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.

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Boys and girls, I learned a les­son last Fri­day night. A few, actu­ally. Let me share them with you.

1. Appar­ently, not all music venues in Bei­jing start an hour after their listed time.

2. Star Live is one of those venues.

3. How­ever, Star Live ticket booth atten­dants have no qualms in tak­ing your Y100 for the night, 40 min­utes before the show is about to end.

So I rocked up to the venue just after ten, when open­ing acts are over at Mao and Dos Kole­gas hasn’t even woken up, only to find myself stuck watch­ing the encores. This was an expen­sive mis­take to make, my friends, made even worse by the sting of Y20 Tiger Beer.

How­ever, while I didn’t get to see The Life Jour­ney, who were the biggest draw card for me per­son­ally, I did get to see most of New Pants’ set. Well, it was sort of New Pants. Their sixth album, “GO EAST”, is actu­ally an album filled with remixes of their pre­vi­ous songs. After more than a decade in the busi­ness, New Pants deserves to have a Best Of album, and this one — from what I’ve heard, any­way — is a great way to mark the occa­sion. Get­ting fel­low musi­cians and pro­duc­ers to remix their songs, they’ve given a new spin to their old music, help­ing to pave the way for a new New Pants. Cel­e­brat­ing cul­tural exchange and the way China is slowly becom­ing rec­og­nized in music cir­cles across the globe, the MO of this event — and, indeed, their album and their direc­tion — is to help show­case the East’s ris­ing cul­tural rel­e­vancy both within Asia and overseas.

While I didn’t get to go for long enough to see any of this actu­ally dis­played, I enjoyed what I did see. Which I think, sadly, was just encores. By this point there was no dress­ing up, though the video screens at the back of the stage were still there, on a loop of Tian’an’men, Pyong Yang, the Bird’s Nest, in all their red and yel­low kitchy glory. What I did see, how­ever, was great. Their sound was bril­liant (the fact that Star Live is classy enough to start on time means they have sound engi­neers that are prob­a­bly qual­i­fied to run a sound board, unlike any­where else in this city), and their per­for­mance was tight. I espe­cially liked when they got their friends from other bands out to help with a song (Bye Bye Disco). Check out some great pho­tos of the gig over at the event’s Douban page.

And other than see­ing the direc­tor of the Live House doc­u­men­tary I saw the pre­vi­ous night at D-22, that was just about as excit­ing as my evening got for this par­tic­u­lar gig.

Next time, kids — remem­ber that Star Live starts on time.

Enti­tled some­thing along the lines of “I’ve Come To Loosen Your Morals”, this was a highly-anticipated gig for yours truly. Not only did it have two acts I had already seen and fallen in love with (Fly­ing Mid­night and Steely Heart) but two acts that I’d heard a lot about and have wanted to check out for a while (Hedge­hog and Casino Demon). So, with the lineup a big draw card for the night, and a full belly, I headed to Mao Live for the first time in a while.

When I got there, the crowd was already pump­ing with adren­a­line, as I had missed the first band of the evening — the me guan me’s (me灌me) — which, from the looks on everyone’s faces, was unfor­tu­nate. I’ll have to catch them next time around. First after them was Steely Heart (钢铁的心), who I’d seen ear­lier at Dos Kole­gas ear­lier this month, and they did not dis­ap­point. At the pre­vi­ous gig, I remem­ber feel­ing a touch of déjà-vu when it came to these guys, but this time the songs were famil­iar and easy to con­nect with. The crowd was into it from the word ‘go’, and Steely Heart has an energy to be reck­oned with. They belted out some of their faster songs to begin with, and the crowd was in there, get­ting a mosh pit going. The thing I like best about this band, though, is that they come to the stage as adver­tised. If you’ve lis­tened to the songs posted on their Douban, you’ll have heard almost what it’s like to see them live. They’ve got bet­ter energy and more fire behind a per­for­mance, but their recorded tracks won’t make you yawn and feel like never see­ing them live. With the excep­tion, per­haps, of their track “For­ever Young”, which is much bet­ter live. It reminds me a lit­tle of a slow Fratel­lis song; not any song in par­tic­u­lar, but it was the slow Fratel­lis sound with a Chi­nese accent. For their last song they played an upbeat num­ber with an adorable synth-infused bridge that really got the crowd going. There was a conga line and everything.

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I do apol­o­gize for my not attend­ing any of the gigs I men­tioned in the Gig of the Week post, but lazi­ness and a lack of funds at the end of the month over­took me and I just couldn’t make it to any of them. I did, how­ever, wrap myself in warm weather clothes, paci­fied a blind­ing headache, and went to catch my favorite band, SuperVC, at their free Ben Sher­man in-store appear­ance. One of the bril­liant things about SuperVC sell­ing out get­ting signed to Mod­ern Sky is that they’ve been tarted up and styl­ized beau­ti­fully. They were attrac­tive young men to start with, of course, but as they’ve been part­nered with Gucci (for their shoot in Vogue) and Ben Sher­man, they’re look­ing much snap­pier. Of course, music is not about the eye-candy. But it cer­tainly helps when you’re going to see a band.

The gig was at the very rea­son­able time of 6pm, and while my para­noid judge­ment of pop­u­lar bands’ turn-out usu­ally has me wait­ing for hours, I repressed it with the knowl­edge that nobody is used to get­ting places early in Bei­jing, so I turned up at 5:30 and the place was prac­ti­cally empty. Well, it looked like there was some­thing going on, but if every­one had been shop­ping nor­mally it wouldn’t have looked crowded. There was a stage set up on the rise fac­ing the glass front doors, and Ben Sher­man staff, some sound peo­ple, video­g­ra­phers, and a cou­ple of snappy-looking secu­rity guards hang­ing around. By the time my toes had thawed out from bik­ing to The Vil­lage, the band was fash­ion­ably late start­ing their set.

Dressed per­fectly in their Ben Sher­man getup, they played a fairly sub­dued first half; not only in terms of song choice (they opened with the fair “1978” but moved on to qui­eter “The Last Poem” (最后的诗) and oth­ers), but the crowd def­i­nitely needed some time to warm up. The thing about in-stores is, I guess, that crowds always seem a lit­tle unsure as to whether they should be danc­ing and jump­ing, because it’s tech­ni­cally still a store. Of course, this was a bit dif­fer­ent — the Ben Sher­man store at The Vil­lage is tiny, and by the half-way mark it was com­pletely packed — but the crowd, despite being much closer to the objects of their inter­est, still remained shy at the begin­ning, feed­ing off the energy of the band which def­i­nitely seemed set at half-mast.

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As hap­pens with most gigs at Dos Kole­gas, the crowd at this gig was often­times far more enter­tain­ing than the artists. The gig was intended to cel­e­brate the birth­day of the inim­itable owner of Dos Kole­gas, but the party was overblown with the addi­tion of five other birth­days. With the crowd already in high spir­its by the time ten o’clock rolled around, the gig started.

The gig opened with the new­comer punk band Sum­mer Sun­shine, who sounded as though they had just stepped out of the garage and onto the stage. Look­ing at their per­for­mance his­tory, they’ve only been hit­ting venues for the last cou­ple of months, and with only a cou­ple of per­for­mances under their belts it’s no sur­prise that they still sound a lit­tle raw. How­ever, their music showed con­sid­er­able promise — a lit­tle Ashura-lite, with some faint metal sounds in the bass line — and they sound like the sort of band that could def­i­nitely grow to become some­thing bet­ter. They were endear­ingly unfa­mil­iar with the stage setup, play­ing with the sound equip­ment between almost every song. They had a short set — no more than four or five songs, I’d say — until a band who wasn’t on the lineup took the stage.

I’ve got no idea who the sec­ond band to play was, because they didn’t intro­duce them­selves the entire time and the only thing I’ve got to work off of is that they played a punk rock ver­sion of a folk song from a place that sounded like “Qian­hai”, but the lead singer mum­bled and it was dif­fi­cult to tell what he was say­ing. The lead singer/guitarist was quite tal­ented, pulling off some stun­ning solos, and his voice sounded like unprac­ticed Mon­go­lian throat singing — my lar­ynx was hurt­ing for him after the set. Oth­er­wise, the music was quite good — if not what I usu­ally lis­ten to. The beats were heavy and the sound a bit more noisy than I usu­ally like, but it made for a rich sound and some nice, long jams. It’s too bad I didn’t catch the name of the band, else I would have checked out their recorded stuff.

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