Monday

Last night, Sunshine and I took a cab to Army Stadium (also referred to as Military Region 7 Stadium), Tân Bình District, to see My Chemical Romance share the stage with some recent winners of Tiger Beer's local Rock Your Passion* battle of the bands. We had VIP tickets, meaning all of the following: one, we were seated in the one available bleacher, near the dugout, distantly behind people with regular tickets standing in the outfield near the stage; two, we had large, useless plastic badges hanging around our necks; three, flashily uniformed beer stewardesses kept bringing us free drinks. The action included three bands and took two and a half hours. First onstage was the Vietnamese band Unlimited, who placed third in the recent contest but were also crowned crowd favorite. The crowd apparently favors speedmetal Dead Or Alive with chunk overtones. Highlights included a slash-n-burn cover of Final Countdown, itself well worth the ticket price. Next, and my favorite, were the grand prize winning Ngũ Cung who, while still serving up a Việt pastiche of harmless pop metal punctuated by glittery castrato grace notes, demonstrated a comely and playfully deconstructive range articulation reminiscent of Faith No More. Both Vietnamese bands played for about a half-hour, striking rock-and-rule postures for the multiple cameras onstage with them. My Chemical Romance played longer: fifty minutes or so. It was mostly wasted on me. I'm unfamiliar with the band, disinterested in the style--a soup of nearly everything that's happened on the gringo pop stage since nineteen eighty-six. They had the crowd, though, and good energy. They had cross-cultural aplomb. It's just that this style of white-boy whiny and anthem (like the Friends theme song sung by Sammy Hagar, or really, vice-versa) was less interesting than the funnier Vietnamese bands. [Cavin]