A diary from the Bangkok soundcheck

We arrived at the venue at 2pm. The stage was still wet from the band before us — they had used a smoke machine too close to the monitors and everything smelled of artificial fog and someone else's set list.

The monitor engineer was named Nat. He spoke exactly seven words of English over the course of six hours: "more", "less", "okay", "problem", "no problem", "wait", and — at the end, when everything finally worked — "beautiful".

We played the show at 9pm to 340 people. Ko Pai broke a stick in the second song. Thura's tuner died between songs three and four. Nobody in the audience noticed. Or if they did, they were kind enough not to show it.