Cheesy Girl Bands

One interesting aspect of travel in Asia is the apparent proliferation of very specific form of musical entertainment which I shall refer to as "Cheesy Girl Bands" or CGB's for purposes of this essay.

This is somewhat of a misnomer because at the heart of every CGB is a male seated behind a slew of keyboards, drum machines,mixers and a microphone. The rest of the typical CGB consists of 3 female vocalists dressed identically in outfits designed to maintain a suitable level of focus from the audience, which is almost entirely male.

CGB's are also characterized by some other common traits:

1. They cover everything from country to disco to current pop.

2. They alternate lead singer between each song. The lead singer rotates to the center of the trio and takes her turn and then turns it over to the next one for the next song.

3. Every so often, the guy behind the keyboard gets a turn to sing a song.

4. The girls have a choreagraphed dance for each song. The choreography appears to be very similar for every song.

5. The singing is very bad. Luckily for the girls (but not necessarily for the audience), the music, not to be outdone by the singing, is worse than the singing

6. The guy behind the keyboards is not actually playing anything. He's pushing buttons to trigger pre-programmed musical tracks.

During the sets, (but after the drinking has begun in earnest) the girls will exit the stage and ask various audience members to dance in front of the stage for brief intervals. Then, at the end of each set, they do an elaborate "flourish" and jump off the stage to go talk to people in the audience.

There has been speculation among the group as to whether they are using this time to setup "external contracts". In my experience they are simply chatting up the various middle-aged business travellers as part of the overall experience:

"How are you doing?"
"How is your trip going?"
"Have you been to Penang before?"
"How long will you be here?"
"Do you have a wife?"
"Can I come back to the United States with you?"

Just kidding Tina. They've never asked me how my trip was going.