A Beijing-based music and gig review blog

1) As I’ve just men­tioned on Twit­ter, the Gig Guide is as up-to-date as pos­si­ble for June. Mao was a bit light on (not unex­pected), so I’ll have to keep check­ing through­out the month. I’ll try not to miss anything.

2) Related to the Gig Guide, China Music Radar reported last week that British com­pany Song­kick won a grant from The Great Escape music con­ven­tion ear­lier this month £5000 to help break into the Chi­nese mar­ket. Since they do the exact same thing I do, only with a big­ger staff and more flair, I’ll be inter­ested to see what Song­kick does with its grant. (Prob­a­bly buys the help of a lot of ener­getic bilin­gual interns, actually.)

3) Ear­lier this month, Straw­berry Fes­ti­val hit Bei­jing. But did you know they also hit Xi’an? China Music Radar put up a great video of one of the few token rock acts that was slated for the ancient cap­i­tal, and China Enter­tain­ment News cov­ered the gen­eral vibe of the thing. Seems it was more of a pop fest than indie, but nonethe­less it’s good to see the Straw­berry name mak­ing inroads into other cities.

That’s all for now. Must rest before the epic week­end begins…

I first saw Shan­ren almost a year ago exactly at Jiangjin­jiu Bar. One year on, and the only thing that was dif­fer­ent was that instead of stand­ing crammed up at the back near the door, I was sit­ting on a stool right next to the stage within spit­ting dis­tance of the inim­itable Xiao Budian. Jiangjin­jiu is still a cramped lit­tle venue, and even though I didn’t turn up as early as I wanted, it meant that instead of being shuf­fled over to make room for late­com­ers, I was the late­comer who got to sit closer to the stage because of it. And to be quite hon­est, Shan­ren is the sort of band that needs a big­ger stage, not because they fill it with noise and enthu­si­as­tic gui­tar solos, but because it gives Xiao Budian room to move.

Gen­er­ally, I try not to have favorites within a band. I like to give the whole band love and rec­og­nize them as a group. But some­times, one per­son sticks out more than the rest, and in Shan­ren that per­son is eas­ily Xiao Budian. Read more

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

Today brings the Bei­jing Gig Blog’s first ever inter­view, with Time Out’s Web & Music Edi­tor Jen­nifer Con­rad. This month Time Out presents its May Music spe­cial, which fea­tures a com­mis­sioned cover by iconic poster artist Chair­man Ca. In addi­tion to pick­ing up the issue to have a look at the art­work, you can also pick up one of some very lim­ited prints, num­bered and signed by Chair­man Ca him­self. Get the details on that here.

Jen­nifer has been on my Gig of the Week mail­ing list for some time now, and very kindly offered to answer a few ques­tions. She also put me in con­tact with Chair­man Ca, so stay tuned for the answers to the ques­tions I had for him. Here’s what I had to ask Time Out’s Web & Music Edi­tor about the May Music issue:

1. What was the rea­son behind choos­ing The Bea­t­les’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover?

We wanted to do some­thing spe­cial to cel­e­brate the Bei­jing music scene–and com­mis­sion­ing an artist asso­ci­ated with the scene seemed like an excit­ing way to do it. Chair­man Ca was an obvi­ous choice because he has a dis­tinc­tive style that’s rec­og­niz­able from his fliers for D-22 and his works that are repro­duced in Sound Kap­i­tal. He’s also a music fan–I saw him mosh­ing to AV Okubo over May hol­i­day weekend–so I think his pas­sion for the sub­ject mat­ter comes through.

We gave Chair­man Ca a few con­cepts to choose from and together we decided to go with Sgt. Pepper’s. It’s an iconic image that’s a lot of fun, and choos­ing this con­cept also let us include a large num­ber of Bei­jing scen­esters on the cover.

2. Who chose the fea­tured artists — Time Out Bei­jing or Chair­man Ca? If you can, elab­o­rate briefly on why those artists were chosen.

We gave Chair­man Ca a list of the artists who were con­firmed for the dif­fer­ent May music fes­ti­vals at the time. I pointed out some that I thought would be most rec­og­niz­able to our read­ers, and he went from there. Since we high­lighted the folk scene in the mag­a­zine, we made sure that folk artists were well rep­re­sented. Hanggai’s trade­mark Mon­go­lian out­fits made them a nat­ural stand-in for the Bea­t­les, who wore psy­che­delic band uni­forms in the cen­ter of the original.

3. What can we expect from the Time Out Music Special?

This year, we decided to throw it down and say that folk is the new rock. It’s not that we don’t like Bei­jing rock ‘n’ roll, but we felt that there’s a really inter­est­ing and inno­v­a­tive folk scene hap­pen­ing. These musi­cians don’t nec­es­sar­ily get the atten­tion they deserve, but they’re mak­ing some of the most orig­i­nal music in China right now–especially the bands that revive tra­di­tional tech­niques in a thor­oughly mod­ern way.

We also take a look back at the Midi Fes­ti­val over the years, cel­e­brat­ing that festival’s his­tory and sense of com­mu­nity. Three artists who’ve been there since the early days Yu Yang (ex-Iron Kite), Xiao Rong (Brain Fail­ure), and Gao Hu (Mis­er­able Faith) share their mem­o­ries from over the years.

And we speak to four Bei­jing music-store clerks. We like to think they’re keep­ing the spirit of the High Fidelity-style obses­sive music fan alive, stock­ing the best of Chi­nese indie music and shar­ing their favorites with customers.

In the music sec­tion, we get to know three of Shanghai’s best bands, Boys Climb­ing Ropes, Boo­jii, and Duck Fight Goose.

4. In your opin­ion, what are the bands to watch out for in the sec­ond half of this year?

I love, love, love Guai Li, and their new album should be out…someday, so I’m excited for that. They’re a great post-punk band that no one ever talks about–definitely one of Beijing’s best. Now that the Rus­tic boys are rid­ing high on their Global Bat­tle of the Bands win, it will be inter­est­ing to see what they do next. The past few times I’ve seen
them, Lucifer has really been com­ing into his own as a frontman.

Hang­gai are so great–with their new album com­ing out this fall, I hope it pushes them in front of a big­ger audi­ence. Shan­ren put on really fun live shows–they’re already kind of buzzy, but I expect that their fol­low­ing will grow in the sec­ond half of the year. And Re-Tros and Hedge­hog have both given great per­for­mances lately, so I’m look­ing
for­ward to see­ing more of them. As far as the younger bands, I have my eye on Lazy Camels and Mr. Graceless.

5. Describe your favorite Bei­jing rock expe­ri­ence: eg, a live show or fes­ti­val, a rec­om­men­da­tion that opened your eyes, your first time at a given venue.…

Hmmm…that I can tell you on the record? When I moved to Bei­jing (March 2008), the only Chi­nese band I knew was Brain Fail­ure. I couldn’t have been in Bei­jing for more than a week when I saw a show listed at Yugong Yis­han and decided to check it out. I was new in town, so it took me like an hour to find the venue.

When I finally arrived, Queen Sea Big Shark were play­ing, and I thought, “Wow, this isn’t bad.” The next band was Joy­side, and when I saw Bian Yuan, I was like, “Holy shit, Chi­nese Mick Jag­ger! Where am I?!” It’s prob­a­bly not fair that I saw two of the best Bei­jing bands the first time I went out, but that’s how it hap­pened. Actu­ally, I saw 24 Hours the first time I went to D-22, and Hang­gai on my first visit to Jiangjin­jiu Bar, so I had really good luck right at the start.

Photo from 小武 on Douban

The Ditan Folk Music Fes­ti­val was a small affair, tak­ing up a cor­ner of Ditan (Tem­ple of Earth) park at the north gate, but in some ways that made it bet­ter than the big­ger events of the week­end before. Attract­ing a size­able for­eign crowd and lots of fam­i­lieas with kids, it felt more like a big pic­nic party in the park than a music fes­ti­val. The music was great, but with­out an adver­tised time sched­ule, it was dif­fi­cult to know what music was on at what time.

High­lights are easy to see, though.

SATURDAY: The Red­bucks and Hang­gai.There was def­i­nitely some great Amer­i­can folk and blue­grass going on this whole week­end, but The Red­bucks got almost every­one to their feet. They were sweet, fun, and the set of pipes on their vocal­ists were really impres­sive. Almost the com­plete oppo­site of Hang­gai, who rocked out at the end of the evening with their great brand of Mon­go­lian folk music. They weren’t all dressed up like they some­times are, but they def­i­nitely impressed the crowd and got every­one to their feet.

SUNDAY: Shan­ren and Suyang. I will admit to already lov­ing Shan­ren. I saw them first at Jiangjin­jiu, and I sug­gest you do so as soon as pos­si­ble (Fri 21 May, in fact). They’re a FUN group, with some great songs that are even easy for for­eign­ers to under­stand (sim­ple lyrics, often repeated, though with a slight accent). Their set at the fes­ti­val turned into a dance party on stage, their energy and wel­com­ing nature spread­ing through­out. Suyang is a folk singer from the North­west of China who com­pletely blew me away. It tore me from the pic­nic spread just to watch him sing.

Of course, there were count­less other bril­liant artists, the names of which I don’t recall — the African drums group, more Amer­i­can folk artists, some Irish folk, as well as all the won­der­ful Chi­nese folk local to the area — so I def­i­nitely sug­gest head­ing out next year. It was a lit­tle pricy — Y80 each day or Y120 for two days — but pre-ordering saves some money. Pack a cooler and bring a blan­ket and all your friends for a great day out. You won’t regret it.