A Beijing-based music and gig review blog

This gig was orig­i­nally billed as Hot & Cold’s final show in Bei­jing, with some great spe­cial guests from the world of exper­i­men­tal elec­tronic music: Fat City, Soviet Pop, Zhang Shouwang, and The B-Side Lovers. What it turned into was some­thing entirely dif­fer­ent. It was, of course, still Hot & Cold’s final show in Bei­jing, and all of the peo­ple who promised to be there were (though I missed Fat City). I saw Soviet Pop first and set­tled in to believe that every­one in the place was there to catch the expat group’s final show, as they’ve been in the city for a long time and have undoubt­edly amassed enough peo­ple to con­vince to come to a show. How­ever, it slowly dawned on me, as I looked around at all the other peo­ple who didn’t seem com­pletely enrap­tured or even very inter­ested in Soviet Pop’s set, that the lit­tle secret I knew wasn’t really a secret at all.

I’d got­ten an email for­warded and then for­warded again from a friend of a friend ear­lier in the week that said that Hedge­hog and Car­sick Cars were play­ing a secret show. It didn’t say where or when, but given that pretty much every­one involved in both of those bands was going to be at D-22, I sur­mised that they would be play­ing instead of their exper­i­men­tal alter-egos. It was a great lit­tle secret for a while, but when I over­heard a for­eigner talk­ing about see­ing Hedge­hog for the first time, I real­ized with­out a doubt that I wasn’t the only one who had heard.

In a way, it was a good thing. It got lots of peo­ple to the show, and more impor­tantly lots of non-committal peo­ple who were more than happy to mill about out­side rather than all cram in expec­tantly for each set. On the other hand, those non-committal peo­ple weren’t really there to hear bands like Soviet Pop, who were the bands that Hot & Cold seemed to be more in touch with dur­ing their time in Bei­jing. Still, the place packed out for Hot & Cold, so I can’t say that the other bands entirely stole the show, though they did slightly over­shadow the point of the evening — to farewell one of the bet­ter exper­i­men­tal groups in Beijing.

At the end of the day, though, it was a great show. Hedge­hog put on a great show as usual, and invited exper­i­men­tal vio­lin­ist Yan Yulong onto the stage for a song or two. Hot & Cold for their part rocked the place with their melodic brand of music cou­pled with the wild antics of Simon Frank. And of course, Car­sick Cars did a reli­ably good job at pump­ing up D-22, even if it was already past mid­night. The only thing about the night that was a real sur­prise was that Car­sick Cars opened with a song that they haven’t played in a really long time — Zhong­nan­hai. Arguably the anthem of D-22, if not of Car­sick Cars’ gen­er­a­tion of punk rock in China, it hasn’t been heard in a while but it’s just as great as ever. I man­aged to catch it on video, so enjoy!

I thought that the Car­sick Cars search for new band mem­bers was going to be a long and pro­tracted prospect, as much as the Hedge­hog one was. I should have real­ized how fool­ish it would be to have Zhang Shouwang float­ing around with­out his bass line, with such a big b®and name like Car­sick Cars hang­ing in the balance.

So it sur­prised me when I saw the lineup for the D-22 New Years gig: Gar, Mr Grace­less, Rus­tic and… Car­sick Cars. I won­dered what was up, and then not an hour later, I got an email in my inbox from the on-the-ball pangbianr.com let­ting me know who the new mem­bers are.

Join­ing Zhang Shouwang are He Fan of Bird­strik­ing fame, and Ben Ben from Taiwan’s Boyz & Girl, who per­formed in July at D-22.

Thanks again to Josh at Pang­bianr for the update; this should make for an inter­est­ing lineup!

Wel­come to Part Two of my review of Max Star Music Fes­ti­val. Part One, cov­er­ing the week­days of the fes­ti­val, can be read here.

SATURDAY 21 AUG 2010

I turned up at Ditan Park on Sat­ur­day after­noon at 5pm, after pluck­ing up my courage to brave the rain (and check­ing that the fes­ti­val was actu­ally still on). I was con­cerned that I had missed the entirety of Laoya and was well into miss­ing Steely Heart. How­ever, in what was to be a very truncated-feeling day, I arrived to catch the last song of Laoya’s set and all of the rest. The rain didn’t keep the rock­ers at bay, but it did make for very tight sets after what I assume was an extended setup process after the hard morn­ing rains.

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The gen­eral atmos­phere at this gig was one of great excite­ment, and I can’t say that it’s unex­pected. Not only were the bands at this gig huge, and all in one place at the same time, but for both local and for­eign fans alike, the fact that they’re head­ing over to South by South­west (SXSW), America’s largest indie music fes­ti­val, is noth­ing short of impres­sive. Maybe Mars has sent con­tin­gents over to Amer­ica pre­vi­ously, but there’s just some­thing about SXSW that’s excit­ing, and a show­case like this see­ing off the bands reflected that completely.

I arrived very much on time, to a largely Chi­nese crowd, and was very pleased to find a free CD in my hand on the way through the door. A com­pi­la­tion CD high­light­ing the bands play­ing at the gig, as well as “bonus” tracks from three of Maybe Mars’ other acts, it was titled The China Inva­sion Tour 2010, what they’re dub­bing the trip to the United States, and it’s a per­fect com­pan­ion to the show. If you didn’t make it, though, check out the down­loads sec­tion at Maybe Mars for some sam­ples. I have to say that I have often been dis­ap­pointed with the lack of energy in recorded songs here in Bei­jing, but hav­ing seen these acts live it imbues the record­ings with an energy that makes me love them rather than just like them.

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