A Beijing-based music and gig review blog

First of all, a big happy birth­day to Dos Kole­gas. They have been kick­ing around longer than that venue every­one talks about own­ing the scene (you know the one I’m talk­ing about) and have long since been a venue for the messy week­end frol­ick­ing only pos­si­ble dur­ing the Bei­jing sum­mer­time. Oh yeah, and they always have some awe­some bands play­ing. Once you’ve been to Dos Kole­gas, it stays with you. It’s the dive bar next to the drive-in where the con­tents of your nights might be lost to your mem­ory but you’ll never for­get the place. I might be mak­ing it sound dirty and weird, but it is, and that’s what you’ll end up lov­ing about it. Last Fri­day was the per­fect cel­e­bra­tion of all that is Dos Kolegas.

To start off with, the bands were amaz­ing. I got there after the unan­nounced first act (some weird Dan­ish lo-fi or some­thing? I don’t remem­ber how it was described) and as per usual, the party didn’t start until it was creep­ing up to mid­night. The first sched­uled band up was Skarv­ing, and they didn’t fail to impress. The only other time I’ve seen them was at last year’s anniver­sary show, and then I remem­ber think­ing that I needed to see more ska in Bei­jing. I still really do. It’s a fun genre, and I should get out to see them more often. Skarv­ing has been around a while (cer­tainly as long as I have, and two years is pretty good longevity for a band in Bei­jing), and they’re a tight band. Plus, half the enter­tain­ment is in see­ing other peo­ple dance to ska.

Next up was SUBS, which is a band I have never fig­ured out my feel­ings for. I’ve seen them three or four times, and each time I either loved them or hated them. I think I need to be in the mood for them — which means, in the mood for loud, yelling, insane punk music — and I guess on Fri­day I was in the mood for just that, because I loved them. Kang Mao is a force to be reck­oned with, and it’s not every day you can just take that in your face. I think the act works bet­ter on a small stage, though, because the effect is imme­di­ate, vis­ceral, and unavoid­able. Which isn’t for me all the time, but on Fri­day I loved it.

After SUBS was Wu & The Side-Effects, who I also haven’t seen since last year’s anniver­sary. As men­tioned on this blog before, they’ve got­ten a new bass player in that space of time. While the new guy is no Checo, he’s still good, and after a year together, the band seems like the solid rock and roll act we’ve always known. I hope it’s not another year before I see these guys again.

Finally to the stage, some time after 2AM, was Buyi Band. I’ve never seen them, incred­i­bly, despite the fre­quency with which they play in my neck of the woods, but it was worth the long wait. I didn’t stay for their entire set (it was, after all, 2AM) but I stuck around for a few songs and really enjoyed them. But by then my ears were ring­ing and my feet were aching, so I took my sorry ass home to recover. I couldn’t take the sec­ond day, but know­ing the lineup I think it would have been just as amazing.

Con­grat­u­la­tions, Dos Kole­gas, for being a very impor­tant part of the his­tory of Chi­nese rock, and thank you for six years of let­ting us riff-raff get drunk on your front lawn every week­end. We salute you!

Where: Dos Kole­gas
When: Fri 27 May, 21:00PM
How Much: 60RMB
Who: SUBS, Wu & The Side-Effects, Buyi Band, Skarv­ing (More Info)
Why: As men­tioned, Dos Kole­gas is the per­fect sum­mer venue, this week­end is going to be the per­fect sum­mer weather, and per­form­ing this Fri­day are some of the city’s hottest bands. I’ve had imper­fect expe­ri­ences with SUBS — some­times I love them and some­times I can’t stand them — but hope­fully on a smaller stage I’ll enjoy them. I have yet to see Wu & The Side-Effects with­out bassist Checo left… in fact, prob­a­bly not since Dos Kole­gas’ fifth anniver­sary! By now they’ll have had enough time to break in their new bassist, so I’m look­ing for­ward to it. Last year I saw Skarv­ing as well, and hope that they’ll impress again. I also have never seen Buyi Band before, which I can’t believe for how often those guys play. All in all, it’s a great lineup, and I can’t wait for it to be Dos Kole­gas sea­son again. Let the party start!

On Sat­ur­day night, the lineup at Dos Kole­gas is just as good: DH & Chi­nese Hell­cats, Nucleus, Free The Birds, and Black Cat Bone; same time, same price. Other run­ners up this week include: Folk Songstress Night at Mao Live, Thurs­day @ 8PM, 50/40RMB; some awe­some stuff is going down with Streets Kill Strange Ani­mals and more at Old What? Bar, Sat @ 9:30PM, 30RMB.

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So I’ve been out of it for a while, but now I can say pretty solidly that my mind’s back in the game, and I’ve got a few notes to pass onto every­one, if you haven’t already heard about/seen them. Check it:

1. Helen Feng (Free The Birds, Pet Con­spir­acy, falling off stage at Straw­berry last year) is back with her “The Rock Show”, only on Douban. If you were around a year or so ago, you might have occa­sion­ally heard a bilin­gual chick on the radio play­ing some awe­some West­ern tunes — that was Helen, appar­ently! She used to be on HIT FM, but after a crazy year she’s started the show again on Douban. Check out all eight episodes here. If you feel like you’ve lost touch with English-language indie music (like me), it’ll open your ears.

2. The kids at Pang­bianr did a great Five Year anniver­sary movie for D-22. It’s got inter­views with all the reg­u­lar artists there, and of course the inef­fa­ble Michael Pet­tis. It’s a great watch, and you can see it over at Youku in high def­i­n­i­tion. Really a fun look back at five years of not only D-22 but also the Bei­jing music scene. D-22 might not be the only kid on the block any­more, but they’ve been an impor­tant step­ping stone to many.

3. Bei­jing Daze is host­ing “a day of music and cel­e­bra­tion” — dubbed ‘daze FEAST — with all his favorite peo­ple, at his favorite venue Dos Kole­gas, on June 25. It’s free, and there’ll be lots of awe­some acts on so check out his post. I’ll be keep­ing an eye out for details but for now, great music, lamb roast­ing, and rum cock­tails sounds like an awe­some after­noon and evening. Set to start at 4PM, it should be a per­fect June twilight.

Photo by 刘耀东 on Douban.com

The photo above rep­re­sents what Ditan Folk Fes­ti­val feels like to me. It feels like a big pic­nic party with some awe­some bands play­ing. There’s lots of snacks, an afternoon’s worth of beer, and the most adorable chil­dren wan­der­ing around. I know that’s not really the sort of last­ing impres­sion a music fes­ti­val should make on a per­son, but that’s truly how this fes­ti­val feels to me. Every now and then a band brings you to your feet, has you clap­ping along, but mostly it’s about friends, fam­ily, and a few beers in the sun.

This year, Ditan got it only half right.

The first day of this year’s Ditan Folk Fes­ti­val went much as I described. The grass was freshly seeded, leav­ing some spots bet­ter for sit­ting on than oth­ers, there were snacks and beer aplenty, and the music was great. Par­tic­u­lar high­lights for me were Ningxia’s Migra­tory Bird, Mongolia’s Yie Er Bo Li, Bloody Woods and the ethe­real voice of lead singer Anna, and of course Xiao He. The event was put together well and the atmos­phere was as chilled as ever.

Unfor­tu­nately, the sec­ond day held only rain. I turned up on time, hav­ing been told that one of my favorites Wan Xiaoli was play­ing first (he ended up being ros­tered at 5PM), to find that they were doing an acoustic ver­sion of the fes­ti­val. Every­one was crowded around the stage, where one guy (pre­sum­ably Li Tian­ran) sat with his gui­tar, singing as loudly as he could. With the rain beat­ing down on my umbrella and already a crowd around him, I couldn’t see and I could barely hear him. I stuck around for a few songs, but retreated to dim sum after a while, hop­ing that the rain would let up.

Obvi­ously, it didn’t, and I didn’t see any of the rest of the fes­ti­val for that day. Look­ing through the pho­tos on Douban, it looked like peo­ple made the best of it. I think it would have been worth­while stay­ing if I had got­ten there ear­lier, when I could have got­ten a spot closer to the action and away from other people’s umbrel­las. Some of the pho­tos look amaz­ing, and the whole vibe was inti­mate and friendly despite the rain, but I made the deci­sion to leave.

I hope that next year’s Ditan Folk Fes­ti­val has two days of beau­ti­ful weather; this year, they didn’t get quite so lucky.

For me, this felt like a very trun­cated ver­sion of the Straw­berry Fes­ti­val. Last year, I went all three days and while the ticket lines were a night­mare on day one, I gen­er­ally felt pretty good about it. I think that watch­ing the slow dete­ri­o­ra­tion of all the per­fect prepa­ra­tion that goes into a fes­ti­val area is almost as fun as catch­ing the bands. The flip side of that is that when you turn up on day three where everything’s tram­pled and dirty, you don’t feel like you were a part of mak­ing it that way, and it all just feels… unsanitary.

None of this was helped by the alco­hol ban that I didn’t hear about until I got there. I don’t like get­ting drunk off my face at fes­ti­vals, but I like to have a beer on a hot day in the park, so I really dis­liked the ban. Of course, peo­ple still got their beer, and by the time the sun started set­ting, one of the stalls behind the love stage and some enter­pris­ing ayi man­aged to smug­gle in enough beer for who­ever heard about it.

I’m sure the cheng­guan had their rea­sons for the ban — how­ever unfounded they might be — but I won­der if any­one will ever learn that putting rules like that up at a chaotic fes­ti­val? Isn’t really going to work. I went to a fes­ti­val with camp­grounds in Aus­tralia one year where this group of guys had taped goon sacks to them­selves to smug­gle alco­hol on the grounds. Oth­ers filled sham­poo bot­tles with vodka. And that was just because they were stingy bas­tards; there was alco­hol at the fes­ti­val! Never under­es­ti­mate the population’s cre­ativ­ity when it comes to get­ting alco­hol with their music.

In other things non-music related, I was really unim­pressed with the food choices this time around. I gen­er­ally love fes­ti­val food, and China does it really well, but this time just sucked. There were life­less sand­wiches and spaghetti, the oblig­a­tory chuan’r and rou­ji­amo meat sand­wiches, but even the noo­dle choices were unin­spir­ing. Where’s my quail egg chuan’r??

The com­bi­na­tion of turn­ing up late and hav­ing to explore the grounds didn’t make for the best music-seeing expe­ri­ence, I must admit, but I did get to see some solid favorite acts of mine. First were Life Jour­ney. I went down to the front-ish for a while, but after get­ting burned in the sun and wind, and real­iz­ing that they were going into the bal­lad sec­tion of the show, I moved back. I’m not dig­ging their cur­rent sound as much as I used to; it’s all feel­ing a lit­tle bor­ing to me, so I hope they make some upbeat tracks soon.

Later on was Zhou Yun­peng, the blind folk artist who seems to have cap­tured everyone’s heart. Last year he per­formed at the smaller Love Stage, but this year he was at the main stage, the Straw­berry Stage. The crowd was incred­i­ble, and the dif­fer­ence was clear. Last year, every­one sat in front of the stage qui­etly with some peo­ple in the back stand­ing on the con­crete. This year, the crowd stretched on for ages, every­one stand­ing and singing along. It was inspiring.

I also got to see all of Hang­gai’s per­for­mance, which reminded me just how much I love them. I was with a friend of a friend from Mon­go­lia, and he said they were kitschy and he didn’t like them because they were just revamp­ing old folk tunes and doing noth­ing orig­i­nal. While I think it’s a valid point, that doesn’t negate the fact that Hang­gai rocks. They have an incred­i­ble stage pres­ence and energy that just doesn’t show any­where else. Their recorded tracks might be great, but their live per­for­mance is where it’s at. No won­der they’re tour­ing the world these days.

We capped off the evening with a brief look-in at the Queen Sea Big Shark per­for­mance, which was as much flash­ing lights and bright red cos­tumed as you’d expect it to be. They’re play­ing to such huge audi­ences at these fes­ti­vals, it never ceases to amaze me that they can play smaller venues with­out a hitch.

Unfor­tu­nately, I didn’t get to see a lot of the minor acts, but I did enjoy the inclu­sion of the Tai­wan stage. When I sat down on the grass near it to eat lunch, I didn’t know what stage it was (by day three, almost all the flags were taken down from hav­ing been ripped by the wind), but as soon as the young woman on stage started singing, I knew that it was the Tai­wan stage. Nobody makes adorable indie pop quite like the Taiwanese.

On the whole, I would def­i­nitely say that I enjoyed myself. There were some draw­backs, atmos­pher­i­cally, but the music was still good, as was the com­pany, so we made the best of it. And some­times, just hav­ing some­one to bitch with about not hav­ing any beer is just as enter­tain­ing as shar­ing a beer with them.