A Beijing-based music and gig review blog

I have to apol­o­gize for not get­ting this review out there ear­lier, and for the fact that this is going to be very trun­cated, but here we are now. I have to say that Music Fun­hill was a very inter­est­ing music fes­ti­val to be at, in a meta sort of way. Look­ing at it as part of a hand­ful of music fes­ti­vals I have been to, it had good points and draw­backs that were dif­fer­ent from the oth­ers I’ve been to, which all amounted to an expe­ri­ence that felt… well, more inter­est­ing than any­thing else.

First of all, let me go through the music I saw there. Because I couldn’t miss work on the Tues­day to get out for SuperVC (believe me, I was totally gut­ted), I picked the Wednes­day to head out with a friend. Because of sched­ul­ing hic­cups or some­thing, we missed the first two acts that I wanted to see, Spar­row and Steely Heart. So the first act up was The Life Jour­ney, who did not dis­ap­point. They played a lovely set, though I do recall that it was full of a lot of their slower songs which made the whole thing… drag a lit­tle, espe­cially to some­one like me who has seen them many times before.

Next band we saw was Perdel. This was my first time see­ing Perdel, and they were a rev­e­la­tion. I’d heard their name bandied about before, but never really gone out of my way to lis­ten to their tracks or see them per­form — the one chance I had, at Straw­berry ear­lier this year, was foiled by ticket sna­fus. I was greatly impressed by them, though. I really liked their music, liked the lead singer’s voice, and imme­di­ately couldn’t wait to see them again at Mod­ern Sky Festival.

After that was Free The Birds, which my friend and I watched from the food stalls, fairly far away from the stage but still within hear­ing dis­tance. They were quite good, putting on an ener­getic and enthu­si­as­tic show that we could feel and appre­ci­ate from a great distance.

We stuck around for Hang on the Box, too, but they weren’t as amaz­ing as we’d hoped. They were punky chicks, that’s for sure, but there was some­thing whiny and annoy­ing to the lead vocalist’s voice, and the rest of the band just sort of looked bored. I was inter­ested to know how immensely cold the lead singer was, though, wear­ing a mini skirt in the freez­ing night.

How­ever, the high­light of the show is unfor­tu­nately an act that I have not been able to track down. They were a lit­tle folk act that played on the Daisy Stage, which never got a lineup released before the fes­ti­val started. It was the band in the photo above — an adorable two-piece folk out­fit. The girl’s name was An, but I’ve for­got­ten the guy’s name. They were incred­i­ble and I’d really love to hear more of them, but with­out any infor­ma­tion on them I fear it’s going to be a wild goose chase. If any­one knows, from the photo and descrip­tion, please let me know!

And that’s all I really have to say about the bands. What I appre­ci­ated about this fes­ti­val, and what was really inter­est­ing to me, was the whole orga­ni­za­tion of it. The buses from the city (just east of Guo Mao sta­tion) ran smoothly and eas­ily. I prob­a­bly waited for half an hour to leave, which passed fairly well talk­ing to a friend. The bus ride was another half an hour or so, which wasn’t too bad once we got out of the city — it was inter­est­ing to see a new side of Bei­jing as we drove away from it. Then, while it took a lit­tle ask­ing where to buy the tick­ets (because we appar­ently couldn’t see the GIANT signs in front of our faces), but there were so many staff around every­where that it was easy to ask. We got our tick­ets, went inside, and most of the time was spent wan­der­ing around.

Who knows what hap­pened to the sched­ul­ing of the first two bands, and I will admit that the fact that they were a bit off the whole day con­tributed to my leav­ing the place early, but hon­estly it didn’t really mat­ter. Wan­der­ing the grounds was fun in and of itself, see­ing the local peo­ple peer­ing over the walls, tak­ing pho­tos with the var­i­ous peo­ple employed to dress up as Dis­ney char­ac­ters or renais­sance mas­quer­ade ball-goers, and just breath­ing in the fresh air.

A final men­tion should go to the food stalls. There was your reg­u­lar giant chuanr and noo­dles, but there were a few great inclu­sions at Music Fun­hill that I loved — Korean fat noo­dles, quail egg chuanr, and some much-appreciated warm drinks. It was all highly enjoyed at din­ner time, espe­cially on such a cold evening.

Over­all, the main impres­sions I came away with were: well-organized, highly (over-?) staffed, but almost… what’s the point? They started the fes­ti­val on a day every­one still had school and work (and it rained), and for the rest of the time they seemed like they were mak­ing up time and spent energy. Still, I enjoyed the few bands I saw (and the frus­tra­tion of find­ing one but not know­ing their name!) and had a nice time in a big empty field away from the pol­lu­tion of the city.