I went to see a friend play in his band last night. It was a bit of a struggle because everyone seemed to be busy beforehand and if I’m home at 8pm, I’m home for the night. But I’ve never seen a Bhutanese band and Pelden is a great guy and known as a good guitarist, so I put in the effort.
It was in P-Wang, a moderately sound-proofed room on the 4th floor of a new building on the main street. They’d placed the seats around the edge of the room in the hope of getting people up and dancing, but this is Asia. At 9:30, the place was empty, so I went for a walk and found them already playing when I got back just after 10. It was quite busy, but I found my friends on the floor at the centre of the room and joined them just as a serving girl came around with drinks.
The band was playing ‘Love Me Two Times’ by the Doors. It was a typical 4-piece rock band with drums, bass and lead guitars and Pelden at the mike with another guitar. They played a set of songs from Sting, the Rolling Stones, Dire Straits and their own original work among others. They were kind of Dire Straitsish in their laid back style, but then much of that may have come from the lack of audience feedback. I’m not sure which was more reserved, but they probably fed off each other. In any case, they played well and took turns at the mike for their favourite songs.
Surprisingly, there were hecklers. A group of roudy locals just to the side of us kept shouting out names of songs and interrupting Pelden every time he tried to just talk. One of them did a reasonable imitation of a Jamaican accent and was keen to show it off at volume, copying key lyrics of the song before in each gap. No one told him to shut up.
My father’s a good guitarist and says that one of the secrets is to leave them wanting more. The band hadn’t learnt that lesson. They wanted the show to be a fund raiser where people left money in a box at the door to buy warmer clothes for the people in bamboo shacks around Thimphu as we approach winter. But when they were still playing at midnight, more than half the crowd left and the box was nowhere to be seen. The band gave up at 12:30, but even then, I wondered if they had finished the set they’d planned. There was no cry for an encore.