Where: Dos Kole­gas
When: Sat 20 Aug, 22:00PM
How Much: Free
Who: Nucleus, Wu & The Side Effects, Skarv­ing, The Rude­ness (More Info)
Why: Mostly, because it’s free, and the bands are great. I’m not on record as the biggest Nucleus fan, but I’m open to them win­ning me over after not hav­ing seen them per­form in a very long time. Because accord­ing to many peo­ple I know, they’re a shin­ing exam­ple of hard rock in this city. Any­one fol­low­ing this newslet­ter will know that I love Wu & The Side-Effects, and this is their last per­for­mance with yet another mem­ber — drum­mer Mo is headed back to Ger­many. Skarv­ing is always a fun, ska-soaked time, and I have never seen The Rude­ness but it will be good to see another exam­ple of ska in this city.

Run­ners up this week are: This is the last two semi-final shows of Tiger Trans­late before the big finale next week­end: on Fri­day, Perdel head­line at Mako Live­house, and on Sat­ur­day, Reflec­tor head­line at Mao Live­house, 70/60RMB; also on Fri­day, Steely Heart and The Lone are doing an unplugged set at Hot Cat Club, 30RMB; and on Sat­ur­day, funk rock­ers Not There are host­ing “Back to School for Adults”, free at Hot Cat Club.

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My friend Jon from the very funky band Not There has a gig com­ing up that sounds like an incred­i­ble party. Here he is to tell you about it:

—

Not There is throw­ing a back-to-school party at Hot Cat in Fang Jia Hutong on Sat­ur­day August 20th. It’s com­pletely free.

Now this isn’t a back-to-school party for kids. When you’re a kid, every­day is a party. Let’s face it. Those of us kick­ing it in Bei­jing work­ing the 9–5 or teach­ing, or just drink­ing down the street at El Nido are the ones who deserve to party. So the kids might be going back-to-school, but the adults will be the ones get­ting naughty in the Hutongs.

What do we have planned for the party?

Well I don’t want to spoil the sur­prise, but Not There is gonna play 2 sets of High Energy Dance Music mixed with Space-Porn Funk. If you’ve seen us play late night, when everybody’s had just enough fun to get lubri­cated, you know we can kick it all night. And this time we will. We’ve got a bunch of new dance songs that we’re itch­ing to drop the nee­dle on and a few oldies that are tweaked and oiled to shine.

Back-to-school for adults will also have kinky door prizes and sexy school sup­plies with a delec­table hint of sala­cious­ness. (We’re also work­ing on dancers in Japan­ese School­girl out­fits.) (Seriously.)

Doors open at 9 and we’ll be going till Sun­day morn­ing. Drink spe­cials include great prices on imported beer and absinthe. You bring the smoke.

Let’s make this back-to-school naughty enough for adults…

–Jonathan Heeter, bassist Not There

Note: “Adult includes all y’all col­lege kids too. Not There is an equal oppor­tu­nity enabler…”

Now, I don’t know why I’ve been post­ing about Sum­mer Sonic any more than you do. For some rea­son, Mao put me on the email list about it, so I’ve been get­ting the emails. But I do hon­estly think that it’s a great oppor­tu­nity for those bands going, and another step in the right direc­tion for cul­tural exchange between China and Japan, to take eight Chi­nese bands and put them on stage at Asia’s biggest and most suc­cess­ful music fes­ti­val of the year. With all that said, here is the final lineup, includ­ing Mao Livehouse’s bat­tle of the bands winners:

1. Re-TROS
2. Queen Sea Big Shark
3. Muma & Third Party
4. Perdel
5. The Ghost Spar­dac
6. Crys­tal But­ter­fly
7. Run­Run­Loser
8. Nanwu

And despite the fact I have never heard of Run­Run­Loser, I think this is a solid lineup. There’s a good vari­ety of all the biggest gen­res, and all with great bands rep­re­sent­ing China’s efforts. Of course there are bands I think would be bet­ter, but for a first pass at impress­ing Asia, I think China’s done a good job.

And yet another music fes­ti­val is grac­ing our fair city. If the inmu­sic fes­ti­val is too far out of the city for you to con­tem­plate, try the Rock Aid fes­ti­val in a cou­ple of week­ends. It’s being held over three nights from 8PM at Tango 3rd Floor (pre­vi­ously Star Live), just out­side the sec­ond ring road north, near Yonghe­gong Lama Tem­ple sta­tion. It’s easy to get to, always clean, and while the space looks like a fac­tory, it’s got pretty good acoustics. The price is a bit much (100RMB/night, and noth­ing yet on pric­ing for all three nights), but the lineup is stel­lar. Twisted Machine, Yaksa, and Chun­qiu head­line each of the nights, with other great hard rock acts lined up. Check out all the per­form­ing artists and more at the gig guide!

Where: Ray­ing Tem­ple
When: Sat 23 July, 21:00PM
How Much: 30RMB
Who: Soviet Pop, Hot & Cold, Felicita, Deadly Cra­dle Death (More Info)
Why: Every now and then, it’s time for some­thing new. And while this is yet another pang­bianr night that I’m rec­om­mend­ing, and one of the bands is the same as last week, Ray­ing Tem­ple is quite new. Well, it’s been around for a while, but I’ve never been, and chances are you haven’t been, either. It’s out south-east, way out in Tongzhou, and it has been a breed­ing ground, a nur­tur­ing space, for exper­i­men­tal artists in Bei­jing for a long time. Though the venue now is not the orig­i­nal, it still has the same ethos, and what bet­ter place for a pang­bianr night, and the artists on the lineup? Soviet Pop is the exper­i­men­tal side-project of the ex-members of Car­sick Cars; Hot & Cold is an expat duo who make the good kind of dron­ing music; Felicita is a British exper­i­men­tal artist who fuses dig­i­tal and ana­log sounds; and finally, new project Deadly Cra­dle Death is the side-project of He Fan of Bird­strik­ing and Liu Xinyu of Chui­wan. I am most inter­ested in hear­ing Deadly Cra­dle Death, because they’re new, and Soviet Pop because they’ve been around a while. Make a day of it and head out early! It should be fun.

The run­ners up this week are many: TooKoo, AIS and more hit up Dos Kole­gas on Fri­day night, 10PM, 40RMB; reg­gae stars Long Shen Dao make a rare appear­ance at Dos Kole­gas in the after­noon from 5PM on Sat­ur­day, 60/50RMB; of course you can check out the acts at Tiger Trans­late — this week­end head­lin­ers are electro-rock dar­lings Queen Sea Big Shark (Mao, Fri @ 8PM) and Reflec­tor (Yugong Yis­han, Sat @ 9PM) prices 70RMB and below; or else, there’s some Japan­ese acts breez­ing through town this week­end: Shuhari, ONC, and US/Taiwanese act Half Mile Radius. I didn’t get a chance to check these guys out but you might like them; they’re play­ing Fri­day @ Yugong Yis­han (9PM, 30RMB), Sat­ur­day @ D-22 (10PM, 50/40RMB), and Sun­day @ Mao Live­house (8:30PM, 60/50RMB).

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