A Beijing-based music and gig review blog

It turns out that last week­end was not a fluke. I have been reformed in my opin­ion of Dos Kole­gas as a venue because even this week, with a buzzing crowd and rock­ing music, I was not dis­ap­pointed. The only thing that would have been nice was a lit­tle help behind the bar, but Doufu keeps him­self on his toes and never skips a beat. The mood of this gig, though, was entirely dif­fer­ent to Lonely China Day last week, and much closer to what I expect of a night at Dos Kolegas.

Unfor­tu­nately, I missed SUBS. Why they were up first when they were one of the longest-running bands there, I’m not sure, but they played and all I heard about them was that they were noisy and a bit bor­ing. Then again, I was talk­ing to new arrivals so I’m not sure I got the most mea­sured opin­ion. I’ll have to check them out at some point, but what I did get in return was an unex­pected fifth act on this already jam-packed bill.

The first band I saw was 24 Hours. Wait, strike that. The first band that was play­ing with 24 Hours. I stuck it out for one song, but then I couldn’t take it any­more. I haven’t lis­tened to much of their music, just what’s on com­pi­la­tions I’ve bought recently, but I thought I was going to enjoy them. It didn’t hap­pen. While the band were inter­est­ing to watch and had a great energy, their music just grated on my nerves and the female vocal­ist was not work­ing for me. I’m will­ing to put it down to my not being in the mood, but I won’t be hur­ry­ing out to check it any time soon.

Next up were the sur­prise guest, Our­self Beside Me. I had been talk­ing ear­lier with some­one who’s been bang­ing around the scene for six years or so, one of those styl­ishly bored types who thinks the scene’s tanked since it’s got­ten pop­u­lar. Still, despite bag­ging out the venue and the crowd, and men­tion­ing that Our­self Beside Me had “dyked out”, he was still in there start­ing the mosh a few min­utes later. As last I saw them, it was a tight set. They weren’t as low-energy as they were last time, with the lead singer look­ing around the crowd with wide, accus­ing eyes as she sang. It was an engag­ing set, and at least there was nobody puk­ing on the floor this time.…

Next up were DH & Chi­nese Hell­cats, who I have rec­om­mended many times for gig of the week but never actu­ally seen, for one rea­son or another. The first time I saw them was last year at Dos Kole­gas towards the end of sum­mer, and the impres­sion was great on me. They’re basi­cally a cover band, play­ing lots of swing and jazz songs, but they’re always fun. Last time, they had a bunch of mem­bers of Swing Bei­jing attend­ing the gig, so it burst into a dance party and was an absolute riot. This time, there was no swing danc­ing but plenty of peo­ple try­ing. It’s the sort of music that makes you get up and dance, whether you want to or not.

Then, just when I thought that I had missed Steely Heart in the begin­ning and Our­self Beside Me had been stand­ing in for SUBS, they took the stage some­where after ridicu­lous o’clock. I’m glad I stuck around for them, though, because they are always a great act. They played some new songs that I didn’t rec­og­nize from their EP, and of course all the famil­iar ones. It was lots of fun, not least of which because I had had enough ¥15 Haerbin beer to make me dance around like one of those crazy for­eign­ers you’ll always find rock­ing out just a lit­tle too much at any given Chi­nese gig. What­ever, I was hav­ing fun. And will never get sick of Steely Heart, even if they always seem sick of singing.

Videos to fol­low, if I deem my cam­er­a­work “not too drunk to watch”.