If Viet Nam War’s politic is a boxing sport, no one punches the controversial bag harder than Asia production. In Nhat Truong/Tran Thien Thanh dedication, Asia, once again, elevated the art-of-war music and visual. Inducing the ebullience of an adrenaline rush, the show opens with explosive gunshots, flashes of bomb bursts, and smoke of ashes. Accompanied by the battling stimulation of the musical arrangement, Thanh Lan approaches “Anh Khong Chet Dau Anh” with a heart of a combating woman. Her voice soars with braveness and her face expresses courageousness. Her strident performance packs more heat than the oven door.

Even though the video is filled with political propaganda, Asia have managed to balance it out with mesmerizing performances from start to finish—even Trish and Asia 4 are listenable in the remix of “Tinh Thu Cua Linh.” Asia’s musical producers, especially Truc Ho, have an ear for making old tunes sound fresh and clean. “Bay Ngay Doi Mong” is a gorgeous bossa-nova orchestration with the invigorating mesh of violins, saxophone, and piano. Both Truc Mai (old generation) and Y Phuong (new generation) bring their unique voices to the tune. Another delightful arrangement is the simple picking-guitar on “Ta Tu Trong Dem,” a song I loved when I was a kid, and hearing Phuong Dung’s ageless voice floats over the rumba rhythm strikes a nostalgic chord.

“Han Mac Tu” is a savory gap-bridging performance between Thanh Thuy and Y Phung. The contrast between Thanh Thuy’s thick, raucous voice and Y Phung’s thin, clear vocals produced an intriguing effect. Y Phung is pretty damn hot too (hopefully she won’t turn trampy any time soon). Speaking of appearances, Kim Anh’s figure looks amazing for her age and in the sky-blue ao dai (long dress). Her slightly raspy voice is marvelous next to Tuan Vu’s warmness. While we’re on long dress, what Diem Lien puts on—the black dress, the pearl necklace, and the hairstyle—epitomizes a Vietnamese woman.

Nguyen Khang is a bit disappointed in “Khi Nguoi Yeu Toi Khoc” with Ngoc Ha. He doesn’t hit the high note like he gets to do at the end of the program with the group collaboration, in which he is assigned to take charge of the bridge. Don Ho’s rendition of “Tinh Dau Tinh Cuoi” isn’t so bad, but he could not surpass Ngoc Lan’s version. In “Tinh Co Nhu Khong,” the young Anh Minh is even better than the wannabe-young Mai Le Huyen. The attempt of pairing up Da Nhat Yen and Pham Khai Tuan is a huge mismatch. Putting a rhythmless dude who could barely pull off a two-step move next to my dancing queen, what were they thinking? Should have let her run the show herself.

The most bone-wrenching performance is Lam Thuy Van and Lam Nhat Tien’s “Nguoi O Lai Charlie.” The cries of Lam Thuy Van’s voice combined with the image of a helmet positioned on a gun gave me a chill. Asia 50 is undoubtedly an audacious political statement. Too bad the video is filmed after the talented songwriter Tran Thien Thanh/singer Nhat Truong had already left us. Imagine how much more powerful it could have been if we could hear the man himself talks about his own work. Now that would be priceless.

According to the sitcom, “Con Duong Nghe Thuat Chong Gai,” in Paris By Night 81: Am Nhac Khong Bien Gioi 2, I am not qualified to criticize Thuy Nga’s product since I didn’t pay twenty five bucks for it, even though I get to watch the original DVD. I am not interested in writing another review since ninety-six percent of the video is garbage anyway. Yes, even Tuan Ngoc’s performance is awful. Mad kowtows, however, to his pops Lu Lien. Even with such an unaesthetic program, Thuy Nga still manage to sell their product, and I have to give their marketers the credits for that. They know their real consumers, and they know how to entertain them. Who are they targeting? The Vietnamese married men.

Unlike American married men who find their entertainment in strippers, Vietnamese married men are either too shy or too scared to step into strip spots, and Thuy Nga marketers see that. Somebody has to entertain the Vietnamese married men because their wives don’t. When was the last time a wife stripped her for man? She makes love to him, but she doesn’t tease him. Part of a wife’s responsibility is to make sure her man gets his mandicine. And when a woman works twelve hours a day (many Vietnamese women do), she just wants to get it done and over with. So she would give him a quick blowjob, just enough for him to be hard for five minutes. After that she could get a peaceful rest. She satisfies his needs, but won’t entertain him. So he has to find another way to entertain himself.

Why and how do Thuy Nga marketers target Vietnamese married man? Buying a Thuy Nga’s video is like killing birds with one stone. He could get his fantasy on while watching Paris By Night’s video with his wife and kids. Thuy Nga are so clever at incorporating PG-13 entertainment into their videos. Let’s take Minh Tuyet’s performance of “Da Khong Yeu Thi Thoi” for example. She is so good at stripping that she doesn’t even need a pole, and Thuy Nga wouldn’t want it to be so obvious either. To take the performance to the next level, they wanted to give a sense that she is floating in the air by grabbing on to the red curtain. To pull this off, they have four strong hands behind the curtain supporting her ghetto booty (Damn! I want that job). She works like a professional stripper while the camera focuses on her slightly sagged breasts. She even pulls off some of her garments. If her presentation is not a strip tease, I don’t know what is. Minh Tuyet is not alone, the usual suspects includes Nhu Loan, Bao Han, Loan Chau, Ho Le Thu, Thuy Tien, and Luu Bich.

To show how much a Vietnamese married man loves his wife, he would run out and buy Thuy Nga’s DVDs whenever they release regardless if they are good or bad as long as the whole family can enjoy. He could sleep through other performances as well as Nguyen Ngoc Ngan’s and Nguyen Cao Ky Duyen’s yakidiyak, just make sure to wake him up when the girls come on stage.

I’ve been receiving automated messages from my host every six hours stating: “The domain visualgui.com has reached 80% of its bandwidth limit. Please contact the system admin as soon as possible.” 80% of 400 gigabytes data transfer in less than a month is overwhelming. Didn’t realize that I am packing more traffic than the streets of Sai Gon. To reduce the congestion, I have to temporarily move all the Motion pieces to the school server, delete the miscellaneous folder (Flash music files and images), and disable all the food photos in the Eatery section. Hopefully, the site can survive until the end of the month without exceeding 400 gigs of bandwidth. In case Visualgui.com does go offline, please come back on May 1st. Keep the faith in me. Only technology can disconnect me from you.

Knowing that I am a scat freak, a colleague of mine handed me Jazz for Kids: Sing, Clap, Wiggle, and Shake—an album he bought for his daughters—so that I could listen to Clark Terry “Mumbles” over Oscar Peterson’s glibness of piano technique. It turns out that I already have this masterpiece (of course I should have it because I am a jazz piano freak also, and Peterson was my man), but the whole record blows me away. It is such a fantastic compilation for kids to jam with.

Ella Fitzgerald has me swinging to “Old McDonald” with her playful rendition. By applying her melodic embellishments and child-like sensibility, she makes one of the most annoying songs of all time sounds superior. The arrangement is hypnotizing—particularly the way the trumpet imitates the chicken sound. In contrast, Slim Gaillard uses his vocals to imitate the chicken voice in “Chicken Rhythm” and his scat sounds exactly like a trumpet. The result is amazing. I am having a blast grooving to the “Chicken Rhythm” like a little kid in the roller-skating ring (I am sure you all remember those chicken dances).

From Lionel Hampton’s “Rag Mop” to Carmen McRae’s “When The Red, Red, Robin Comes Bob, Bobbin’ Along” to Blossom Dearie’s “Doop-Doo-De-Doop (A Doodlin’ Song),” Jazz for Kids is a perfect collection for both the parents and kids to enjoy. If you love jazz and would like to introduce her to your kids, this album is highly recommended. But make sure you let them know that Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” is not true jazz. Not sure why it was included in a jazz album when Pops had tons of classic scat songs in his early Hot-Five-and-Hot-Seven days. Other than that, I have been rocking this kiddy joints again and again just so I can feel young all over again. Now let me go train my two-year-old nephew, who doesn’t want to talk yet, to mumble along with Clark Terry and show my six-year-old niece to do the chicken dance, or the other way around.

Is it just me or the album cover of Tran Thai Hoa’s Tinh Khuc Le Uyen Phuong is a rip-off of Michael Bublé’s It’s Time? Other than the ugly typography on Tran Thai Hoa’s CD, the black suit and the loose tie are dead-on identical. Disgraceful is on Thuy Nga’s graphic designer as well as fashion artist. Why do I always disdain Thuy Nga’s products? Because they have been making desecrated music continuously, and Le Uyen Phuong’s songbook is another instance.

Except for the blues-inflected “Vung Lay Cua Chung Ta” and the bossa nova-flavored “Noi Buon Dang Nho,” the twelve remaining tracks are wimped-out, noodling, and vulgar efforts to revamp old tunes. The arrangements are drowsy, especially the overexploitation of the fuzak saxophone (“Buon Den Bao Gio”) and trumpet (“Cho Lan Cuoi”), yet Tran Hoai Hoa’s snoring voice is drowsier. His rendition of “Da Khuc Cho Tinh Nhan” is being crushed like black peppers by Nguyen Khang’s powerful and savory version. His cheesy phrasing (especially his enunciation of “hoa”) in “Tinh Khuc Cho Em” is so gay and lame.

Since Thuy Nga productions have not been able to release any new music, they have to find a way to pull listeners’ cash out of their pockets (thanks to the Internet, or I’ll be damn broke by now with piles of junks). And they do so by polishing up old songs and assigning to someone who is least expected from the audiences to be able to pull them off. The tactic of Tran Thai Hoa sings Le Uyen Phuong is not much difference from Minh Tuyet collaborates with Bang Kieu. What is the end result? Both albums flop, but people will buy them to find out how bad they sound. I, too, take great pleasure in listening to mundane music in order to appreciate higher arts.

Working at Vassar is hard not to learn new skills or not to be inspired when we’re always indulged with design-related resources. Lawrence Zeegen’s Digital Illustration: A Master Class in Creative Image-making is the latest book being passed around the Vassar’s Web-design crew. Although the heart and soul of the book is the jaw-dropping illustrations, the history of image-making is no less interesting, especially with the influences of pop culture such as punk rock, hip-hop, and pornography. With digital tools—Mac computer, digital camera, scanner—being affordable and easy to access, the process of integrating media and techniques is much smoother and faster. An artist can move freely from paper-sketching to digital-crafting or vice versa. Digital Illustration is a wonderful source of inspiration.

With a collection of essays written by music scholars, Bad Music: The Music We Love To Hate edited by Christopher Washburne and Maiken Derno is both refreshing and informing to read. The book delves into various genres—country, pop, world music, smooth jazz, folk, and punk rock—that are often ignored by the academic’s gatekeepers. Discussions such as “Camp vs. Cheese,” “Why Smooth Jazz is Not Part of Historical Narratives,” and “Badness as ‘Aesthetically Unbearable Style'” help readers understand the “musical badness” without being disdainful. As someone whose interests include music writing, I find Bad Music to be helpful and insightful.

Chosen One got the flow and delivery, which are cool for club joints and clowning on Asia’s videos. When it comes to serious hip-hop, however, he is only half way there. He’s lacking the personal expression and the lyrical wit to make a distinctive voice as a rapper. His political statement in “World News” is weak and his technique is stilted. Both “Lyte It Up,” and “Still the Same” are lost in the gangsta shit with the same damn weed-puffing, women-dissing, and amateur-beefing contents, nothing new. Despite the saccharine lyrics, I am feeling that west coast funk in “L.A. Underground Part 2” and Chosen’s dope flow. Still, homeboy has a long way to go in term of lyricism. Keep listening to your mentors (Pac, Nas, Jigga, and AZ) and find your own voice, C.

O Kia, look who’s back? The young, witty, and eccentric Ngoc Khue, whose debut Ben Bo Ao Nha Minh remains a rare work of art, strikes again. After writing a highly favorable review of her first album, I wanted to test the water by playing it at a family-gathering dinner, which included about twenty people. The reactions were what I had expected to be: “What the heck is this music?,” “She can’t even sing,” and “She sounds like ‘len dong’ (calling the spirit).” The last comment is not so far off, but I would prefer to call her style as running-the-voodoo-down. And that is exactly what she has accomplished in volume two, her newest release, by weaving Vietnamese traditional folk into western flavors including jazz, funk, pop, rock, and semi-classical.

Like her previous album, O Kia marks another imaginative collaboration with fusion master Le Minh Son who penned six out of seven tracks and produced the entire album. In the lead-off title track, slinky songbird Khue paints a gorgeous rice-padding scene with white butterfly on the flower, a laughing bee, and a singing bird. The cha-cha beat gives the song a nice, mid-tempo rhythm, but it is her unusual phrasings that take the track to the anomalistic level. Her superb, bizarre technique is best observed on “Bo Song.” Sporting an unorthodox delivery, Khue floats her big, deep, slightly graveled voice in and out of the savory jazz-funk groove. What makes “Bo Song” a masterpiece is the way she swaggers from soulful to playful phrasings with effortless verve, and she has the requisite chops to maneuver her way into the blend of folk, funk, and jazz. Khue switches her flow in the semi-classical “Toc Tha Thuyen” soaring her strident timbre into the soul-soothing sounds of violin and keyboard accompaniment. “Tinh Tang” and Nguyen Cuong’s “Em Khong Vao Chua” are her rock-folk experimentations, and she rocks them both with her prevailing delivery and prodigious techniques.

Once again, Khue offers out-of-the-trend freshness to the Vietnamese musical scene. She also brought her own distinctive style to Le Minh Son’s music. I am so glad that she continues to excel in the avant-garde path she has chosen. Her execution is a tremendous improvement: more confidence, less breathy, and unafraid of vibrato. Her performances can make the mass listeners feel uncomfortable because they are ill-prepared for something that is way too far out there. Khue’s work is not the type of art form that speaks for itself. If we don’t get it, the commiseration is on us.

Bang Kieu and Minh Tuyet on the same album? What was on Bang Kieu’s mind? Moving from Khanh Ha to Minh Tuyet is like trading in a Lexus for a Corolla. But most people love economical car and Thuy Nga is a business-oriented production; therefore, the collaboration is understandable. Pairing up an idiosyncratic combination to provoke curious listeners has always been Thuy Nga’s marketing strategy even though they know damn well that these two voices don’t go together. In their integrated-effort Boi Vi Anh Yeu Em, we can tell right away that they don’t harmonize on the opening duet, Thai Thinh’s “Phut Giay Minh Chia Tay,” with the way they trade lines. Bang Kieu sings high notes while Minh Tuyet stays in the middle register. When they join forces, he has to switch to a lower range to mesh with her weaker vocals.

Although Bang Kieu has a striking countertenor of a voice, I still can’t get over his feminine quality. He needs to smoke some cracks, weeds, and cokes or do whatever it takes to deteriorate his gay-ass timbre or roughen it up. I actually started to accept him when he performed with Thanh Ha and Khanh Ha on Paris By Night videos, but now he takes me back to when I first described his singing as a hen-esque voice (giong ga mai). Crooning bubblegum pop tunes only makes him sounds campier, especially on the Chinese-inflected “Boi Vi Anh Yeu Em” when he caramelizes the words “hoi em” and “cho quen” on the second verse. Why he chose to sing Phan Dinh Tung’s composition is beyond me. I suspect Minh Tuyet puts him up to it.

As for princess Minh Tuyet, whom is she trying to seduce by flaunting out her chest on the album cover? Even Bang Kieu has to close his eyes to avoid staring at her breasts. He knows better not to mess with Trizzy Phuong Trinh. She would beat the shit out of him if she caught him peeping at a younger girl’s cleavage. Minh Tuyet may look sexy (depends on the angle of the viewer) but she can’t make Phuong Quynh’s “Anh Da Ra Di” sounds as sexy as Ho Ngoc Ha could. From the raucousness of her voice to the voluptuousness of her groove, Ho Ngoc Ha epitomizes sexiness. Even her rap delivery is more sensuous than Minh Tuyet’s stilted flow. I heard Cam Ly’s version of Minh Vy’s “Ke Dung Sau Tinh Yeu” not so long ago, and now her sister covers it. Which one do I like better? Neither. I can’t eat too many sweet candies. They make my bad teeth more pejorative. But I am sure young people who have good teeth will chew on this album like a bar of chocolate, especially fans of Minh Tuyet and Thuy Nga, but Bang Kieu’s followers may be disappointed.