Blues Music in Bangkok: The Jukes

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A young Thai band called the Jukes plays great Blues at Apoteka, on Bangkok’s Sukhumvit soi 11 every Monday night from 21:30 until after midnight.  I’d heard about them, and I finally got to hear them last night.  Fantastic!  The singer also plays a heart-breaking blues harp; makes you want to cry.  The guitarist plays soul-splitting licks, and he broke two strings from his intensity.  The good bassist and drummer round out this very tight group.  They played songs I could not name, which is a change from hearing the same old standards every night.  It’s a younger generation of Bluesmen coming up, and they live it. 

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It is a rare pleasure these days for me to be out to a late live gig, but it did me good.  My back had ached terribly all day long, on the boat coming to Bangkok and during some intensive necessary shopping.  I rested a bit by seeing a movie (“3 Days to Kill” with Kevin Costner; not bad).  But true relief only came after finding a seat with a comfortable back at Apoteka.  Of course, the refreshments they serve kicked in as the definitive anesthetic, and by midnight – after many beers and many good tunes – all my pain was gone.  Blues music is cathartic, it takes you on a tour down deep and you can only go up from there. 

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Apoteka and Soi 11 are interesting places, grittier than my neighborhood.  The pub is partly an open space, even in rainy weather, with the bar and band area inside with many tables under air conditioning, but it is opened wide to a front porch table area so I enjoy watching people walking by on the soi.  Walking down the couple of hundred meters of Soi 11 itself is rather dangerous, because the sidewalks are incredibly narrow and are usually occupied by food vendors, making you walk in the narrow street with its crowded two-way traffic. 

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The beggars here look much worse off than at least the places I’ve been through when walking back from gigs, many of these being mothers with little kids.  The ladies of the night on the late night soi here often look much more forlorn than in other areas, trying hard to sell their bodies and their sorry souls to staggering louts.  One must walk on by many pathetic situations. 

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One young lady had “hooker” written all over her, but she was a class above the others.  She didn’t operate from the street.  Rather she came into the various bars lining the soi and took up a seat on a high stool right near the doorway.  Dressed in a short black skirt, one could not miss her.  Very good looking, neat, and not looking stupid, no doubt she could be pickier about her clientele.  But what of the years ahead?  If she’s lucky, and smart, she may find a tolerable husband soon, but the clock is ticking. 

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On a brighter note, my shopping expedition earlier in the day was very successful.  I desperately needed a new backpack for everyday rough duty, and I always buy a new pair of sports sandals before the rainy season.  My present pack (an excellent North Face “Recon”) is about five years old and has given me wonderful service, but I am afraid the big zippers will blow out soon from overloading it with books or groceries every day.  I couldn’t find another “Recon” in the city, but I found a great replacement daypack from The North Face (a “Hot Shot II”) that should last me five years or so.  Both these packs have a feature I demand: a good system of compression straps to make it slim in profile while traveling until I need to expand it for loads. 

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I had been having problems finding good sandals.  The pair I’m wearing now are great except for a tendency to slip on wet surfaces – not a good thing in humid Thailand – so I will wear them only in the dry season.  I got a fantastic deal on this year's new pair of sandals from a Rockport store.  The tread should grip well in wet conditions, but I won’t really know until the rubber hits the (wet) road.  

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-Zenwind.

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