Excellent Music!
NYKhmer | 06/01/2010
(5 out of 5 stars)
"I love listening to Cambodian oldies, especially the first track, a remake of the Beatles "Hey Jude"! So catchy and beautifully written. Sin Sisamouth vocals is also great in this one. I listened to that track like a hundred times within the first few days of hearing it. Music is about a man longing and hoping to be with his love again. Basically there are a lot of analogies and metaphors used to describe his emotions and feelings. He's comparing his feelings like a bee without honey and flowers drying out and decaying. Mainly expressing hope that love will blossom again soon. His choice of lyrics are so well composed that ordinary young Cambodians don't really understand it because of the depth of poetic wordings. I really had to listen to it carefully many times before actually understanding what he's really saying and trying to express. It's ashamed he and many other great singers didn't survive during the Pol Pot regime, otherwise there would have been so much more great music produced. Overall, great stuff for those fans of 60's and 70's rock and roll with Asian flare.
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The best of the "Cambodian Rocks" series.
R. Rittenhouse | Illinois | 07/13/2007
(5 out of 5 stars)
"The other three volumes of CAMBODIAN ROCKS are interesting, but this one is far and away the best, and if you buy only one CD of Cambodian music, this should be the one. All of the songs are excellant, including Sinn Sisamouth's Spaghetti Western-ish "Beloved Girlfriend", Ros Sereysothea's bouncy "If You Wish To Love Me" (a song that would fit right in a Quentin Tarantino movie), Pan Ron's delerious and infectous "Monkey Dancing Monkey" (once heard, it will never leave your head. NEVER.) and Sisamouth's "Tender Hands", a strangely eerie cover of the AM radio standard "Streets of San Francisco". A haunting, hypnotic, and strange collection, made even more poignant by the fact that none of the major performers featured here made it out of Khmer Rouge regime alive, all of them murdered by the state for the "crime" of playing pop music."
Track Listings (17) - Disc #1