Operation Warzone
They Told 'em War Was Hell... They Were Right!
Eye Of The Eagle
In This War, If You're Not The Best... You're Dead.
Fatal Pulse
First there were ten little sorority girls...then there was one.
Even in a multicultural, polyglot city like L.A. (which has the largest population of Asian-Americans (1.4 million) in the country and where the percentage of the population which is Asian-American is roughly equal to that which is black) most discussions of race appear to still be framed in the outmoded, bipolar terms of black and white. For example, whereas a lot of people and many organizations honor Black History Month, Asian Pacific Islander American Heritage Month is almost completely unrecognized except by some Asian-Americans. The centuries-long struggle and strife of blacks in America is well-documented and worth honoring- but Asians have also been subjected to legal segregation, racist violence, widespread discrimination and harassment. So why is it that the Asian-American experience is so downplayed?
According to polls, 23% of Americans are uncomfortable voting for an Asian-American to be President of the United States. This is in contrast to 15% compared with an African-American candidate and 14% compared with a woman candidate. A lot of Asians are suspected and viewed of holding allegiances to Asia, and not the U.S. which plays into the "perpetual foreigner" syndrome. True, many Asians are more recent immigrants than the white or black population but even Asians born in America often speak, in my experience, of "Americans" only in the third person. Last year, coming up with movies to showcase for APA Heritage Month resulted in the suggestion of Chinese Kung Fu movies the distinction between Asians in Asia and Asians in America remains a lot harder than distinguishing African-Americans from Africans or white people from Europeans partly because America loves Asian movies and Korean dramas seem to show at all hours of the day, but Hollywood almost never casts Asian-Americans in anything and, to date, there have only been three TV shows to focus on Asian-Americans.
Vietnamese New Wave
Are any of my readers out there Vietnamese? I have asked the experts here at Amoeba Hollywood about "Vietnamese New Wave" (also referred to as Asian New Wave at times) groups and no one seems even remotely familiar with any of them, with the exception of Chris Matthews, to whom "Modern Talking" sounds familiar ...
First of all, when people talk about Vietnamese New Wave they’re not talking about Vietnamese artists (although there is Thu Thuy, Lynda Trang Dai and supposedly a tieng viet cover of a Night Society song), but rather a movement that includes mostly German Hi-NRG or Eurobeat, Italo disco and English synthpop artists who acquired, through means that no one seems to understand (although it definitely involves mixtapes) massive popularity amongst Vietnamese in Cali, Texas and Canada (and maybe elsewhere).
And whilst there’ve been at least four or five documentarians who’ve explored the popularity of still supposedly strange popularity of Morrissey amongst Mexicans and Mexican/Americans, to my knowledge no one has yet delved into the mysterious “Vietnamese New Wave” movement in which (in addition to OMD, Pet Shop Boys and Gazebo's "I Like Chopin" four German performers, with no radio play, no MTV exposure, no Amazon recommendations, no local performances came, against all odds, to achieve stardom in the Vietnamese immigrant population.
To start with, the term “new wave” as used in music means many different things to different people. History records that Sire records head Seymour Stein was the first to borrow the term from the 1950s and 60s film movements from Europe to describe the bands that played at CBGB like Blondie and the Talking Heads. Before long it seemingly became applied to any band formed after 1976 and was applied to such musically dissimilar artists as Spandau Ballet, Elvis Costello, Tom Petty, the Thompson Twins and definitely anyone with asymmetrical hair or 80s fashions regardless of their sound. By the late 80s, I don't remember anyone really using it anymore. "Alternative" had pretty much replaced it as the term for anything underground or bizarre (at least in Columbia, Missouri, where I was still living.) Anyway, in the context of Vietnamese New Wave, four performers loom large that are pretty much completely unknown by every non-Vietnamese I’ve talked to (except Lance Rock, below).
Are any of my readers out there Vietnamese? I have asked the experts here at Amoeba Hollywood about "Vietnamese New Wave" (also referred to as Asian New Wave at times) groups and no one seems even remotely familiar with any of them, with the exception of Chris Matthews, to whom "Modern Talking" sounds familiar ...
First of all, when people talk about Vietnamese New Wave they’re not talking about Vietnamese artists (although there is Thu Thuy, Lynda Trang Dai and supposedly a tieng viet cover of a Night Society song), but rather a movement that includes mostly German Hi-NRG or Eurobeat, Italo disco and English synthpop artists who acquired, through means that no one seems to understand (although it definitely involves mixtapes) massive popularity amongst Vietnamese in Cali, Texas and Canada (and maybe elsewhere).
And whilst there’ve been at least four or five documentarians who’ve explored the popularity of still supposedly strange popularity of Morrissey amongst Mexicans and Mexican/Americans, to my knowledge no one has yet delved into the mysterious “Vietnamese New Wave” movement in which (in addition to OMD, Pet Shop Boys and Gazebo's "I Like Chopin" four German performers, with no radio play, no MTV exposure, no Amazon recommendations, no local performances came, against all odds, to achieve stardom in the Vietnamese immigrant population.
To start with, the term “new wave” as used in music means many different things to different people. History records that Sire records head Seymour Stein was the first to borrow the term from the 1950s and 60s film movements from Europe to describe the bands that played at CBGB like Blondie and the Talking Heads. Before long it seemingly became applied to any band formed after 1976 and was applied to such musically dissimilar artists as Spandau Ballet, Elvis Costello, Tom Petty, the Thompson Twins and definitely anyone with asymmetrical hair or 80s fashions regardless of their sound. By the late 80s, I don't remember anyone really using it anymore. "Alternative" had pretty much replaced it as the term for anything underground or bizarre (at least in Columbia, Missouri, where I was still living.) Anyway, in the context of Vietnamese New Wave, four performers loom large that are pretty much completely unknown by every non-Vietnamese I’ve talked to (except Lance Rock, below).