home with his Father. I’m so sorry I couldn’t keep him here with us. More later. I’m sorry.”

We are sorry as well.

Saxon was the founder of the Seeds, one of the all-time great first-wave garage rock bands. If the Rolling Stones was the sound of five British guys trying to imitate Muddy Waters and Howlin Wolf and failing in new and strange ways, ’60s garage rock was the sound of American kids trying to imitate the Stones and (similarly, brilliantly) missing the mark.

The Seeds fell together in 1965 around a core of Saxon and guitarist Jan Savage with keyboardist Daryl Hooper and drummer Rick Andridge. The bands’s first couple of singles — ‘Can’t Seem To Make You Mine’ and ‘Pushin’ Too Hard’ — are ’60s punk classics, snotty and fuzzy and brief. Check out their first two albums — ‘The Seeds’ and ‘A Web of Sound,’ both from that magic rock year 1966 — for perfect examples of proto-psychedelic roar.

After a few more records, Saxon broke up the Seeds in 1970, joined the spiritual commune the Source Family, adopted the name Sunlight and played with the Source Family band YaHoWha 13 now and then.

He continuted to make albums since with various lineups, distributing his music via the Internet at www.skysaxon.com. He came to Austin in March for the second annual Psych Fest and never really left, according to his publicist, keeping a very low profile until recently.

Springsteen Stumps The Band, Steve Plays Dead Girl Songs

I've still yet to warm much to Springsteen's latest album, but that notwithstanding, I sure wish I could have seen him on the Working on a Dream tour for Bruce and his audiences have been having great fun playing Stump the Band. Admittedly some of the songs Bruce has played by request -- "Hang on Sloopy", "Wild Thing" -- no band in the universe could mess up too badly. But it sounds like the tour's been a blast. Here's a site with a link to a few videos of the Stump the Band performances.

Here's Bruce and the band going at The Ramones' "I Wanna Be Sedated".



My favorite recorded spontaneous performance though remains one by the late Steve Goodman appearing on the posthumously published No Big Surprise anthology. Looking for a cowboy hat to wear while he starts to sing "You Never Even Call Me By My Name", he's instead is offered a motorcycle helmet...and immediately changing gears as it were, with the audience shouting requests he proceeds with the funniest medley of songs I've ever heard. The songs are "Born to be Wild", "Teen Angel", "Tell Laura I Love Her", and the killer, one of the most bizarre pop songs ever, Dickey Lee's "Laurie" (Top Ten in Los Angeles, 1965). The performances and the interaction with the audience both have to be heard to be believed.

Here's Dickey Lee's version. I'll post Steve's when I get to California.



Laurie (Strange Things Happen)
Lyrics by Milton "Mitt" Addington

Last night at the dance I met Laurie,
So lovely and warm, an angel of a girl.
Last night I fell in love with Laurie -
Strange things happen in this world.

As I walked her home,
She said it was her birthday.
I pulled her close and said
"Will I see you anymore?"
Then suddenly she asked for my sweater
And said that she was very, very cold.

I kissed her goodnight
At her door and started home,
Then thought about my sweater
And went right back instead.
I knocked at her door and a man appeared.
I told why I'd come, then he said:

"You're wrong, son.
You weren't with my daughter.
How can you be so cruel
To come to me this way?
My Laurie left this world on her birthday -
She died a year ago today."

(Steve: "Undaunted, our hero plunges on....")

A strange force drew me to the graveyard.
I stood in the dark,
I saw the shadows wave,
And then I looked and saw my sweater
Lyin' there upon her grave.

(Steve: "And now the understatement of the year...")

Strange things happen in this world.

When is Christmas Again?

Audiophilia is a serious form of psychosis with which I was diagnosed long ago, my move to Cambodia being primarily driven by it being an audiophile equipment free zone. I was ok for a while, maybe it was the five girlfriends the first year who kept me busy enough that audio equipment wasn't exactly the first thing on my mind. And I suppose it's being without work the past year and a half that have brought the pangs of audiophile desire back in full force.

Now that I'm happily tube amplified, the next nifty little item that has me in the how-can-I possibly-live without-this mood is this incredibly clever linear tracking tonearm. As anyone who has ever owned an LP knows, inner groove distortion is the price paid for having a traditional tangential toneram. There have been linear tracking tonearms before, I remember the Rabco design from years back, but they have been fussy and generally not worth the pain. There are some fine ones made today, but they are hideously expensive.

Enter Trans-Fi Audio's Terminator Tonearm, a $900 piece of kit which looks like it was built with an Erector Set, but it's all function and that's why it's $900 rather than $5000 (which is what crazy people do spend on tonearms). It's an air-bearing device, so it involves a small aquarium pump which can be placed in an adjacent room. The bottom line is that this thing works, doing everything that the concept is supposed to do with elegance and simplicity, such that people are kissing their SME IV's, Linn Ekos II's goodbye for this tonearm at a fraction of the price.

$900 is still a lot of money for a tonearm. Perhaps a cuckoo amount of money. My friend Paul is poised to pick up a dandy little Pro-ject turntable, arm and cartridge combo for $350, and of course my KAB modified Technics 1200 table, arm and cartridge cost me about $750. But as described my Michael Fremer in that wonderful article I posted earlier, that's the incidious nature of this disease. Reaching audio nirvana is an impossibility, and every step closer you think you'll get costs you more and more.

My long term plan for my vinyl set up had been to get a new 220v power supply (done that) and eventually replace the arm with a nice Jelco 750D, basically a new and presumably improved version of the old Sumiko MMT. That' $450 for the arm, and about $150 for a new armboard, total $60o. I get the impression that the extra $300 one would spend for the Terminator would be worth it to the crazed audiophile (hand raised).

Here's a review from Enjoy the Music which annointed the Terminator with a Product of the Year award last year.

Borei Keila: Evictions Today

The long anticipated and dreaded evictions of the remaining families at Borei Keila, many of whom are HIV positive and in need of easy access to medicine and medical services, will take place today. More to follow.

LICADHO's report, Land Grabbing and Poverty in Cambodia: The Myth of Development 2009 is available for download here.