A Beijing-based music and gig review blog

Where: Yugong Yis­han
When: Sat 30 Jan, 9.00PM
How Much: 180RMB; 150RMB pre-sale
Who: Andrew Bird (More Info)
Why: While the con­cept of this newslet­ter is gen­er­ally to bring you ideas for the best place to go for a cheap, good gig with Chi­nese music, I couldn’t really pass this one up. There are some great for­eign bands that come through Bei­jing, but they’re usu­ally either too small to have heard about (see: Great Lake Swim­mers), or too big to afford (see: The Killers). But Andrew Bird is sub­limely between the two. While Y150 is still expen­sive for most, it’s well worth it — I would eas­ily pay more than that to see him in my home coun­try (and nearly did a cou­ple of years back). If you don’t know who Andrew Bird is, check out his MySpace for some stream­ing music. What this man can do with a vio­lin and the Eng­lish lan­guage… well, there’s a rea­son I’m dish­ing out Y150 to see him.

For some­thing a lit­tle more Chi­nese (and with a more Chi­nese price), I’d sug­gest D-22 on Fri­day night, with an 80s ret­ro­spec­tive gig with great bands like Candy Mon­ster & Steely Heart (40RMB).

Gig Review: Read it here

Before I get stuck into this gig review, I should men­tion yet again (I think this is the third time) this arti­cle at Neocha EDGE. It explains both Nancheng Brother and the tra­di­tion of crosstalk, which is a form of comedic per­for­mance that can be found all around China — most often for us for­eign­ers, as some strange fast-talking radio play that makes your taxi dri­ver split his sides and swerve on the road. This is what makes Nancheng Brother both inter­est­ing and valu­able as a group — the crosstalk. Sure, it’s slightly inac­ces­si­ble to the for­eign punter — even if you speak Chi­nese bet­ter than most, humor is by far the last fron­tier of lan­guage learn­ing — but it’s impor­tant that such a group exists. I can’t speak for Chi­nese peo­ple, but I would imag­ine that with­out groups like Nancheng Brother, crosstalk would grow old and stale (as it has done pre­vi­ously, in its long tra­di­tion), eas­ily being for­got­ten in a world of col­or­ful vari­ety show humor and rehashed West­ern rock and roll. By revamp­ing both tra­di­tional music and crosstalk, they’re bring­ing a tra­di­tion back into the vocab­u­lary of Chi­nese youth, which is an admirable and, in many ways, impor­tant thing to do.

All that said, the gig last night was great. Packed to the rafters with young Chi­nese peo­ple (not a taxi dri­ver to be seen), Jiangjin­jiu was alive. The show was billed as the band’s first unplugged show. (It wasn’t, really, of course; there were still mics and an elec­tric bass gui­tar, but points for try­ing.) It was meant to bring a sense of close­ness with the band, and I think that Jiangjin­jiu was the per­fect place for it. Not only is the venue small and inti­mate even on a quiet night, but it pos­i­tively thrums with life when it’s stuffed full of happy, tipsy pun­ters enjoy­ing some great music and bril­liant com­edy. It was well worth the 50RMB for stand­ing room only tick­ets, even if we had to stand by the door and watch over other people’s heads.

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Just shar­ing a few links, because I’ve got too many stored up and not enough time to go into any depth about most of them.

1. rock ‘n roll crosstalk & the revival of a uniquely chi­nese art form from Neocha EDGE
This is a great look at not only the fusion move­ment in mod­ern Chi­nese music, and the fan­tas­tic band Nancheng Brother, but also a brief his­tor­i­cal overview of one of China’s most inter­est­ing enter­tain­ment tra­di­tions — the crosstalk. If you’ve ever been in a taxi and heard a strange radio­play with two men talk­ing rapid-fire, and your taxi dri­ver starts to laugh, it’s most likely a cross-talk piece. The his­tory of that, and how Nancheng Brother winds it into their musi­cal reper­toire, makes for an inter­est­ing piece.

2. Anar­chy in the PRC from foreignpolicy.com
For­eign Pol­icy mag­a­zine is not where you’d look first for an arti­cle about Chi­nese punk music. But if you’re up for a refresher course, and ogling a few of Matthew Neiderhauser’s bril­liant D-22 shots, the cap­tions on these few pack a def­i­nite punch. It reminds you what it means to be liv­ing in a city with a real, liv­ing, and impor­tant punk scene.

3. sing for china: some reflec­tions from china music radar
An inter­est­ing look at last year’s Mod­ern Sky tour of the United States. The part I found most fas­ci­nat­ing was the fact that these groups — courted and touted by one of the largest Chi­nese indie music labels — never really had any expe­ri­ence trav­el­ling with their own equip­ment. In stark con­trast to every­thing I per­son­ally ever grew up know­ing about rock and roll — the story of the long road, the tour bus, the drag­ging equip­ment, com­plete with 1970’s haze à la Almost Famous — it seems that the Chi­nese groups were miss­ing an inte­gral part of their upbring­ing. But who can blame them?

4. queen sea big shark + con­verse = “let’s play” mv (heads up from Neocha EDGE)
Check out Queen Sea Big Shark’s new mv (music video) for their song “Let’s Play” here. The inter­est­ing thing about this video — and, indeed, the song — is that you expe­ri­ence it for the first time and it’s def­i­nitely got the marks of a QSBS song, and the style of the video is very them. How­ever, a large por­tion of the lyrics, ideas for the video, and even some extras in the video are crowd-sourced from Con­verse. Mak­ing this song, and this video, not just a prod­uct of QSBS, but some­thing much more indica­tive of their audience.

5. asia’s neglected music con­sumers from china music radar
This is a repost of a really inter­est­ing arti­cle from Typepad-blocked MIDEMNET about “Music Apartheid”, which describes the ostra­ciz­ing of the Asian music con­sumer mar­ket. Basi­cally, it talks about how legal online out­lets (like iTunes Music Store and Ama­zon MP3 down­loads) aren’t really help­ing bat­tle online piracy and offline boot­leg­ging of music by restrict­ing out­side (and largely Asian) pur­chas­ing of dig­i­tal music. It’s an inter­est­ing and in-depth read for any­one, even gen­er­ally con­cerned with DRM and new media policy.

Where: D –22
When: Fri 15 Jan, 10.00PM
How Much: 40RMB; 30RMB stu­dents
Who: Mir­ror, Cao­qin & Starry, Quan Tou, Sweet Rock, Xiao Meng (More Info)
Why: The only band on this lineup I have seen is Cao­qin. In fact, he was my first gig here in Bei­jing, at the Tiny Salt Cafe in the SOHO Chaowai com­plex. And if he’s any­thing to go by, the night should be filled with some bril­liant folk music. It’s dif­fer­ent from what you usu­ally get at D-22, but I have a feel­ing that it will be more than worth it. Xiao Meng is another big name in Bei­jing folk, also of Tiny Salt fame. The other groups are head-scratchers, though — Sweet Rock and Mir­ror err on the side of rock rather than folk, but since the gig is listed as acoustic, it should be inter­est­ing either way. Def­i­nitely worth the trek!

Of course, if you’re not ready to com­mit to the jour­ney out to Wudaokou, check out the run­ners up for some­thing closer to the city cen­ter: lively folk band Shan­ren, play­ing at Jianghu Bar, Fri @ 9.30, 30RMB; Play Rock! gig with Buyi, Casino Demon and more, Mao Live­house Sat @ 8.30, 40RMB; Amer­i­can indie folk group La Loupe, Jiangjin­jiu Sun @ 9.30m, Free.

A friend of mine has this super­sti­tion that what­ever you are doing, how­ever you are feel­ing as one year ticks over to the next, that is the way your com­ing year will be. I’m not sure I sub­scribe to it entirely (though, look­ing back on pre­vi­ous years, it’s been true on more than one occa­sion), but hope­fully this year it will stick for me. This year at mid­night, I was feel­ing slightly drunk on more Tsing Tao’s than I’d pre­fer to admit to, in between amaz­ing live music acts, chat­ting with my new best friends by the bar at Mao Live. If that is a pre­mo­ni­tion of what is to come for me in 2010, I can more than get behind that.

For me, choos­ing a New Year’s gig was a no-brainer. There were a few good line­ups out there, but Mao Live had three of my favorite Bei­jing bands in one place, and three oth­ers I’d only heard good things about. To say that the Y100 was worth it would be a gross under­state­ment; it con­tended for favorite gig of 2009, and only lost the title by a hair.

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