If as my Fuhrer suggests there is a plot to
make the gogo bars of
Patpong
redundant by swamping the notorious acreage
with live music venues instead, then the master
plan is doomed to failure I’m afraid.
It’s true that there we
now have the Muzzik Café, Radio
City, the recently-added Twilo
and the King’s Garden all
offering live bands, but they are, it has
to be said, very sad versions of the real
thing. Live music should at the every least
be LIVE as in ALIVE, to get the punters
a-movin and a-groovin’, but the way things
are now, you will need truck loads of speed
or other uppers to get the thin crowds off
their arses in the four venues we visited.
Let me qualify that sweeping
indictment with the news that I too am a
musician, so I am careful with any criticism
when it comes to the output of the Brotherhood
of Groove Merchants of which I am one. And
to be fair, I am really having it out with
the venues here rather than with the bands
in Patpong, some of whom were actually not
that bad.
But that’s the point –
‘not that bad’ doesn’t cut it at all!
We are talking about live
entertainment in one of the most visited
and most famous streets for entertainment
in the world, and the bands should be nothing
less than awesome and blinding and unmatched
in Asia at the very least!
You can find any of the
offending bars within walking distance of
each other on Patpong 1
and they are all actually near neighbours
with three of them at least owned and operated
by the same company.
As you come down Patpong
on your right you will see the latest addition
to Susu’s empire – the rather oddly named
Twilo Bar. It is a rather
plastic looking, though comfortable and
spacious enough bar with a broad stage and
some very good sound equipment. Like one
of the other three venues under the same
management – Radio City
– there is no music here until 10 pm which
strikes me as kinda odd since the street
is heaving with people from 7 pm. But Twilo
was new and pretty and dead when we arrived
at 9:30 pm. And of course, it was totally
devoid of any custom too.
So we left and headed
for Muzzik Café just a
short block away on the same side of the
street and there the seven-piece band ‘Geb
And I’ were pounding out reggae,
rock and pop hits to the satisfaction of
a few customers at least. And very good
this band was too, if not the best in town.
The Muzzik Café
opened at the tail end of last century and
has not changed a centimeter since. Here’s
what one friend said about the place: “A
different kind of venue…like a poor-man’s
Hard Rock Cafe, it features
deafening live bands, London prices and
clingy freelancers.” Nor will you be impressed
by the sand coloured, fibreglass and wrought
iron interior with its corny detail, but
it’s all very inoffensive and reasonably
comfortable if you are just out to impress
your recently-acquired partner from a nearby
gogo bar. Two drinks will cost you three
hundred baht and if 
you
are enjoying your girl and the music you
won’t care. You can sit outside, inside
or at the bars facing into and out of the
main room, and it packs in about 200 punters
by the end of a busy night. But me and My
Girl were on a mission, so drinks tucked
away, we headed for the King’s Bar,
literally around the corner on Patpong
2. Busy with music from nine, this
place is staffed to handle hundreds although
it may be a little over the top as the palce
is not designed to hold hundreds. The King
Band were in full swing when we
arrived with Scorpion and
tunes and more of the same culled from the
charts of the past. Musical, tight and predictable
but the two dozen or so punters already
there were enjoying it and the place gets
very busy the later it gets. However I can
not prove how busy it was as the staff stopped
me from taking pictures so we finished our
Heinekens and left – me
in a huff. And no comment.
So that left Radio
City back towards the main drag
on the right hand side going out towards
Silom. There things were
now underway but music here only started
at 10 pm and the President Band
were in full swing as we ordered our beers,
roasted cashew nuts, chicken wings and spicy
squid salad.
This is the first band
I ever saw at Radio City
as much as eight or nine years ago, and
yes they still play much of the same material.
Their Carlos Santana look-a-like
guitarist plays great covers of Santana
classics, they still do Deep Purple’s
Smoke On the Water and throw in
The Stones, Neil Young, Scorpions
and of course The Eagles,
and you know there will no musical surprises
here. But that’s maybe what tourist-driven
venues are expected to deliver. Competent
bands playing predictable favourites well.
I mean they cause no pain and I have to
class it as harmless fun. The place was
filling up as they got going and by eleven
the Elvis impersonator was on and driving
the international contingent of pissheads
crazy.
Need I say more? We left
soon after he got started at 11:30 pm and
apparently he gets the boot when Tom
Jones arrives at a half hour past
midnight. So there is a god!
That meant we had to pass
the Twilo Bar again on
the way out of Patpong, so we stopped in
for a beer to check out the band now on
stage – complete with sequencer. Yes, and
suddenly we had tunes from JLO,
Puff Daddy, Eminem and others from
the hip hop/rap scene from a very tight
band of farang and Thai musicians known
as The Chronics –and the
manager insisted that was their name! The
place was still empty as perhaps it just
looks too nightclubbish for the girly part
of town, but I dare say it filled up towards
2 am. It’s a youngsters’ hang out and the
bar girls will love it as they can dance
to all the latest hits too if they can persuade
some punter to buy them out.
Its either that
or head upstairs at Radio City
where the Lucifer’s Disco
is still going great guns and very well
it should because it still looks great,
has great music and there is room to dance
and hang out too. Though it has to be said
it is not the biggest disco in town.
