At one show on their Cambodian tour last year, South Bay all-girl rock band the Like Me’s played for over 5,000 people. This was less than two years after their first show ever—at Iguanas Taqueria in San Jose. Their bass player, Helena Hong, had only just started playing the bass four days earlier.
The band, who headline the “Gals Rock” show at X Bar on Saturday, has never confined their music to any one genre. They play rock, funk, R & B, folk, reggae, or whatever else they feel like, but in the beginning all their songs were confined to English. Then they started thinking of ways they could better represent their cultures (two of them are Cambodian and two are Filipino). They made some videos in Khmer, the common language in Cambodia, and those went viral.
“We got contacted by this one woman who invited us to play in front of the Angkor Wat Temple Complex because of those videos. To us it was like, we have to make this happen. When will we ever be invited to play in front of this sacred temple again?” Hong says.
This was not a typical rock concert by any means. Angkor Wat was constructed in the 12th century and has been a place of religious significance for the Khmer people ever since. The show was a two-day event, called “a tribute to the masters.” The other performers at the event were master violinists, trombonists, cello players and even an old woman that performed an ancient dance. The Like Me’s were the only group anywhere near the realm of rock music.
“It was an honor because they were saying we were masters of our music,” Hong says.
.The Like Me's Go Viral, Headline 'Gals Rock'
