Talented Kings Do It Their Way: Vietnamese Flamenco

When consultants for Westminster Mall’s recent Asian Festival asked what talent they should seek to play from the Vietnamese community, they were told at every turn: the Kings. You’ve got to have the Kings.

The Kings play Spanish music with an Asian twist, and these four young Vietnamese men know that can be a tough sell to mainstream radio deejays.

I listened to their first album, due out soon, at the Garden Grove home of Simon LeVan, 23, the group’s leader. It was easy to see why their Orange County fans consider them so talented. The instrumental album is called “My Way,” taken from the Paul Anka classic. All but the title song were written by LeVan. Their flamenco rendition of “My Way” is probably like no version Anka’s ever heard. But I’m guessing he’ll love it if he ever does hear it.

The other Kings are 25-year-old twin brothers An Lan (rhythm guitar) and Loi Lan (percussion) and their brother, Can Lan, 26 (lead guitar). By day they operate their own hair salon in Little Saigon.

They recorded the album in LeVan’s home, in an amazingly complete soundproof recording studio, with the latest in engineering equipment. The three Lan brothers proudly point out that LeVan built the entire studio himself.

Their audiences at first were mostly Vietnamese Americans. But now it’s a mix, with a sizable Latino following.

“Flamenco music isn’t that much different from Vietnamese music,” says LeVan. “Both have great feeling in the melody.”

The three brothers met LeVan in 1988, at the Vietnamese United Methodist Church in Fountain Valley. The four have played together since. They are keenly aware that some Vietnamese their age have chosen other options, some even gang life. Can Lan is convinced one problem for these young people is a lack of musical identity.

“They don’t really have their own music,” he says. “The Vietnamese music is really the music of their parents. What we hope to do is to combine the best of that music with a modern sound.”

Namedrops: The New York Times once described k.d. lang as “the type of politically radical vegetarian lesbian defender of wildlife you’d want to take home to your mother.” The Canadian country singer is such a hit in concert that it’s become common practice for women in her audiences to throw their underwear onto the stage in lieu of “Bravo! Bravo!”

She’s singing at the Orange County Performing Arts Center on Friday night, which is certainly a change of pace for that venue. Its patrons are used to the likes of Baryshnikov, Yo-Yo Ma and Leontyne Price.

I have a hard time picturing patriarch Henry Segerstrom sitting there watching as a pair of pink panties fly over his head. But bravo to the center for expanding its horizons with a talent like lang. . . .

Hall of Fame comedian Steve Allen kept his audience laughing hard at a Round Table West luncheon at the Balboa Bay Club in Newport Beach two weeks ago. Typical Allen humor was a line he told to companions at his table:

“TV is so dominant, that when you’re not on it, people think you aren’t doing anything. I once was playing a three-man show with Louis Nye and Bill Dana [from his old Sunday night show.] Before those two came out, I’d answer questions from the audience, and one woman asked: ‘Is Louis Nye dead?’ I said: ‘Yes, he is dead. But when he comes out on stage, don’t tell him, because Louis doesn’t know it yet.’ ”

Allen is back Thursday night, this time at a Huntington Beach Friends of the Library dinner, at the library’s theater (tickets $18). He’s promoting the latest of the 46 books he’s written: “Murder on the Atlantic.” . . .

The Crazy Horse Steak House and Saloon was named “Country Night Club of the Year” on Monday by the Academy of Country Music. That’s its seventh such award, but first since 1992. The awards show will be April 24 at the Universal Amphitheatre. Next up at the Crazy Horse: Joe Diffie on April 15-16.

Defendant I: Conservative activist Oliver North is speaking Saturday afternoon at the Atrium Marquis Hotel in Irvine.

When I hear North’s name, I’m always reminded of him shredding documents just steps from the Oval Office, to keep both Congress and President Reagan’s own investigators from finding out in November 1986 that he and others were diverting Iranian arms sale millions to the Nicaragua Contras.

North’s shredder missed one, which Reagan’s inquiry team discovered. North’s reaction (from his own autobiography): “This was precisely the kind of document I had shredded. Or so I thought. . . . This was the secret within the secret that was never supposed to be revealed.”

I’ve always thought North had a future making license plates. But when he was convicted of three felonies--including the shredding count--he only got a suspended sentence. And then an appellate court overturned his conviction anyway.

Whether you love North, as many in Orange County do, or loathe what he stands for, as many others do, he’s going to be on the national scene for some time. His topic this weekend: affirmative action. (He’s against.)

Defendant II: Time apparently turns wounds a lighter shade. Chapman University, touting a May 15 speech by Michael Milken at its annual Economic Forum, calls him “One of the nation’s most influential, if not controversial, financiers. Milken is widely credited with having revolutionized the modern capital marketplace.”

No mention is made that a lot of this revolutionizing got him sent to the pokey. Milken served 22 months in prison, and paid $600 million in fines and restitution, in the largest scandal in Wall Street history.

Wrap-Up: The Kings hold their album’s coming-out party April 28, at the Majestic nightclub on Beach Boulevard in Huntington Beach. There’s a sentimental reason: It’s a club they played many times as they built a following.

Jerry Hicks’ column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Readers may reach Hicks by calling the Times Orange County Edition at (714) 966-7823 or sending a fax to (714) 966-7711.