A Beijing-based music and gig review blog

Since I was unable to catch the Shang­hai con­tin­gent due to my work being absolute slave dri­vers last week, I hit up Dos Kole­gas on Sat­ur­day night for some of Beijing’s great bands. The night started out with four-piece band Me Too, who have been around the cir­cuit more than a few times but I’ve never got­ten to see them before. At least, I assume that the first band was Me Too. See­ing as most bands here still haven’t got­ten the hang of intro­duc­ing them­selves (except for Candy Mon­ster, who I will now never for­get because they say their name after every song), and Me Too don’t seem to have any per­for­mance pho­tos up, it makes it dif­fi­cult for me to tell whether it really was them or just another band that sounds a lot like them. In either case, they were great. They had a great energy on stage, and worked together really well. They really reminded me that bands who get out there every other week (they’ve per­formed 13 times that I know of since I started the Gig Guide in Octo­ber) might not have as big a fol­low­ing as some, but their work pays off in the qual­ity of their sound and performance.

The next two acts I def­i­nitely rec­og­nized, because I’d seen them before.

Steely Heart is, as every­one read­ing should know, a favorite of mine. I love see­ing them, and will quite prob­a­bly never get sick of their bored rocker act. Their songs are infec­tious and catchy with­out being sac­cha­rine and poppy, their lyrics are totally incom­pre­hen­si­ble but fun to sing along to any­way, and their rock is hard enough to have an edge but not so hard it hurts your ears. Even if you stand right up front. Read more