Enti­tled some­thing along the lines of “I’ve Come To Loosen Your Morals”, this was a highly-anticipated gig for yours truly. Not only did it have two acts I had already seen and fallen in love with (Fly­ing Mid­night and Steely Heart) but two acts that I’d heard a lot about and have wanted to check out for a while (Hedge­hog and Casino Demon). So, with the lineup a big draw card for the night, and a full belly, I headed to Mao Live for the first time in a while.

When I got there, the crowd was already pump­ing with adren­a­line, as I had missed the first band of the evening — the me guan me’s (me灌me) — which, from the looks on everyone’s faces, was unfor­tu­nate. I’ll have to catch them next time around. First after them was Steely Heart (钢铁的心), who I’d seen ear­lier at Dos Kole­gas ear­lier this month, and they did not dis­ap­point. At the pre­vi­ous gig, I remem­ber feel­ing a touch of déjà-vu when it came to these guys, but this time the songs were famil­iar and easy to con­nect with. The crowd was into it from the word ‘go’, and Steely Heart has an energy to be reck­oned with. They belted out some of their faster songs to begin with, and the crowd was in there, get­ting a mosh pit going. The thing I like best about this band, though, is that they come to the stage as adver­tised. If you’ve lis­tened to the songs posted on their Douban, you’ll have heard almost what it’s like to see them live. They’ve got bet­ter energy and more fire behind a per­for­mance, but their recorded tracks won’t make you yawn and feel like never see­ing them live. With the excep­tion, per­haps, of their track “For­ever Young”, which is much bet­ter live. It reminds me a lit­tle of a slow Fratel­lis song; not any song in par­tic­u­lar, but it was the slow Fratel­lis sound with a Chi­nese accent. For their last song they played an upbeat num­ber with an adorable synth-infused bridge that really got the crowd going. There was a conga line and everything.

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I don’t know how I for­got to men­tion this in my write-up of the Ben Sher­man in-store but after all the crazi­ness of Zhen Yang wad­ing through the throngs of fan­girls, they all went off stage, but Sun Ling Sheng came back for an adorable encore. It was him, a ukulele, and some of the most adorable ren­di­tion of the 1924 song “I’ll See You In My Dreams”. Here’s a video from Youku (not mine)

Where: Yugong Yis­han
When: Thu 19 Nov, 9PM
How Much: 50RMB
Who: Mosaic, Mr. Che­lon­ian, The Trou­ble, 2Guns (More Info)
Why: This gig is enti­tled “Chengdu Rocks Again” (成都摇滚再出发), part of a tour of some of Chengdu’s best indie rock­ers — or so says the event orga­niz­ers. With 2Guns the folk rock­ers, The Trou­ble (ska), Mosaic (indie pop/dance rock), and Mr. Che­lon­ian (rock punk reg­gae ska vin­tage, what­ever that means), every­one will get their fix of gen­res. And I think it’s always a good idea to get your head out of Bei­jing and see what sounds are com­ing out of the rest of the country.

And that’s my pick! Runners-up for this week is indie-pop night at D-22 on Thurs­day, fea­tur­ing a for­eign band that sings in Chi­nese, DH & Chi­nese Hell­cats at Dos Kole­gas on Fri­day, and of course col­lege electro-popper Owl City at Yugong Yis­han on Saturday.

So despite Sat­ur­day night being the cold­est night I’ve expe­ri­enced in Bei­jing yet, hav­ing had a fever + cold ear­lier in the week, and every other com­mon sense instinct in my mem­ory banks, I still rugged up and braved the cold win­ter weather and took the epic pil­grim­age out to that mecca of Bei­jing rock, D-22. I have to insert here just how much I love D-22: not only is it a very cute venue, with a great upstairs area and a cozy, famil­iar, friendly feel­ing down­stairs, but it’s got some great staff and I just love the phi­los­o­phy of the whole place. It’s owned by an Amer­i­can who is will­ing and able to bleed money every day from the venue just in the name of pro­mot­ing Chi­nese indie bands, which is some­thing that every bur­geon­ing music scene needs. It’s also given birth to Maybe Mars, the record label that hosts some of the best and bright­est on the scene. So I always love patron­iz­ing D-22, even if it is a hike out there.

The gig started at about 10 (even though it was listed to start at 9, as every other gig at D-22), with Metoo (迷途, which means “to go astray”). I had no expec­ta­tions of them, not hav­ing checked out their music before­hand, and they were a very wel­come sur­prise. With a solid beat behind them and some pretty iden­ti­fi­able rock sen­si­bil­i­ties, they put out a sound that was famil­iar with­out being bor­ing. They were a pretty together band, despite their rag-tag look, and the new addi­tions of the key­boardist and bassist (since the spring, accord­ing to their MySpace) def­i­nitely rounded out their sound. Occa­sion­ally, they mean­dered into the exper­i­men­tal side of rock, but for the most part it was rock — sim­ple and enjoy­able. I also enjoyed the fact that the band hung out for the rest of the night, talk­ing with inter­ested crowd mem­bers and lis­ten­ing to the next bands.

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As hap­pens with most gigs at Dos Kole­gas, the crowd at this gig was often­times far more enter­tain­ing than the artists. The gig was intended to cel­e­brate the birth­day of the inim­itable owner of Dos Kole­gas, but the party was overblown with the addi­tion of five other birth­days. With the crowd already in high spir­its by the time ten o’clock rolled around, the gig started.

The gig opened with the new­comer punk band Sum­mer Sun­shine, who sounded as though they had just stepped out of the garage and onto the stage. Look­ing at their per­for­mance his­tory, they’ve only been hit­ting venues for the last cou­ple of months, and with only a cou­ple of per­for­mances under their belts it’s no sur­prise that they still sound a lit­tle raw. How­ever, their music showed con­sid­er­able promise — a lit­tle Ashura-lite, with some faint metal sounds in the bass line — and they sound like the sort of band that could def­i­nitely grow to become some­thing bet­ter. They were endear­ingly unfa­mil­iar with the stage setup, play­ing with the sound equip­ment between almost every song. They had a short set — no more than four or five songs, I’d say — until a band who wasn’t on the lineup took the stage.

I’ve got no idea who the sec­ond band to play was, because they didn’t intro­duce them­selves the entire time and the only thing I’ve got to work off of is that they played a punk rock ver­sion of a folk song from a place that sounded like “Qian­hai”, but the lead singer mum­bled and it was dif­fi­cult to tell what he was say­ing. The lead singer/guitarist was quite tal­ented, pulling off some stun­ning solos, and his voice sounded like unprac­ticed Mon­go­lian throat singing — my lar­ynx was hurt­ing for him after the set. Oth­er­wise, the music was quite good — if not what I usu­ally lis­ten to. The beats were heavy and the sound a bit more noisy than I usu­ally like, but it made for a rich sound and some nice, long jams. It’s too bad I didn’t catch the name of the band, else I would have checked out their recorded stuff.

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