A Beijing-based music and gig review blog

So I briefly reviewed Pairs a few weeks ago, and I failed to men­tion that the gen­er­ous Xiao Zhong gave me a free copy of their Yang Haisong-produced album “Sum­mer Sweat”. That’s prob­a­bly because I knew I wouldn’t be able to make an effec­tive review of it, because I really think that Pairs is a bet­ter band seen than heard. (If that sounds rude, trust me it’s not. They’re amaz­ing live.) Which is where this bul­letin comes in!

The album came with a DVD sec­tion which I didn’t actu­ally check out but is now posted on Tudou. It’s an hour’s worth of ran­dom clips of every­thing from per­for­mances to clips of tour­ing life. As Xiao Zhong says, “it’s a pretty good rep­re­sen­ta­tion of what it’s like liv­ing and play­ing in Shanghai/China.” Check it out below the cut, or view it on-site at Tudou.
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There’s always some­thing dif­fer­ent about going to see a for­eign act in Bei­jing. It’s not just that the crowd is filled with for­eign­ers, or that the music is some­how more famil­iar than any­thing you hear from a good Chi­nese band, but there’s always some­thing else, some­thing that makes the night mem­o­rable. Some­times, it’s some­thing as sim­ple as Yugong Yishan’s power cut­ting out in the mid­dle of Andrew Bird’s set, but some­times you have per­form­ers like Die! Die! Die! that leave you speak­ing about it for days afterwards.

I hadn’t heard of Die! Die! Die!‘s per­for­mance style before I got to the gig, where a friend of mine told me that they went absolutely nuts on stage, and brought their act off stage and into the crowd. We’ve all seen that before — crowd­surf­ing while play­ing a gui­tar or singing — but this is some­thing com­pletely dif­fer­ent. There wasn’t a part of D-22 within mic cord range that wasn’t climbed and per­formed on, and most likely bro­ken. The lead singer — while off-stage, just an unas­sum­ing blonde guy with Buddy Holly glasses — climbed up the amps to the sec­ond floor of the venue, break­ing the smok­ing angel on the way down, per­formed count­less times in amongst the mosh pit, mosh­ing along with his gui­tar, he climbed up onto the bar and broke some of the fairy lights and smashed his face into the Matt Nei­der­hauser por­trait of Our­self Beside Me. He lay on the ground in spilt beer and cig­a­rette ash and got up for hugs and more mosh­ing. It was, in a word, insane. And I loved every moment of it.

The music prob­a­bly wasn’t really my style — noisy and deranged and anger-inducing — but the per­for­mance mixed with the unpre­dictabil­ity of the crowd made for a hell of a show. One thing I will say about the crowd is that they enjoyed them­selves. A bunch of for­eign guys started mosh­ing right at the begin­ning and didn’t stop. And this isn’t a bunch of skinny 60kg Chi­nese boys throw­ing them­selves at each other, these are six-foot 90kg New Zealan­ders push­ing and shov­ing and falling to the floor. It was all in good fun, as any mosh pit is, but you could see the tiny Chi­nese spec­ta­tors around them look­ing pretty scared. A few brave souls joined in, but if it weren’t for the smiles on everyone’s faces, I would have been more scared of get­ting trampled.

After the high­light of insane lead singers and fevered mosh­ers, it’s hard to remem­ber the Chi­nese acts of the night. The B-Side Lovers have given up resem­bling Hedge­hog and put on an electronic-infused acoustic set that nearly bored me to tears with­out Atom beat­ing the shit out of her drums. Bird­strik­ing were okay, but the singing (or lack thereof) really brings down the feel of the songs. They prob­a­bly had the most energy of the night, though, as Wan­der­lust really just felt like two kids on synths play­ing in their dorm room — which is prob­a­bly what they are.

Check out a video of Die! Die! Die!‘s last song of the night below the cut or here on Youku. Read more

I’m not about to get myself into another “Thing of the Week”; how­ever, with the num­ber of videos I’ve been trawl­ing lately I prob­a­bly should. Any votes for what day it should come out? I’m think­ing a Monday…

Any­way, the fol­low­ing video is by expat group Christ­mas. I found it over a week ago and was prompted by Bei­jing Daze to post it (sorry to any­one who has watched it already but if you haven’t… god it’s worth it). It’s an adorable exam­ple of indie pop, matched with a great DIY-spirited video. This song is in Chi­nese, but a very sim­ple Chi­nese that stu­dents will love. I tran­scribed the lyrics and have writ­ten them (with pinyin and trans­la­tions) under the cut.

Before you watch, BE WARNED: This song is incred­i­bly infec­tious. I’ve had it stuck in my head since I found it. Not even kidding.

歌词
gēcí
lyrics:

垃圾桶，垃圾桶
lājītǒng, lājītǒng
rub­bish bin, rub­bish bin
不要把我放在垃圾桶里 (x2)
bùyào bǎwǒ fàngzài lājītǒng lǐ
don’t put me in the rub­bish bin

我知道你现在不需要我
wǒzhīdào nǐxiànzài bùxūyàowǒ
i know you don’t need me right now
但是我还是很有用
dàn­shì wǒ háishì hěnyǒuyòng
but i’m still useful!

垃圾桶，垃圾桶
lājītǒng, lājītǒng
rub­bish bin, rub­bish bin
不要把我放在垃圾桶里 (x3)
bùyào bǎwǒ fàngzài lājītǒng lǐ
don’t put me in the rub­bish bin

Just updat­ing to post a few videos I got of TooKoo & Spar­row at the gig last Fri­day. The pho­tos didn’t turn out so great but the videos are passable.

Here’s a photo from Douban, though, of every­one on stage after the final song. A com­mem­o­ra­tive photo with the musi­cians and the crowd:

(And if you look really closely just slightly left of mid­dle you can see a dis­em­bod­ied arm wear­ing a grey shirt and hold­ing up a black cam­era with a blue strap? That’s my arm. Talk about ever­last­ing memories.)

On with the videos!

TooKoo — Take Me Home (with SuperVC’s Sun Lingsheng)

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Just shar­ing a few links, because I’ve got too many stored up and not enough time to go into any depth about most of them.

1. rock ‘n roll crosstalk & the revival of a uniquely chi­nese art form from Neocha EDGE
This is a great look at not only the fusion move­ment in mod­ern Chi­nese music, and the fan­tas­tic band Nancheng Brother, but also a brief his­tor­i­cal overview of one of China’s most inter­est­ing enter­tain­ment tra­di­tions — the crosstalk. If you’ve ever been in a taxi and heard a strange radio­play with two men talk­ing rapid-fire, and your taxi dri­ver starts to laugh, it’s most likely a cross-talk piece. The his­tory of that, and how Nancheng Brother winds it into their musi­cal reper­toire, makes for an inter­est­ing piece.

2. Anar­chy in the PRC from foreignpolicy.com
For­eign Pol­icy mag­a­zine is not where you’d look first for an arti­cle about Chi­nese punk music. But if you’re up for a refresher course, and ogling a few of Matthew Neiderhauser’s bril­liant D-22 shots, the cap­tions on these few pack a def­i­nite punch. It reminds you what it means to be liv­ing in a city with a real, liv­ing, and impor­tant punk scene.

3. sing for china: some reflec­tions from china music radar
An inter­est­ing look at last year’s Mod­ern Sky tour of the United States. The part I found most fas­ci­nat­ing was the fact that these groups — courted and touted by one of the largest Chi­nese indie music labels — never really had any expe­ri­ence trav­el­ling with their own equip­ment. In stark con­trast to every­thing I per­son­ally ever grew up know­ing about rock and roll — the story of the long road, the tour bus, the drag­ging equip­ment, com­plete with 1970’s haze à la Almost Famous — it seems that the Chi­nese groups were miss­ing an inte­gral part of their upbring­ing. But who can blame them?

4. queen sea big shark + con­verse = “let’s play” mv (heads up from Neocha EDGE)
Check out Queen Sea Big Shark’s new mv (music video) for their song “Let’s Play” here. The inter­est­ing thing about this video — and, indeed, the song — is that you expe­ri­ence it for the first time and it’s def­i­nitely got the marks of a QSBS song, and the style of the video is very them. How­ever, a large por­tion of the lyrics, ideas for the video, and even some extras in the video are crowd-sourced from Con­verse. Mak­ing this song, and this video, not just a prod­uct of QSBS, but some­thing much more indica­tive of their audience.

5. asia’s neglected music con­sumers from china music radar
This is a repost of a really inter­est­ing arti­cle from Typepad-blocked MIDEMNET about “Music Apartheid”, which describes the ostra­ciz­ing of the Asian music con­sumer mar­ket. Basi­cally, it talks about how legal online out­lets (like iTunes Music Store and Ama­zon MP3 down­loads) aren’t really help­ing bat­tle online piracy and offline boot­leg­ging of music by restrict­ing out­side (and largely Asian) pur­chas­ing of dig­i­tal music. It’s an inter­est­ing and in-depth read for any­one, even gen­er­ally con­cerned with DRM and new media policy.