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S TA N L E Y • FA I R F I E L D • S H O S H O N E • P I C A B O
Student Spotlight
Sun Valley Film Festival
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READ ABOUT IT ON PAGE 8-9
Silver Turns; Skiing Into The Golden Age PAGE 15
M a rc h 1 9 , 2 0 1 4 • Vo l . 7 • N o . 1 3 • T h e We e k l y S u n . c o m
Scars On 45 Plays Sun Valley Brewery
from Vietnam with love
BY KAREN BOSSICK
T
hey are an English indie rock band who rose from obscurity when their song “Beauty’s Running Wild” was featured in an episode of “CSI: New York.” More recently, their single, “Heart on Fire,” was selected as the lead song for ABC’s hospital drama, “Grey’s Anatomy.” Now Scars on 45 will be rocking out at the Sun Valley Brewery in Hailey at 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 25. Advance tickets are $10; they’re $15 the day of the show. “They’re quite an accomplished band,” said Sean Flynn, who books the music for the Brewery. “They have had their songs on several TV series including “The Tonight Show,” as well as several times on VH1 Morning Buzz and MTV’s new artist’s feature. They were also signed by Atlantic Records’ Chop Shop Records.” The band was started by lead singer Danny Bemrose who learned to play his father’s guitar after a broken foot ended his professional football career as a striker for the Huddersfield Town F.C. “I had been playing football so long I was completely lost without it. I taught Stuart Nichols, who played on an opposing team, how to play bass and we recorded on a computer before bringing together the rest of the band. The first gig we spent the whole time with our backs to the audience we were so nervous,” Bemrose recalled. The band took its name from an Emmylou Harris interview lead singer Bemrose heard, in which Harris talked about scratching her Dad’s records and being scolded for getting “scars on his 45s.” It was one of the few names they considered that band members didn’t readily dismiss; hence, it stuck. The five-member band’s single “Give Me Something” from their first EP was recognized as one of the Top 3 Singles of the Year by Amazon.com in 2011. The quintet was also named to “Entertainment Weekly’s “Must List” that year. The group’s first fulllength studio album, “Scars on 45,” was selected as No. 7 out of 50 Best Albums of 2012 by Amazon.com. Their music has also been featured on such TV shows as “One Tree Hill,” “Pretty Little Liars” and “Supernatural.” tws
Cuc Ho garnishes one of his stir-fry dishes.
Cuc Ho got bigger woks this year—the better to serve up Asian food by.
BY KAREN BOSSICK
C
uc Ho is a familiar face behind the flame and smoke emanating from the round-bottom woks at River Run Lodge. Treating Sun Valley residents and visitors to authentic Asian fare has been his life for 30 years, as he plops hands full of white noodles into the wok, stir-frying shrimp in a tiny bit of oil. Every once in awhile, he casts a sly grin, creating a little drama as the flame shoots up almost to the ceiling. Just for good measure, he tosses the concoction in the wok up in the air before catching it smack dab in the middle of the pan’s gently sloping sides. “Very good!” diner Jesse Burke gives him a thumbs up. “He really puts on a show for you.” The beauty of the ski lodge with its chandeliers and giant picture windows looking out onto Sun Valley’s storied ski runs are far removed from the life the 5-foot-1, 100-pound Cuc Ho once knew. Born in Da Nang, Vietnam, Ho was
among the Vietnamese boat people—refugees who fled Vietnam with the fall of Saigon to the North Vietnamese Army in 1975. “After the country split in half, the Viet Cong came in and gave every family a dollar to survive. Me and my brother— we go to Hong Kong, then the Philippines. And finally we come to America where I meet a wife and get married and we have three babies,” Ho says. Of course, it wasn’t as simple as all that. About 800,000 Vietnamese refugees fled Vietnam by boat—most of them in the mass exodus in 1978 and 1979 spurred by increasingly repressive and retributive policies. Many of the refugees failed to survive their journeys, which were fraught with pirates, overcrowded fishing boats and mishaps. “We sail on the water. We sleep on the water. We get lost. We hungry. We thought that we were going to die,” Ho says, recalling his journey with a hundred fellow Vietnamese in his somewhat limited English. “Fourteen days from Vietnam to
China. No food. No water. Only crackers. Our lips were cracked from sitting in the sun. Everybody say we gonna die. Then a storm come and people use their clothes to trap drinking water,” he adds. Eventually, the boat landed in China. But the boat people were met with bandits with machine guns and angry Chinese who told them, “Get the f--- out of our town!” Reluctantly, Ho and his fellow refugees crowded back into the boat. This time they were not as fortunate as a storm came in, dashing the boats against some rocks. The boat started filling with water and suddenly it splintered. “Everyone was in the water. We hang onto pieces of the boat,” Ho recalls. “Seventy-five people died.” Ho and his brother were among the lucky few who made it to Hong Kong. Ho lived in a refugee camp there for two years where he learned to cook for the camp. He then was relocated to Malaysia.
CONTINUED ON PAGE 15
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