Radical rock band No Longer Music plan a tour of Vietnam

THE AMERICAN leader of a TV-featured Christian rock group is organising an historic concert tour of Vietnam next year. David Pierce's No Longer Music are due to play a series of concerts during a two-week 'Friendship Tour' - one of the first appearances by Westerners - in March 1994. They plan for profits from their performances to go towards helping some of the many abandoned children to be found on the streets of the big cities.

Combining alternative rock with stage effects, the international, Amsterdam-based band have played in over a dozen countries in the past few years.

Part of the Steiger International group, a ministry of Youth With A Mission, No Longer Music's Vietnam itinerary is due to include concerts in Hanoi, Saigon, Banang and other parts of the country. The visit is being made at the official invitation of the Vietnamese authorities, after Pierce visited the country last year to ask if he could bring his group.

"We want to go and show that we are all from different nations but we can be friends, that we can work together. Vietnam is showing greater openness to the West, and we want to respond to that," Pierce said. "We are not going there to make any political statement, but as an American I am pleased that I can be going to make friends, unlike in the past when our two countries met as enemies."