La Rocque 'n' Roll and Dewi Sri

Get this and feel happy. Feel smug that something so old can make you feel just as good as OMD or Stereolab. I heard one of the tunes on a Radio program called "Music restored" and while the radio version was very good and even promoted a certain amount of foot tapping, it didn't have the manic abandon of the version by the Baltimore consort. Everywhere you go in the world, the best music is the local equivalent of rock. The fastest Balinese stuff is pure rock. Some of the interlocking parts are like the most complex special effect in Western techno. When I was there I listened to the Balinese/Western fusion on the radio and it was stunning. Jah Wobble did this with Molam Dub and although its not Balinese, the idea is the same.

I like to consider myself rational (as rational as you can be in Yossarian's Quantum universe) but in Bali I believed outright in the existence of the animist spirits. They are right for the world in which they live. Peter Pan said "No. You see children know such a lot now, they soon don't believe in fairies, and every time a child says, `I don't believe in fairies,' there is a fairy somewhere that falls down dead.". I like to think that I kep a lot of Balinese Spirits alive while I was there. It wasn't spooky or anything. Even with the big air of Western Tourism, it just seemed part of what was all about.