Gig Review: New Year Mania! @ Mao Live, 2009.12.31–2010.01.01
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.