Kerang!

Kerang! Whine, groan, screetch! Thump! Kerrrr....ang, ang, ang, ang, ang!

A band of Thai students is in full action, full volume, and high enthusiasm. Guitars, bass and keyboards are out of time and completely out of tune (relative both to themselves and each other). Under their careful ministrations Hotel California takes on the semblance of a B grade horror soundtrack. In our hotel room we wait, cringing and barely daring to breathe, anticipating each teeth-grinding atonal moment, painfully aware that there are three more verses to go, and powerless to make it end. Make it end! Make it end! Oh please! If ever Joe Walsh needed to come up with an excuse for taking to drink he could have found it right here.

We are in Fang, a small town in the North West of Thailand. The occasion is the Chinese New Year and of course if you're Chinese and want to celebrate what better than to hold... a market day! There are stalls for the length of the main street, one side of which has been closed to traffic, and the Schoolboy bands are facing up against a more elderly traditional Thai band. Not one performing after the other as you might imagine, but both performing at once, on separate stages, a mere 50 metres apart. Caught in the middle the cacophony is devastating. Youth win out by the sheer muscle of amplification but the trad band relax into their performance and it all looks easy in comparison, hence they make their point in their own way.