A Beijing-based music and gig review blog

There are two great fes­ti­vals com­ing Bei­jing way at the end of August, just as the weather is its hottest and mug­gi­est. (There are plenty of oth­ers, all around the coun­try, so if you’re trav­el­ling check out the end of this post for a list.)

The first is the Great Wall Tan­gle­wood For­est Music Fes­ti­val, orga­nized by Mod­ern Sky and boast­ing three days of some amaz­ing bands from August 27 to August 29. The big draw cards are: Perdel, Re-TROS, Big­ger Bang, Hedge­hog, AV Okubo, Zhou Yun­peng, Cao Fang, XTX, and much a lot more that is very promis­ing. How­ever, while I have been to and love a good camp­ing fes­ti­val, I’m not sure I’m ready to brave one set up by Mod­ern Sky. Noth­ing against them, but if get­ting a shut­tle into Straw­berry was so 乱七八糟, I’m not sure I want to see their first foray into offer­ing camp­ing facil­i­ties. (Also, I don’t have a tent, car, or any­one who can drive.) Still, I’ll be wait­ing on the reviews and take them with a grain of salt as it’s their first year, and hope­fully it’ll be around for next year.

Besides which, some of the bands at the Tan­gle­wood Fes­ti­val will be hit­ting my fes­ti­val of choice, the Max Star Music Fes­ti­val, run­ning from August 16 to August 22 — a full week of amaz­ing music. They have a lot of part­ners, includ­ing Sina, MySpace China, Kappa, Baidu, Yahoo, and our very own The Bei­jinger and Time Out Bei­jing. This has given them some amaz­ing buy­ing power when it comes to band lineup, with some head­lin­ers being: Vel­vet High­way, New Pants, Long Shen Dao, Car­sick Cars, Big­ger Bang, XTX, Demerit, Our­self Beside Me, Steely Heart, SUBS, Pet Con­spir­acy, Tang Dynasty, and so much more it would take for­ever to list. Basi­cally, it’s got a spec­tac­u­lar lineup over a whole week, and it’s at Ditan Park which — while it could be across the city for you — is not three hours away by car. (For me it’s a ten minute walk.) Tick­ets are 40RMB for Mon-Fri, 80RMB for Fri-Sat (all the good bands are on that day any­way), or 200RMB for a 7-day pass. (Buy­ing them pre-sale online is cheaper again.)

I know which music fes­ti­val I’m going to this month — where are you headed?

Today brings you an inter­view with Chair­man Ca, the artist behind many of the iconic gig posters of the Bei­jing music scene. Fea­tured recently on Neocha EDGE and found com­ple­ment­ing Matthew Neiderhauser’s band pho­tog­ra­phy in Sound Kap­tial, he is highly tal­ented and widely rec­og­nized. And because there is woe­fully lit­tle about him in the Eng­lish lan­guage press, I’ve asked him some incred­i­bly basic ques­tions that I hope you find as inter­est­ing as I thought they would be.

Thank you once again to Time
Out’s Web & Music Edi­tor, Jen­nifer Con­rad. She not only put me in con­tact with Chair­man Ca but also pro­vided trans­la­tion for this inter­view to help pro­mote their May Music Issue, which I finally picked up in — of all places — the toi­lets of Dos Kole­gas last week­end. Check out the Time Out web­site for details on how to buy a print of the issue’s cover by Chair­man Ca.

1. There isn’t much infor­ma­tion out there in Eng­lish about you. How did you get started design­ing gig posters?
I started design­ing gig posters at the end of 2006. My first work was for three French guys who were orga­niz­ing shows in Beijing.

2. Your art­work is iconic and, for many, an illus­trated rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Chi­nese music scene. Do you feel the same way about your art­work?
Actu­ally, I didn’t intend to do illus­tra­tions for the Chi­nese rock music scene. Rock music is rock music, and I think my work and I myself have same spirit as rock music. Well, it doesn’t mean rock spirit expressed on paper. Draw­ing is the same as rock music with char­ac­ter­is­tics like burn­ing, hav­ing to show your­self off, step­ping onto the stage, enthu­si­asm, guid­ing other peo­ple, and being a star. It’s true, really — they are the same.

3. What are some of your favorite Chi­nese bands?
I’m inter­ested in some clas­sic bands. Maybe we can’t say clas­sic, because the his­tory of these bands is too short. And in a city with a lot of shows, peo­ple don’t always pay atten­tion to the older bands. Lots of bands are my favorites, includ­ing New Pants, Re-TROS, PK14, The Scoff, Linga, Joy­side, and Top Floor Cir­cus. My favorite band now is AV Okubo — their drum­beats always knock at my heart. Some bands have dis­banded now, but that’s the rock music scene, right? I like other musi­cal styles as well. For folk music, I like Wutiaoren. I like rock­a­billy and surf music too, but there aren’t good bands with these styles in Beijing.

4. What do you do when you’re not cre­at­ing poster art? Do you have a “day job” or does most of your work encom­pass com­mis­sions by peo­ple like Time Out and D-22?
I do lots of dif­fer­ent jobs. I give classes one or two days each week with sta­ble income. I do other work as well, such as draw­ing car­toons, doing illus­tra­tions for adver­tis­ing com­pa­nies, and draw­ing my own works no mat­ter what — I’ll do it on a wall or paint on a wooden plate.

5. Why did you choose to take the com­mis­sion for Time Out? What did you think about choos­ing a Bea­t­les album as the stage for Chi­nese bands?
It’s an honor to illus­trate the cover. I think it’s inter­est­ing and mean­ing­ful. The edi­tors from Time Out picked the idea for the cover — I just put their ideas into action. The cover is like a reunion of folk music, elec­tronic, punk, metal and new wave, putting lots of musi­cians together. The musi­cians are not in the same groups in daily life, but they meet each other at music festivals.

6. What do you think about the increase of inter­est in Bei­jing bands by for­eign media and for­eign­ers liv­ing in Bei­jing?
Rock music is from West­ern coun­tries, but our bands are becom­ing bet­ter and bet­ter with their own rock spirit and atti­tude. The world is flat, so it’s nat­ural that more for­eign­ers and for­eign media focus on Chi­nese bands, and that’s good. It seems that the media pays more atten­tion to minor­ity bands, which isn’t bad. Rock music is rock music — bands don’t mind people’s views of them.

7. Finally, could you please tell us your favorite story from the Bei­jing rock scene.
Lots of things hap­pen every­day — I don’t have the time to recall all my mem­o­ries. I def­i­nitely like the story that will hap­pen tomorrow.

Trans­la­tion by Giss­ing Liu

Okay, I’ll bite.

Every­one in this very small com­mu­nity of Bei­jing music scene blog­gers has been all over the recent arti­cles posted by the intel­li­gent and knowl­edge­able Mr. Max-Leonhard von Schaper over at Rock in China. I read the first arti­cle, Why No Bei­jing and D-22 are not worth the hype! before every­one else started talk­ing about it and I could have said some­thing then, but I saw it for what it is — what Max has admit­ted to it being — which was a con­tro­versy bomb designed to incite discussion.

If you don’t have time to read the whole thing (it bor­ders on tl;dr), basi­cally Max points out that it’s a bit unfair that the for­eign media gets to focus entirely on the Maybe Mars lineup, because that’s not all there is to the Bei­jing indie scene. (Max, I know you read this, so feel free to tell me what mas­sive points I left out by boil­ing your essay into one sen­tence )

Hav­ing been on the inter­net for far too long, I expected it to turn into a mud-throwing con­test. How­ever, the beauty of small com­mu­ni­ties — online or offline — is that they’re usu­ally civil and eas­ily man­aged. I was pleas­antly sur­prised when even Matt Nei­der­hauser, who was pretty per­son­ally impli­cated in the attack, retorted with a mea­sured argu­ment with­out tak­ing potshots.

So I thought I’d throw my opin­ion out there.

Quite sim­ply: no, Maybe Mars isn’t all that. It’s a great label, fos­ter­ing bands I sim­ply adore (and a bunch I don’t give a crap about); D-22 is a great venue, the one I credit with my falling in love with the Bei­jing scene (it was a bet­ter intro­duc­tion than Tiny Salt Cafe 2); the man­age­ment team is great, because they have con­nec­tions and funds and the know-how to get expo­sure to the West­ern (Amer­i­can) indus­try. But all of us here in Bei­jing know that it’s not “Chi­nese rock”. It’s not even “Bei­jing rock”. It’s a sec­tion of the Bei­jing scene, and an even smaller sec­tion of what’s going on across the nation.

But the prob­lem with media is that it is still local­ized — to where the pub­li­ca­tion is based or the cir­cle of friends the blog­ger has. Think about it: even if you read a New York Times arti­cle about the indie scene in the city, you’re not going to hear about all of the gen­res and bands that are per­haps wor­thy and inter­est­ing, you’re going to hear about the ones that reporter has been exposed to through con­nec­tions, funds, and know-how to get expo­sure. The effects of that are ampli­fied by phys­i­cal distance.

Maybe I’m naive, but I like to think that any West­erner with half a brain and an actual inter­est in Chi­nese indie music will look at an arti­cle about Maybe Mars and not say “okay, this is it”, they will say “wow, awe­some, I won­der what else is out there”. I’m pretty sure that most peo­ple gen­uinely inter­ested in indie bands these days knows how lit­tle actu­ally gets through to main­stream media.

What I’d like to see is a round-up of what inter­ested indie scen­esters in the West who have read and become inter­ested in Chi­nese inde­pen­dent music and have sought it out them­selves say about Maybe Mars. My guess is that it’s along the same lines as Max’s basic state­ment: they’re okay, but they’re not the be-all and end-all of the Chi­nese music scene.

I know that the lan­guage bar­rier for West­ern­ers is immense. But I also know a per­son, who I often credit with giv­ing me a kick-start with my gig-going and thus this entire site, who lives in the DC area in Amer­ica, who has never stud­ied Chi­nese for­mally, and for whom Chi­nese indie music has become a pas­sion. She’s on Douban, catches up with her favorite bands more than I do, and went to see Casino Demon & Hedge­hog per­form at the Chi­nese Cul­ture Fes­ti­val in Wash­ing­ton DC. Of course she’s the excep­tion to the rule, but all it takes is a few well-placed pas­sion­ate peo­ple like her in the West­ern blo­gos­phere to help every­one under­stand that Maybe Mars isn’t the only thing out there.

And I think it’ll hap­pen. The response Maybe Mars has got­ten in Amer­ica is heart­en­ing, and what I think we need to do, as peo­ple on the inside, is intro­duce as many for­eign­ers as we can — inside and out­side of China — to the Chi­nese music that they’ll like. We can’t be elit­ist, we need to squash the music snob inside of us that makes us cut down the tall pop­pies of Maybe Mars and Mod­ern Sky, because maybe if we intro­duce a punk fan to Joy­side or an electro-rock fan to AV Okubo or an indie pop fan to Life Jour­ney and give them the tools (web­sites like Rock in China, for exam­ple) to explore for them­selves, they’ll go look­ing and find a whole world out­side the walls of D-22 and the ring roads of Beijing.

Max might be com­plain­ing about the media mis– or under-informing peo­ple, but I’m con­vinced that what an indie music fan does when they hear about indie music in the main­stream media is explore fur­ther. So instead of com­plain­ing about it, we should boost our own sig­nals and get the word out to peo­ple search­ing in Eng­lish for more than just the Maybe Mars sound.

Which is really what Max, Matt, the Maybe Mars team — and each of us enthu­si­asts — is all about, in the end.