A Beijing-based music and gig review blog

I’m always a lit­tle wary when it comes to see­ing a ben­e­fit con­cert. There seems to be a lot of hype around them with­out much sub­stance; the bands brought out are either too small to rec­og­nize or too large to be acces­si­ble for the aver­age punter but this show was dif­fer­ent. An effort by the Chi­nese Red Cross Foun­da­tion, this series of con­certs through­out Bei­jing were staged to raise money and aware­ness for chil­dren with con­gen­i­tal heart dis­ease. There was a show on Thurs­day at Star Live with Ashura and Caffe Latte, and one next Fri­day at Yugong Yis­han with JOMO, Gem­ini, and Gala. The event I chose to attend, how­ever, was the Fri­day night Star Live show with Future Bicy­cle and The Life Journey.

To start off with, the show had a pretty good turn-out. While the crowd wasn’t what you’d describe as “pumped”, they were all watch­ing and enjoy­ing the music in their own quiet way. There were barely any peo­ple drink­ing, hardly any smok­ing, and I’m pretty sure myself and my gig part­ners were the only for­eign­ers there. Whether that’s because I didn’t see this event adver­tised any­where on the reg­u­lar for­eigner chan­nels (except for the Bei­jing Gig Guide, of course), or because for­eign­ers were dis­cour­aged by the con­fus­ing “how much to donate” ques­tion (which was very sim­ple; Y50 was your base dona­tion but if you donated Y100 you got a set of signed post­cards by all the groups), I’m not entirely sure. Either way, it was inter­est­ing to be treated like a VIP, get­ting your photo taken as you came through the door and with your dona­tion card, just because you’re a for­eigner with her ear to the ground.

As per usual, though, I missed the begin­ning of the show. I’m sure the overly-enthusiastic MC of the event had an intro­duc­tion for Future Bicy­cle (未来脚踏车), but we missed it. Instead, we came in as the band was round­ing up what­ever energy they could in the placid crowd to join them in a cheer. I’m not sure what the cheer was — some­thing to do with the event, not the band them­selves — but they did have a hard time rous­ing everyone’s spir­its. Their set, how­ever, was great. The music itself was def­i­nitely on the side of Top 40 pop/rock, and it reminded me — not just vocally — of Bob Evans, an Aus­tralian singer-songwriter, and after lis­ten­ing to their songs on MySpace, I dare say they’d fit right into at least the Aus­tralian pop­u­lar music scene. Not only that, but the attempts at engag­ing the audi­ence and the enthu­si­asm of the band them­selves def­i­nitely ingra­ti­ated them. They had fun on stage, which is an infec­tious trait in a live per­for­mance, even­tu­ally bring­ing the audi­ence around to the idea of par­tic­i­pa­tion, and had peo­ple singing along to their cho­ruses and going “lalala” as much as they wanted.

Check out a video of their catchy tune “Kulalala” at tudou:

Between the two sets, there was an activ­ity with both bands to get the audi­ence a lit­tle more involved. They brought both bands up on stage and played a game, the sta­ple of any Chi­nese event. There were two teams of audi­ence mem­bers assigned to one of the two bands. With a rep­re­sen­ta­tive from each band stand­ing on one side of the stage, the team mem­bers would take turns in being blind­folded, turn­ing around in cir­cles, and try­ing to walk to their assigned band mem­ber to stick a paper heart on his chest. The hearts were a large part of the whole event — each musi­cian had a token one stuck to their clothes, and your dona­tion was called “爱心捐助”, or “affec­tion dona­tion”. After the heart-sticking event, there were door prizes — signed posters and the like.

After the activ­i­ties, it was time for The Life Journey’s set. And just as they were on New Years, they were ener­getic and excit­ing to watch. They have really good group dynam­ics on stage, and every­one seems to work together really well. Which seems a strange thing to note at a gig, but it’s impor­tant that groups have a good chem­istry on stage, and the more times you see a band, the more that chem­istry becomes appar­ent. Also, a lot of times at gigs, as a spec­ta­tor you tend to focus on the lead singer, but with The Life Jour­ney, there’s so much more going on in that group besides the pretty face in Yann. The key­boardist is an enthu­si­as­tic mem­ber of the group, and often watch­ing him sing along and dance in his chair is more enter­tain­ing than any­thing. He and the drum­mer get along really well, too, and it’s great to see them all riff­ing off each other. The band’s set, how­ever, was really sim­i­lar to the one they’d played at New Years, with a few more old favorites thrown in to please the crowd.

The crowd who was, amus­ingly, filled at the front rows with gig­gling and shriek­ing fan­girls. I’m not sure about other coun­tries, but in Aus­tralia you sure don’t get fan­girls of the gig­gling and shriek­ing vari­ety at pop/rock singer-songwriter gigs, even if they are signed to the biggest indie labels around.

All in all, a very enjoy­able, highly amus­ing evening. And because it started at 7.30, it was all over before the night had even started!