A Beijing-based music and gig review blog

The month of JUE March started off with a bang, with an epic show send­ing off some of Beijing’s most-loved bands. I skipped out on most of the show, since all I really wanted to see was the new Rus­tic lineup, but it was packed with pun­ters and that’s always a good thing. Rus­tic was great as usual, though there really is some­thing to be said for the dynamic that Ricky and Lucifer had on stage. I think Ricky leav­ing, while the right choice for him artis­ti­cally, hurts both bands a little.

When 2 Kole­gas re-opened after the epic win­ter months, it was fit­ting that it was a Ningxia night. I really didn’t care who was on the lineup, though it was all the old faves — Buyi, Wu & The Side-Effects, WHAI, Lidong. I think I just spent most of the evening wan­der­ing around say­ing how much I had missed 2 Kolegas…

The Sally Can’t Dance exper­i­men­tal fes­ti­val was held over two days at “the new D-22″ at Di’anmen, which made it dou­bly as inter­est­ing as it would have been by itself. I posted about the space, but the music was great as well. I went for the sec­ond, less harsh noise day and really enjoyed myself, and was happy to dis­cover that Li Daiguo’s music was just as amaz­ing as every­one had always told me.

Con­tin­u­ing in the theme of Sally Can’t Dance, the first JUE event I attended was the Tea Rocker’s Quin­tet, which was just as amaz­ing as you’d imag­ine a band with Xiao He, Li Daiguo and Yan Jun would be. It was held in a gor­geous guqin stu­dio in 798, and it was a delight­ful after­noon show filled with tea, music and relaxation.

Also at JUE’s 798 extrav­a­ganza that week­end, I man­aged to catch David Thomas Broughton, a won­der­ful folky singer-songwriter from Britain via North Korea who does a won­der­ful job loop­ing sounds and weav­ing them into amaz­ing songs. There were a cou­ple of inci­dents where he threw things (a water bot­tle, his shoe) that I found more than a lit­tle odd, but it was for­given for how great he sounded. I also stayed for a while after­wards to catch Lucifer’s qui­eter solo side, but they were mostly cov­ers and I left when he started to cover Adam Green.

And then it was JUE, with their big first act of the fes­ti­val, Death Cab For Cutie. This is, of course, not Death Cab but Life Jour­ney, because the entire crowd was com­prised of exu­ber­ant Amer­i­can youths, which is fine when you’re one your­self but mostly just makes you feel alien­ated if you’re not. The band put on a great show, though, and musi­cally I thor­oughly enjoyed it.

Post-rock night at Mao was just what it was adver­tised as: some of Beijing’s best post-rock musi­cians per­form­ing one after another. I got to see Spar­row, who I haven’t seen for nearly two years. They were just as good as ever, as was Glow Curve, but pen­ta­tonic and Grind­ing Ear weren’t really my favorites. How­ever, we were hang­ing with an ex-member of pen­ta­tonic and got lots of juicy band gos­sip that I have totally for­got­ten by now.

This was billed as Black Cat Bone’s last show, since Jon Camp­bell was in town for The Book­worm and his book tour, and it was pretty damn good. It started after 1AM, and it was a total change from the zen-like night at Mao, but with enough fire in the belly it was jam-packed fun, as those mas­ters of blues always are.

Another JUE offer­ing, this was a snap deci­sion on my part. With Jianghu being so close to my house, and the fact that singer-songwriters are a par­tic­u­lar weak­ness of mine, I went down to see Court­ney Wing after din­ner and I do not regret the deci­sion. It was a low-key night, with a bunch of peo­ple at some alumni party who didn’t even real­ize where they were, and the music was great. I also got to meet the lovely Qu Want­ing, who had played a sold-out show at Yugong Yis­han the night before.

Chape­lier Fou is one of those artists you really have to see to believe. Lis­ten­ing to his tracks is great, but describ­ing him is dif­fi­cult and doesn’t do him jus­tice. He’s an elec­tronic artist who uses the vio­lin, gui­tar, his voice, and what­ever else he can get his hands on to cre­ate not only inter­est­ing pieces of music but also ones that wouldn’t go astray at clubs. Check out his myspace for now, and if/when he’s back in Bei­jing, catch him. Seriously.

I have never really con­sid­ered myself a fan of trip-hop, though that’s prob­a­bly because I never really gave it a chance. It’s a good genre, though I will admit it’s not the best one to see per­formed live. I enjoyed myself at the AM444 show, but I think the music lends itself to cre­at­ing an atmos­phere in head­phones rather than in per­son. I didn’t stick around for ROM. Enough said.

One of the most antic­i­pated Shang­hai bands, though, were Rain­bow Dan­ger Club. It’s too bad I had been to Great Leap for the chili cook-off because that meant I was a lit­tle more than tipsy when I got to 2 Kole­gas. Still, I remem­ber hav­ing an amaz­ing time, even if it took me a while to remem­ber who was actu­ally there with me. I do remem­ber pogo-ing to RDC, and hav­ing the promised Jager shots with the guys from Friend or Foe. It was a super night and while I wish I had been more sober, I’m also glad I had that water break and got through it like a trooper.

Jef from New Noise had told me about how pop­u­lar pg.lost was with the Chi­nese crowd, but I sort of didn’t believe him. But when I turned up to a totally packed-out Yugong Yis­han, the proof was right in front of me. It wasn’t as fun as it could have been, stuck watch­ing the show on a pro­jec­tor, but the music was great — I def­i­nitely really enjoy their brand of post-rock. And yet again, I close out the month with a Swedish post-rock group…

The Dos Kole­gas Fifth Anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tions were exactly as you’d imag­ine it. If you’ve never been to Dos Kole­gas, it is one of Beijing’s finest dive bars. D-22 might have the name and the sta­tus, but Dos Kole­gas has a com­pletely dif­fer­ent atmos­phere. Dos Kole­gas is tucked away in an oth­er­wise unloved cor­ner of a drive-in movie the­atre com­plex, and has an expan­sive out­door area that is well taken advan­tage of in the sum­mer when the inside tem­per­a­tures are exactly as hot as the music being per­formed on stage. Peo­ple are friend­lier and more open, includ­ing all of the staff, and bands seem far more will­ing to hang out there than any other venue I’ve been to yet. There’s some­thing com­fort­able in the atmos­phere, though I have to admit that you must be in the mood for it, or else extremely drunk.

Per­son­ally, I was the lat­ter over this week­end. I didn’t have as much trou­ble find­ing alco­hol as some peo­ple have sug­gested, but that might be because I spent a good por­tion of my night near the bar rather than on the dance floor. It was very much a social event for me, per­son­ally, though the bands that I did see were phe­nom­e­nal. Instead of a lin­ear review, I’ll a brief overview of what I got to see and what I loved.

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