Say Bok Gwai-self titled CD; Monkey King Records 2004

 

Of all spots in the world, San Francisco seems an especially good one for a band that fuses Hardcore Punk Rock energy with Cantonese lyrics. Disaster Amnesiac realizes that there are Cantonese speakers everywhere outside of China, of course. Still, The City By the Bay has a long and storied Chinese heritage along with its Punk Rock history going back to the 1970s and probably earlier than that. These factors make Say Bok Gwai, the record by the band of the same name, feel like a natural fit. The music here is characterized by ripping guitar tones courtesy of Alex Yeung, who also shouts out his mostly Cantonese invective in a way that has had me thinking of the chess players on Kearny St. and the busy markets of Clement St. Song titles such as White Demon Stir Fry, Lazy, and Why Are Your People So Crazy can give the listener hints as to the perspective from which these dudes viewed their surroundings at that time. Something tells me that they probably see a lot of the same dynamics at which they were wailing in 2004, and that's completely understandable. Yeung's guitar sound is sharp and obviously well considered. At times, Disaster Amnesiac wishes that there was bass guitar to support it, but I guess that they were comfortable playing their songs without it. Drummer Andre Custodio twists and torques the songs' rhythms in Prog like ways often, but when he wants to just thrash on tunes such as Staight Outta HK, he's up for that, too. I always wanted to see this group head over to East Asia or maybe South America, for there's no doubt in my mind that their music could have taken off in those zones. Not sure if the band Say Bok Gwai is still playing at all, but I do know that circa 2019 both Yeung and Custodio were active within the deep and fertile SF Bay Area music scene. How does one say "rock on dudes" in Cantonese?