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.

Next up was Golden Dri­ver (金司机), who were sim­ply not my cup of tea. While they had an inter­est­ing sound, they were a lit­tle too fond of the extended jam, which can be a good thing but with all the feed­back and dis­tor­tion it just sounded a lit­tle con­fus­ing and unnec­es­sary. They did have a cou­ple of more sim­ple rock songs, which they busted out at the end of their set, but for the most part I wasn’t as impressed as I’d hoped I would be. They’re still a new band, though; they’ve yet to go through the inevitable lineup changes every Bei­jing band seems to have under their belt, so I do look for­ward to when they’ve edited down their sound a lit­tle and have a tighter act.

Finally, Gar took the stage just before mid­night, and they were well worth the wait. Just as I had imag­ined, their songs were even bet­ter live than recorded. The crowd really got into it, mosh­ing in the small­est pos­si­ble space ever, and were absolutely cap­tive for their more toe-tapping songs. They also played a few new songs, which were a lit­tle more on the mel­low side and didn’t invite any mosh­ing at all. They were a lit­tle more like their song 白 (White), which is entirely instru­men­tal, or per­haps 猴子D (Mon­key D) if it was a lit­tle qui­eter. I’m not sure if they’re slowly mov­ing away from their more dance­able num­bers, but the new songs they played def­i­nitely had a more sub­dued feel­ing to them. Per­haps it was just the shock of the new, and the con­fu­sion at not hear­ing some­thing famil­iar, but I didn’t like them as much as the songs I’d already got­ten used to. I was also let down that I didn’t hear my favorite song of theirs, 圈 (Cir­cle), and that they didn’t come back for an encore after much cheer­ing. How­ever, I’m not dis­ap­pointed about going, because what I did hear was a great, together band whose music is much loved.

Also, it really helped that the vocal­ist was much more attrac­tive than I thought he was going to be.

Check out my review of the Gar album here, and head to the Music page for a down­load. I’ll also be hop­ing to catch them again at Mao on Novem­ber 28 for one of the best line­ups I’ve seen so far. Who knows what sec­ond impres­sions they’ll make.