Thai high with Ian Brown, Franz Ferdinand and Oasis

BANGKOK, Thailand – We are in Lakeside Muang Thong Thani for the 2006 Bangkok 100 Rock Festival, and it is hot as hell. Not The Beach sort of heat. Approximately more like the heat endured by Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now. You get the urge to stare at the whirring blades of an electric fan, let ice-cold water slide down the crackling throat, and imagine the trippy Doors. And all the children are insane, waiting for the summer rain.

No, no, we are not here for hippy ’60s music or a doomed ride in a tuk-tuk to find Colonel Kurtz. My girlfriend Becca and I went all the way to Bangkok to watch three great acts – Ian Brown (formerly of the Stone Roses), Franz Ferdinand and Oasis. Unfortunately, stellar rock acts don’t go all the way to the Philippines anymore when they’re touring Asia. All we get in our country are coup scares, overacting government officials and Michael Bublé (or even – The horror! The horror! – Bolton). That, my dear readers, is our lot in life. No matter. I thank the heavens this night for rock n’ roll stars. (Thanks also to the nice people at Sony BMG Music Entertainment Philippines for giving us tickets to the festival.)

After a 40-minute cab ride from our hotel, we arrive at the sprawling car park transformed into the festival grounds on this sweltering Saturday. What a turnout (20,000 people said one hyperbolic reporter). We get here just after Deus and a couple of Thai bands had already played. It would’ve been interesting to see Big Ass. Uh, I mean the band.

What I love about festivals is that it is – for lack of a better and brainier word – festive. In some coliseum concerts, people sit their butts down on cheap seats, watch like zombies, and buy the obligatory merchandise. In festivals, people are more dialectic, interactive, crazier. They crowd-surf, splash water around, invade the stage, generally act like idiots, and, oh, listen to some good ole rock n’ roll.

Ian Brown (as Liam Gallagher of Oasis would tell the audience later that evening) is a bona-fide "rock n’ roll star."

Brown and the rest of the Stone Roses created quite a stir in England when they came out with their self-titled debut in the late ’80s. First track, I Wanna Be Adored. Last track, I Am The Resurrection. Now, that’s rock n’ roll for you: narcissistic, nihilistic and – in the case of the Stone Roses – danceable. In between, there are tracks like Made of Stone and She Bangs The Drums. Great gyrating guitars, great pop arrangements. The Stone Roses was the resurrection of rock. That was until the blues-fixated "The Second Coming" came along.

The Roses wilted. Guitarist John Squire left and formed the Seahorses. Ian Brown went solo. Mani the bassist joined Primal Scream. A hundred years later, the singer is onstage in Bangkok belting out She Bangs The Drums and Waterfall, as well as his solo numbers like Golden Gaze, F.E.A.R., and Corpses, etc.

Brown was never really known as a great singer, but he has a compelling stage presence that even Liam "Our Kid" Gallagher would die for. "King Monkey" walks about in a pink tracksuit, tugs at a constantly snagged microphone cable (a roadie darts to and fro to un-snag it), prances, and sings flatly (especially in the terrible Bob Marley covers and the Dear Prudence quote). But it is riveting to watch Brown dance and sing immortal lines like "Passion fruit and holy bread/Fill my guts and ease my head."

If Ian Brown reminds you of hot Saturday raves and the Happy Mondays, Alex Kapranos and the rest of Franz Ferdinand recall Television and Gang of Four. The guys from Franz are like the Gestapo with guitars: the jagged, choppy, angular guitars evoke images of storm-trooping soldiers out to subjugate the world. Riffs drill into your head. Drums arrive like battering rams ("white crunk," coined a fan). All you can do is be a slave to the rhythm. Dance music can be a dominating thing.

The band from Glasgow plays the upbeat hits (which resemble one large aural organism altogether) – Do You Want To?, Michael, Dark of the Matinee, Take Me Out, etc. The experience is not unlike sitting in a dentist’s chair, listening to sound of a Fender drill. I occasionally wake up from this trance at the sight of Kapranos prancing around in white pants. Queer Eye for the straight band?

I love the less monotonous numbers like Eleanor Put Your Boots On, wherein Kapranos strums an acoustic at the onset. He is, like the onetime Stone Rose, a great showman. At one point, Kapranos stands on the drum-riser and flails around. A Pete Townshend in white chic pants? Another highpoint: three people bash away at the drum set. Kuyog, baga. The band then segues into This Fire. Quite a workout.

But festivals are always about anthems – big, brawny, brash sing-alongs that leave audiences hoarse and high. And Oasis has lots of it in its back catalogue. Its discography teems with peaks and valleys.

The Gallagher brothers walk onstage with bassist Andy Bell, guitarist Gem Archer and drummer Zak Starkey. (Zak, by the way, is responsible for making Oasis sound like a proper rock n’ roll band again; his dad Ringo Star must be mighty proud.)

The guys start with F*ckin’ In The Bushes and then Turn up the Sun, off the comeback album "Don’t Believe The Truth." Lyla is the sort of thing one likes to hear in festivals. What with its coruscating chorus and Liam singing in supernova fashion, "Calling all the stars to fall/And catch the silver sunlight in your hands."

Bring It On Down is dedicated to the people in the cheaper rows, Morning Glory is announced by Liam in a gruff manner, and Cigarettes & Alcohol allows the band to play swaggering T-Rex guitars (shades of Get It On). Ah, "Definitely Maybe" – an oasis for youths who peered into a future of dole-outs, queues, conservative politics, and assembly line jobs in ’94. We in front of the stage go nuts, as mineral water containers aptly fly overhead like baby rockets.

"Our Kid" is still the epitome of cool and aloofness: standing motionless on one side of the stage, surveying the people during guitar breaks like a crafty fish that could go immobile for minutes until an unwary worm comes along. Predatory, some might say.

Noel takes up the microphone for The Importance of Being Idle to sing about the pleasures of tramp life. He then uses the acoustic for – surprise, surprise – The Masterplan, a really good B-side.

Liam sings his own composition Songbird, which he’s darn sure is the crowd’s favorite. The Gallagher brothers’ anthem Acquiesce follows. I love the way Liam stands beside Noel when the latter sings the "Because we need each other/We believe in one another" chorus.

People go nuts when they hear the languid drum intro to Live Forever, one of the defining songs of Britpop. I see a few people get teary-eyed (including my girlfriend) when the guys follow the mucky jam of Mucky Fingers with the wondrous Wonderwall.

(In the press conference that morning at the Four Seasons Hotel, I asked Noel what he thinks of Ryan Adams’ Wonderwall cover, which the alt.country artist made more intimate and plaintive. Noel said that it is an amazing song to begin with. True, true.)

It is time for cosmic, celestial karaoke when the band dusts off Champagne Supernova. Derivative, yes. Beatlesque, yes. But Noel once said he’d rather leave the experimenting to his peers (alas, poor Yorke), and concentrate on music that would raise roofs off arenas.

It is an open-air festival, but it wouldn’t be hard to imagine roofs hurtling to outer space on this splendid night. Like champagne super-shingles in the sky.

Oasis "ends" the set with Rock N’ Roll Star. Assorted bedlam occurs. Crowd-surfing drunks are hauled into the enclosure in front of the stage. Water-bottle rockets’ red glare. A girl beside us almost faints. Security men escort her away from the front row. Her boyfriend elects to stay. Hmm…

Two songs later in the encore, Noel motions something to the keyboard player (who looks like a young Dr. John). Gulp! The familiar C to F piano chords mushroom into the hot Bangkok air. This is Noel Gallagher’s Imagine, Strawberry Fields Forever and All The Young Dudes put together. "Slip inside the eye of your mind," sings the elder Gallagher. And we are gone, putting our lives into the hands of this British rock n’ roll band.

The guys from Oasis end their set with The Who’s My Generation. Zak feels right at home (since he used to session for Daltrey, Townshend and Entwistle), playing anarchically like a young Keith Moon but with more control. Bell solos on a trebly bass, just like "The Ox." Liam sputters the lyrics out. People try to put us down…

You just can’t put those supernova siblings down.