Loomis, Steven, IC3

CBC Band was a Vietnamese band popular in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. Made up of a family of poor Vietnamese, the CBC discovered they could earn money by playing Western rock music for American soldiers in Saigon. They were called the CBC Band, which stood for Con Ba Cu, MOTHERS CHILDREN. It was a way to honor their mother for her unwavering support.

Fronted by Nam Loc and her brother, Tung Linh, a renowned guitar player in Vietnam at the time, the group played at the CBC bar where they got their name. On May 29, 1971, they played at South Vietnam's first International rock festival, Live at the Saigon Zoo.

On April 8, 1971, a bomb exploded in the bar killing one GI and a 14-year-old girl. While on tour in India, in early 1974, they applied for asylum in Australia. After being denied, they were taken in by Tibetan monks who were themselves refugees in India.

When the South fell in 1975, they applied at the US Embassy to grant them entry as refugees. They eventually settled in Houston, Texas.

On April 8, 2011, the CBC band held a reunion for war veterans in Houston, Texas.

. . . . now, about that night, and the bombing on the 8th of April, 1971.

I had been to what I called the CBC many times. It may have been the name of the band because the place was also called Fillmore (far) East. If you don't find that funny you must be kinda young.

Anyhow, the day before I'd been with a bar-girl just down a side street from the circle where there stood a large statue of Tran Hung Dao which faced the Saigon River. I had asked the girl if she wanted to go to the CBC with me the next night, she said yes... However the next afternoon my counterpart, a Vietnamese Sailor named Ha, asked me to go to dinner with his parents and wife to celebrate the birth of their son.

What could I do? There was no way to contact her, my date, and so I joined Ha and we set out for Cholon, the Chinatown of Vietnam... My counterpart, his family and wife were Chinese living in war torn Viet Nam. Their's is another story... but that night Ha and I had a lot to drink and I overslept at my BEQ, the Capitol Hotel. The Army bus that picked up at the Capitol had come and gone so I got a cab to the shipyard where I worked. I climbed up the outer staircase and into the Advisory Unit's office to nearly a welcoming committee. I was the youngest member of the shipyard's advisors and like fathers they had been trying to locate me, including asking for a list of the dead!?! Dead??? I asked, "What are you talking about?"

Well, one of them had heard me telling, there day before, that I was going to take a girl to the CBC Club... They were now nearly shouting... "THE CBC WAS BOMBED LAST NIGHT" well...

No, I wasn't there, I was in Cholon with my counterpart having dinner with his parents.

Later that day I went past the CBC, chairs and tables were still in the street, blown there through a large hole in the building. Stories very, I heard a dozen Purple Hearts were passed out because of that explosion, and I once heard the lead singer had been killed. I don't know for sure. I never went back to the CBC, nor did I go back to the bar to apologize to the gal I had stood up.

By the time of the CBC bombing I was short... a two digit midget with about fifty days to go in-country.


���MORE OF THE CBC STORY:

On April 8th, 1971, the CBC Band were performing at the My Phuong Club in downtown Saigonâ??s To Do street. It initially seemed to be like any other of CBCâ??s multitude of gigs.As always, Loan opened proceedings with the banshee proclamation that had echoed through all too many smoky Saigon venues.

â??Yea, weâ??re the CBC Band, and weâ??d like to turn you onâ?¦ We got a little peace message, like straight from Saigon. Waaaaaah yeah!â??

Like a well-oiled machine, the band launched into their blazing rendition of Hendrixâ?? â??Purple Haze.â??

As they hammered away at the pulsing opening riff, there was a deafening boom and a blinding flash. The band seemed to disappear from sight.

â??One minute weâ??re sitting at a bar table, next moment blown away, covered in debris, pitch black darkness, in complete silence. But the silence lasted only a few seconds,â?? Air Force veteran Scott Roberts remembered. â??Then we heard the screams of a bar girl and shouts for help. Then total chaos.â??

Michael Janus had just returned from patrolling the jungles with an infantry unit and had hoped his period of R&R in Saigon would offer some light relief. Instead, he was caught up in the pandemonium within the My Phuong Club.

â??When the bomb went off, I lost my glasses, my hat,â?? he said. â??I was one of the first ones to get out. I had a wound in the spine. Perforated ears. My ears still ring.â??

Whilst the band emerged unharmed, the audience were not so lucky. One American G.I and one Vietnamese woman- Phan Vanâ??s girlfriend- were killed, and an undetermined number of others were wounded in the bombing. The Vietcong- who had so often bemoaned the decadence of Western popular music- had directly targeted the CBC Group.

Shaken but not stirred, the band- and the wider Saigon counterculture-were undeterred.

â??In Vietnam today, there is a war and we must expect controls,â?? Linh told Grunt Free Press in 1970. â??But I hope when it is over, we can be as free as young people everywhere. I hope that one day, we can have a Woodstock in Saigon, maybe in the Zoo, with some rock groups from America and England playing together with us. It would be the greatest day in Saigon- for our young people and your young G.Is.â??

â??Yeah, man,â?? interjected a U.S soldier. â??Like, they ought to give Bob Hope and Billy Graham a year off and send us the Doors or the Jefferson Airplane or the Mamas and Papas.â??

The August 1969 Woodstock Festival was certainly a powerful and omniscient symbol. Bordering on sacred within the international counterculture, it had already become an event of mythic status, a legend in its own time, a viable case study for the alternative society that the counterculture aspired to.It is hardly surprising that the CBC Band, born amidst one of the twentieth centuryâ??s most violent conflicts, looked expectantly at the formula perfected by this peaceful three-day long Aquarian exposition. Joni Mitchellâ??s oft-covered tribute to the festival had, after all, featured the prescient and tantalising imagery of bombers turning into butterflies in the sky, all thanks to the love power generated by a gathering of kindred tribes.

On May 29th, 1971, only one month after the bombing in Tu Do street, Woodstock came to Saigon Zoo.

As was by now the norm within the Vietnamese counterculture, the Saigon International Rock Festival held at the cityâ??s zoo was riddled with idiosyncrasy and paradox. For a start, proceedings were organised, sponsored and promoted by some of the most pro-war echelons of South Vietnamese society. Dieu Hau, a weekly magazine staffed predominantly by ARVN officers, was particularly outspoken in their support of the festival, and proceeds were to be donated to the South Vietnamese Army. The first of a several such concerts eventually held at the Saigon Zoo, the festival was, unfortunately, set to fuel the war that the CBC Band so earnestly wanted to end.