A Beijing-based music and gig review blog

First of all, guys, Decem­ber is finally updated! For now. It took me long enough, and there’s a rea­son for that, which leads me to my sec­ond point.

I’ve men­tioned this on my newslet­ter, and will soon update the main website’s “About” page, but I thought I would put this on the blog for those of you who don’t know. I recently switched jobs, which wouldn’t be such a note­wor­thy deal if it wasn’t for the fact that I am the new Nightlife edi­tor at City Week­end here in Bei­jing. I’ve been at the mag­a­zine for three weeks now, and the issue on stands next week will be the first I have done entirely on my own.

For my audi­ence here, I want to reas­sure you that this will not change any­thing about my work at the Gig Guide. In fact, it can only help it. At CW, I hear about shows a lot ear­lier than I would just check­ing Douban spo­rad­i­cally, and I can be much more accu­rate with my infor­ma­tion on the Gig Guide (which is always a good thing). The down­side is, of course, that occa­sion­ally I will get so busy that I don’t update the Gig Guide in advance as I have been doing. As for this blog, they are two sides of the same coin. City Week­end is very much about keep­ing peo­ple up-to-date on what’s com­ing up, while this blog is largely about report­ing on shows I have been to, while also offer­ing the sort of niche news about releases and shows and the indus­try that isn’t as impor­tant to the read­ers of City Weekend.

So over­all, the pos­i­tives out­weigh the neg­a­tives for all involved, and you have my word that I won’t aban­don my Bei­jing Gig Guide and Blog because of my new posi­tion at City Week­end. After all, it got me the job in the first place.

One of the first names I learned in the Bei­jing music scene was New Pants — mostly because it made me won­der whether all Chi­nese bands had such odd names, but also because of their impact on the scene in gen­eral. While New Pants started out as a clear rip-off of The Ramones, they grad­u­ally added sythe­siz­ers and disco balls to their bored punk sound, and they came out sound­ing com­pletely unique. And though there was talk that they weren’t going to make it through releas­ing a remix album, they have very clearly shown that that was not the case. They’ve been quiet, and have been sit­ting on their newest album (released at the show, and came free with the more expen­sive tick­ets), but they’re com­ing back to the main­stream stronger than ever.

This show was not just an album launch, though. It was a show that took four months of prepa­ra­tion, a ret­ro­spec­tive that took plan­ning and time to put together, and it showed exactly what New Pants have been about since the begin­ning. From the moment they took the stage in their com­mu­nist leader attire (from the afore­men­tioned remix album Go East), they delved into each of their var­i­ous per­sonas with gusto, includ­ing back­ing videos, cos­tume changes, and spe­cial guests. The list of high­lights is long, but where else are you going to see a man hump a skele­ton in a wed­ding dress across the stage, or sing a song while clad only in a towel, or a long-haired rocker ride across the stage in a scooter? Only at a New Pants show.

Love them or hate them, New Pants offers some­thing that nobody else does. Their curi­ous electronica-fused punk rock is maybe not accom­pa­nied by the most biaozhun of singing voices, but like every good punk group, their lyrics and pas­sion more than make up for it. The whole crowd sang along with their most loved tracks — I Love You (我爱你) and I’m Ok were unsur­pris­ing par­tic­u­lar crowd-pleasers, and I even saw some for­eign­ers call­ing out for Bye Bye Disco. I’ve seen New Pants per­form at fes­ti­vals before, but with a crowd totally ded­i­cated to enjoy­ing their music, it was easy to see how many peo­ple really do love them.

Because this was an expen­sive show (180RMB was the cheap­est ticket, 580RMB the prici­est), it guar­an­teed that every­one there was there because they love New Pants. And for those up the front, it was worth the price to be close to the stage. Though the fact that the Bei­jing Exhi­bi­tion Cen­ter is a seated venue didn’t make it the most rock and roll show ever, the secu­rity couldn’t be both­ered keep­ing peo­ple from mov­ing fur­ther down to the front. There was still crowd surf­ing, and sneaky alco­holic bev­er­ages, and the acoustics of the venue made call­ing out to the band much eas­ier than at a fes­ti­val. Every­one had a good time, and though the show felt occa­sion­ally scripted, there were plenty of spon­ta­neous moments to remind every­one that New Pants is a gen­uine rock group.

The only thing that sucked about the evening was get­ting caught in the rain on the way home.

If you’re new to New Pants, check them out on Douban, but if you already love New Pants, but weren’t at the show, hit up this album sign­ing at the indie music store on the south-eastern end of Jiugu­lou Road next Sun­day after­noon at 3:30.

The won­der­ful thing about a show at Mako Live­house is that it ends in enough time to get to the venues that start late and end later — namely, Dos Kole­gas. By the time we’d snatched up a cab and got­ten to Liang­maqiao, we caught one song of Candy Monster’s set and were able to get some beers before the dou­ble head­lin­ers took the stage. Thank you, Dos Kolegas.

But let’s get right to it. Nova Heart is the name of the ever-prolific Helen Feng’s newest project. If you don’t already know her name, Helen Feng helped cre­ate Pet Con­spir­acy, and is cur­rently also involved in Free The Birds, who still haven’t decided if they’re called Ziyo or not. Some­where between her involve­ment in artist pro­mo­tions com­pany Fake Music Media, host­ing a Douban-hosted pod­cast based on her pop­u­lar radio show, and a myr­iad other respon­si­bil­i­ties, Nova Heart has burst onto the indie-electro scene with instant buzz. Being a fan of Free the Birds/Ziyo, I was excited to see Nova Heart and how it might be dif­fer­ent. Unfor­tu­nately, I couldn’t really tell the dif­fer­ence. It’s clear that Helen is the dri­ving force behind both groups, and there isn’t much of a clear dif­fer­ence in stance between the two. Nova Heart sounded to me like a more ener­getic Joy Divi­sion with female vocals, which was enter­tain­ing enough to get the crowd into it, but I would have liked to see some sort of dif­fer­ence — styl­is­tic or oth­er­wise — between this and FTB.

Finally, some time after mid­night, and after a deli­cious bowl of Ningxia noo­dles (worth every fen of the 20RMB they cost), Re-TROS took to the stage. I have doc­u­mented here my luke­warm feel­ings about Re-TROS, but to be fair I have only ever seen them at music fes­ti­vals. I say this in defence of the fact that I really enjoyed their set at Dos Kole­gas. I think the more inti­mate nature of the stage and venue made for a great per­for­mance — and one I could actu­ally see and feel involved with. This doesn’t mean I’m going to go out and buy their album, because I still find their music a lit­tle too monot­o­nous for con­stant lis­ten­ing, but I did enjoy them and I’ll be much more excited to see them if they keep play­ing smaller venues.

If you’ll allow me, I first have a bit of per­sonal his­tory to divulge. When I first moved to Syd­ney, I had just turned nine­teen and wasn’t much of a gig goer. I liked music, but hadn’t caught the gig bug. My first friend at Syd­ney Uni­ver­sity was a girl named Leah who was big into ska and reg­gae at the time, and so my first gig was in a sub­urb of the city I don’t even remem­ber, at a tiny lit­tle pub, and it was some sort of mini ska fes­ti­val. This was before there were smok­ing restric­tions (or before they were strictly enforced), so what I remem­ber is a smoky pub, cheap beer, and a bunch of peo­ple doing a funny dance I later learned to be called skank­ing to some great ska music.

Fast for­ward seven years and last night was almost exactly the same, apart from the for­get­table sub­urb part. Tem­ple Live­house is smack in the mid­dle of Gulou East Street, inside a com­plex I didn’t real­ize had become so built up over the last year (when I was there last, it was a tem­po­rary art gallery and largely empty). It hasn’t been open long, but already has the feel of a grungy live­house, with sticky tables and thick smoky atmos­phere and every­thing. The bar at the back is exten­sive, and while the stage is small, it seems to project a much big­ger feel. There are couches and long wooden tables with chairs, and it feels like the sort of space that is eas­ily both a music venue and a bar. The only thing I would say is that when a show is billed as a dance party like this one was, get rid of some of the tables.

But what really brought me back to my first gig in Syd­ney was the music and the danc­ing. Skarv­ing is a great party band, and they have rounded out an evening at Dos Kole­gas more times than I can offi­cially remem­ber. They got a large por­tion of the peo­ple off of the couches and out of their seats and onto the dance floor, which is an impres­sive feat in China. (You should have seen the stoic crowd dur­ing Buyi last week at Dos Kole­gas… it was bizarre.) They really have an infec­tious sound, and it’s nigh impos­si­ble to keep still while they’re play­ing. How­ever, as much as I love the band, and really liked the venue… some­times, a band is just bet­ter at a cer­tain venue, and Skarv­ing will always be a Dos Kole­gas band for me.

If you were around on the blogs in 2009, you might remem­ber Top Floor Cir­cus as being a con­tro­ver­sial band. They wrote a song called Shang­hai Doesn’t Wel­come You in their inim­itable par­o­dy­ing style dur­ing the run-up to the Expo, which promptly got their fol­low­ing shows can­celled, forc­ing them out into neigh­bor­ing Hangzhou for a lit­tle while. The scan­dal blew over, though, and the ironic folk-punk band has had time to regroup and come back stronger than ever. This is the first time I’ve ever seen their name pop up in Bei­jing, and despite the myr­iad amaz­ing things going on last night (oh, the many other gigs I could have been with), I made the com­mit­ment to see them because I knew it would be a once-in-a-Beijing-lifetime event. I was not disappointed.

To start off with, SUBS opened the show in full Hal­loween getup. Kang Mao was dressed as a mummy, which slowly got unrav­eled as she thrashed around the stage in her usual weird danc­ing rou­tine. I know I’ve spo­ken about SUBS before, and men­tioned how beau­ti­fully intense and spec­tac­u­larly per­for­ma­tive Kang Mao is, but it always bears repeat­ing. It’s a true tes­ta­ment to this band that despite the fact I really am not a fan of high-pitched squeal­ing or ear-splitting vol­ume or almost any other part of SUBS’ sound and act, I always really enjoy myself. Of course, I always wear my earplug because seri­ously, I’m not kid­ding about that ear-splitting thing. If you haven’t seen these guys yet, get a good pair of earplugs and catch them next time they perform.

Between the sets, and help­ing to assuage a rest­less crowd, VeryRock.net put on a (twenty minute) video of other musi­cians’ impres­sions of Top Floor Cir­cus — and the music scene in gen­eral. Every­one was there — from exper­i­men­tal folk artist Xiao He to jazz sax­o­phon­ist Li Tieqiao to punk vet­er­ans Misan­dao — and they all had good sto­ries to tell. There were par­tic­u­larly long seg­ments about the lead singer get­ting drunk and get­ting into fights, as well as his habit of tak­ing his pants off… Nev­er­the­less, it was a great video, and really helped to pass the time as the stage hands set up for the main event.

Now I didn’t know this before the show, but Top Floor Cir­cus sings almost exclu­sively in Shang­hainese. So for their pil­grim­age to Bei­jing, they brought along a pro­jec­tor and a charm­ingly DIY slideshow with the lyrics so that every­one could under­stand what was going on. I’ll admit, it was a lit­tle bit of a dis­trac­tion (for every­one, not just my inner lin­guis­tics nerd), but with a large part of Top Floor Cir­cus’ appeal being in their won­der­fully sar­donic and satir­i­cal lyrics, it was impor­tant to get the mes­sage across. They were all great songs, but par­tic­u­larly mem­o­rable were the fol­low­ing: an ode to “hailuo ayi” set to Knock­ing on Heaven’s Door, a KTV-style trib­ute to the Suzhou River, a song about monks accom­pa­nied by pic­tures of our robed friends at McDon­alds, and one of their few songs in Man­darin about the girls at pink-window “hair salons”. But really, the whole show was mem­o­rable, and I hope they make their way back to Bei­jing some­time soon.

And he really did take his pants off.