I know, I know… I’ll stop harp­ing on about this soon. But if you didn’t catch me on the radio talk­ing about my web­site, here it is embed­ded. Think of it as for pos­ter­ity, not van­ity. Oh, and if you ever see me at a gig, feel more than free to come over and say hi! I don’t bite, and I promise not to make you buy me a drink.

Where: Mao Live­house
When: Sat 27 Nov, 21:00PM
How Much: 80RMB; 60RMB pre-sale
Who: Reflec­tor (More Info)
Why: I have only seen Reflec­tor once, at this year’s Straw­berry Fes­ti­val, but at that time I was incred­i­bly impressed. Not only by their music, which I guess you could describe as punk rock, but they are def­i­nitely heav­ier on the ‘rock’ side of the spec­trum than on the ‘punk’. They were ener­getic and engag­ing and I hope to see the same per­for­mance on a smaller stage at Mao Live­house. I didn’t see another name on the lineup, but I can’t really fathom a gig start­ing at 9PM and not hav­ing an open­ing act.

This week’s run­ners up are: Dalian band Doc Talk Shock are hit­ting D-22, Sat @ 10PM, 40/30RMB; Burn­ing the Chi­nese Flame punk rock gig at Mao Live­house, Fri @ 8:30PM, 60/50RMB; and finally, another Made in Ningxia night at Dos Kole­gas, Fri @ 10PM, 40/30RMB.

I described this gig to my friend before going as an “ambi­ent rock” night, and I think on most counts I was cor­rect. I will admit, we didn’t get there in time to see The Fly­ing Man­tas (if they did indeed play, they cer­tainly got it over with quickly, as I didn’t get there that much later than the start­ing time), so I’m not sure of the over­all effect, but I came away from the gig feel­ing as though I’d lis­tened to some great, if a lit­tle soporific at times, loud ver­sions of quiet rock.

The first band we saw was Me Too, who have been hit­ting the stage most often with bands like Lazy Camels and Candy Mon­ster — both solid rock acts. Me Too are no dif­fer­ent — a solid act, if a lit­tle dis­tant in their per­for­mance of their brand of rock — but often they sounded more like the house music had been turned up really loud, rather than being a live band. I did like a cou­ple of tracks of theirs — Exist (存在) and Present (礼物) were espe­cially enjoy­able — but on the whole it was a very low-energy per­for­mance, and not exactly what I had expected.

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Before I get into dis­cussing the music of the evening, I would like to start with a gen­eral ques­tion that came to me over the week­end: since when did so many for­eign­ers go to D-22? The last time I was there was for an Aus­tralian band who had been pro­moted through the Embassy and around lots of Aussie cir­cles, so it didn’t sur­prise me then. And even dur­ing this gig, it was clear that a large major­ity of the for­eign­ers in the crowd were a party-going con­tin­gent Peking Uni­ver­sity; and I guess, on Sat­ur­day, the head­lin­ers were two for­eign­ers from Shang­hai and a Chi­nese girl. Still, it felt very strange to see so many for­eign faces in the crowd. I’m glad to see it, don’t get me wrong — intro­duc­ing Chi­nese bands to for­eign­ers is a favorite pas­time of mine — but it still threw me off.

Any­how, that’s not what tonight was all about.

Owing to an early din­ner and a leisurely stroll from Ren­min all the way to D-22, I arrived in enough time to catch a size­able amount of the first act’s set. Old Fash­ion were a pretty solid act, inter­rupted only by the afore­men­tioned PekingU crowd who were clearly friends with the adorable lead singer. It made for some amus­ing bilin­gual acro­bat­ics between songs, but really the songs were much stronger than the antics sur­round­ing them. They reminded me of a rock­ier, less pol­ished ver­sion of Queen Sea Big Shark, but then– most any band with a spunky female vocal­ist with crazy hair and inter­est­ing fash­ion sense seems to have the same effect.

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Where: Bye Bye Disco Bar
When: Sat 20 Nov, 21:00PM
How Much: 25RMB
Who: The Life Jour­ney (More Info)
Why: Those of you who have been with this newslet­ter for any period of time this year should know that I will always pick a Life Jour­ney gig for pick of the week. Yes, it’s biased, but I can­not rec­om­mend them enough. I wrote up their self-titled album on my blog last year and I think it gives you a pretty good overview of what their music is like. They’re a fun band who always look like they’re hav­ing fun on stage, and their music is indie pop at its best. But the real rea­son for rec­om­mend­ing this gig in par­tic­u­lar is that it’s highly likely that it’s the last acoustic gig that will be played at Bye Bye Disco Bar. If, like me, you have never been, it’s a court­yard bar just off Nan­lu­ogux­i­ang, affil­i­ated with the trendy Bye Bye Disco bou­tique which is actu­ally on NLGX. I rec­om­mend head­ing out early, not only because space will likely be lim­ited, but also because who knows where Sha­jing Hutong is actu­ally located… (I lie, there’s a map at my web­site, but good luck navigating!)

Run­ners up for this week are: King Kong’s 5th Anniver­sary, for all the hard rock & metal heads out there, Mao Live­house, Sat @ 8:30PM, 60/50RMB; Zoomin’ Night CD Launch nights — Fri­day & Sat­ur­day at D-22, 10PM, 40/30RMB; and check out the fresh faces at Cam­pus Rock Night at Mao Live­house, Fri @ 8PM, 50RMB.