Ths Shadows and the Vietnam War

[chai]

In the early 60s, as a young teen living in Bangkok, the war in Vietnam was in it's early stages.
The American armed forces and their allies were using Thai military bases to fight the north Vietnamese. It was around that time that many bands in my hometown got started.

Bangkok was flooded with American and allied personel from local bases as well as men on R&R from Vietnam, and what better entertainment to offer than bars and clubs; there were as many as a hundred bars on one strip in Bangkok called Petchburi Rd. These clubs needed live music, so there were plenty of opportunities for bands everywhere. If you could play a set of instrumentals with a couple of singing tunes, then you got the gig. Many of us were going to high school during the day and playing clubs at night. Cliff and the Shadows, the Ventures and Elvis’s music were heard everywhere. Apache, Dance On and Walk Don’t Run were probably played at least twice during a night’s gig for each band.

My band at that time and I played the first gig of our lives nightly from 11pm to 3am. Then we'd go home to get ready for school. We had so much fun and were making a handsome amount of money.

During those days, as soon as a Shadows record hit the record store, we would buy it and then sit around the phonograph together and learn it little at a time. We learned quite a few of them that way.

[kipper]

nice intresting story. peter