If I didn’t already think that the JUE fes­ti­val was a great idea, this gig bring­ing one of Shanghai’s best bands to the cap­i­tal sealed the deal. It’s not often that Bei­jing and Shang­hai coop­er­ate and let their tal­ent cross the other city’s bor­ders, but that’s part of what makes JUE such a great con­cept. Shang­hai has a lot of tal­ent to offer, and if this gig was any­thing to go by, it makes me want to head to the Paris of the East for a week­end just to check out their under­ground scene.

But I’m get­ting ahead of myself.

I missed the first act, Bei­jing group King Statue (国王之像), but by all accounts they were a lit­tle rough around the edges, but worth check­ing out another time. The first band I saw were the very catchy Arrows Made of Desire (欲望之箭). With what can I only assume is an Eng­lish native speaker on vocals (though his Chi­nese was fan­tas­tic) and two Chi­nese guys keep­ing hold of the beat on bass and drums, it’s really obvi­ous that this group has come from a West­ern per­spec­tive. There’s just some­thing about the music that’s dif­fer­ent from a Chi­nese group, and I could the­o­rize about how the legacy of rock music some­how gets implanted in the West­ern psy­che from child­hood, but this isn’t a blog about psy­chol­ogy. All I know is that there’s some­thing dif­fer­ent about bands with for­eign­ers in them, and Arrows Made of Desire is an exam­ple of that. The vocal­ist seemed to be chan­nel­ing a bit of Pearl Jam in his appear­ance, but the music was one of every­thing — there were songs with traces of blues and jazz, and every song was a dif­fer­ent type of rock. I didn’t catch their whole set, but I’d def­i­nitely check them out again.

The venue didn’t seem very packed, for such a big group, but more peo­ple came stream­ing through the doors as soon as Mush­room started. While it wasn’t the most crowded I’ve ever seen Mao Live­house, it was obvi­ous that not every­one was stuck so firmly in Beijing’s scene that they didn’t know about Shang­hai bands at all.

Now, I hadn’t lis­tened to very much of Mush­room before going to the gig, but I had heard about their live acts. The per­son I spoke to about them said that the lead singer Pupu (仆仆) scared her, and it was def­i­nitely some­thing I thought about going into the gig. Now, I wasn’t scared, but I can see how you could be. He’s a pas­sion­ate singer, ener­getic and there’s def­i­nitely some­thing raw and mas­cu­line about him. But while he thrashes around on stage, only show­ing the whites of his eyes, strain­ing his neck and veins pop­ping up, it doesn’t feel vio­lent at all. Also, the way he spoke so humbly and qui­etly between songs tem­pered any vio­lent feeling.

Aside from work­ing out if I was scared of Pupu, I really loved the band. Pupu is, of course, a big part of what makes their act amaz­ing, but they work impec­ca­bly as a team. They def­i­nitely sounded like they’d been work­ing together for the five years they’ve been around, offer­ing up a tight set with lots of changes in mood. They’re loud, and Pupu seems to be yelling most of the time, but it’s not the sort of metal that drowns lyrics with scream­ing and hides melodies with a thump­ing bass. These guys make songs that feel like some­thing that comes from the heart, and you can hear the sub­tleties in the vocals as well as the melody through the instru­ments. They’ve got their act together, and it’s a great act.

What I enjoyed the most, prob­a­bly, was their last song. After announc­ing their “last song” three times, they wrapped up the set with an orig­i­nal song that lifted the cho­rus from “What’s Going On?” by the Four Non-Blondes and turned it into a sing-along with the crowd. I don’t know about the Chi­nese gig-goers, but that song was part of my child­hood, so it was really nice to hear it appro­pri­ated in such a seem­ingly ran­dom place. The crowd involve­ment was beau­ti­ful, and Pupu seemed to get a real kick out of it.

I’m offi­cially jeal­ous of Shang­hai. Mush­room impressed me a lot, and it would be great if I could see them more often. Fin­gers crossed they make it back up to the cap­i­tal some time soon.