A Beijing-based music and gig review blog

I started the year out with Happy Avenue, a band I had heard good things about from a friend. I’d lis­tened to some of their music online, and it was pretty good indie folk-pop, so I was inclined to enjoy it. When we got to Mako, and the beloved Wu Hongfei took the stage, I couldn’t really believe it. The woman was nuts. Cer­ti­fi­able. In addi­tion to wear­ing a dress that was way too short and being caked in makeup, she for­got most of the lyrics and was a com­plete diva about get­ting some water. I still don’t know if I dis­liked her or her syco­phan­tic fans more…

We left before the encore (we only stayed that long because it was sort of like watch­ing a train­wreck), and headed to Dos Kole­gas’ Ningxia Night. We’d missed a bunch, but we got what we came for: re-formed Wu & The Side Effects. With a new (Chi­nese drum­mer), they felt awk­wardly new, but still emi­nently enjoy­able. Props to them, and I can’t wait to see them again.

My last gig of the week pick for Jan­u­ary was Cao Qin & Starry, which didn’t dis­ap­point. I’d seen him play acoustic nearly three years ago at one of the first shows I went to in Bei­jing at SOHO Shangdu’s Tiny Salt Cafe, and this time he played Mao Live­house with his whole band for their debut album launch. It shows you just how long it takes to get to mak­ing an album in this city. The show was great, and reminded me why I had remem­bered his name after such a long time, but the one thing I would have changed was all the thank­ing. I felt like I was watch­ing the Oscars…

Then, finally, it was time to start say­ing good­bye to D-22. I first saw Res­i­dence A at D-22, so when I knew that they were play­ing there just before it closed, I had to go see it. It was a chill evening, but busier than it might have oth­er­wise been, and four bands added them­selves to the lineup. Unfor­tu­nately, they were not bands I wanted to see (though also see­ing White Stripes wannabe band Youxi again was a nice full-circle moment), but I hung out for Res­i­dence A. And they were bet­ter than ever.

The final Zoomin’ Night was, for many D-22 old hands and fans, the real last night of the venue’s reign. Not to say that Mohanik was a bad show, just that Zoomin’ Night was what D-22 embod­ied: a place for any band to come, play and hang out. This was it. Unfor­tu­nately for me, I had already been at my extremely boozy annual din­ner, so I was wrecked by 11 and only saw a cou­ple of bands. This pic­ture is Low Bow col­lab­o­rat­ing with some­one else, but I couldn’t for the life of me tell you who.

Finally, it was the last night that any­one would ever play D-22. And it was a night pop­u­lated with out-of-towners. Sen­ti­ment aside, it was a great show. I wasn’t super fond of the screaming-singing of Shanghai’s Moon Tyrant, but Mohanik cer­tainly banged out what was a great set, despite the fact that they were drink­ing some sort of Mon­go­lian moon­shine out of the bot­tle. They were very gra­cious, and amus­ingly spent most of the gig speak­ing in Eng­lish and singing in Mon­go­lian, that just made it more enter­tain­ing for the mish-mash of a crowd. It was a great night for music, but then of course we stuck around for a while. I fin­ished off the bar’s gin, while a friend of mine took the last (and warm) beer. We took pho­tos of the bath­room walls and ran around try­ing to see if there was any­thing we could steal, some part of D-22 we could take. But of course, as the true sen­ti­men­tal would know, the best thing we will take from D-22 is memories.

Instead of doing the reg­u­lar one-post-per-gig, I’m going to branch out and start a new method of updat­ing: bi-monthly round-ups of gigs I’ve been out to and maybe a break-out post for a par­tic­u­larly awe­some show. This will hope­fully alle­vi­ate the pres­sure on me to write any­thing huge, which will also mean I’ll actu­ally write things for this blog again. Any­way, with that house­keep­ing out of the way…

Chad Val­ley (Split Works 5th Anniver­sary) @ Temple: I turned up after it started, but I was instantly impressed. It’s the sort of indie elec­tronic that I love, and there is a beau­ti­ful, pow­er­ful voice hid­ing behind Hugo Manuel’s unas­sum­ing exte­rior. I wish the set had been longer, but I love that there was space up the front to watch the show up close.

Shan­ren + Lidong @ Mao Livehouse: Shan­ren and Lidong are folk bands from two dif­fer­ent provinces (Yun­nan and Ningxia, respec­tively), and have com­pletely dif­fer­ent per­form­ing styles, but they are two of my favorite folk groups out there. Lidong opened to a recep­tive crowd, and Shan­ren played to a very enthu­si­as­tic one. Shan­ren had a guest rap­per, who intro­duced him­self as a “black Chi­nese”, and they had Sam, their laowai drum­mer, have a song all to him­self. It was a great show, though the rowdy French peo­ple made it a lit­tle awk­ward sometimes.

Duck Fight Goose @ D-22: This was an awe­some gig! I was really too tired to appre­ci­ate most of it, but I do remem­ber being parked up front just let­ting the music wash over me. They were absolutely great and I hope they get back to Bei­jing soon. For now, I have to be con­tent with the CD I got for free with the ticket.…

Win­ter Sol­stice @ Zajia Labs: Not specif­i­cally a gig, but this was a great night which should remind us all that there are always ran­dom awe­some things going on, you just have to keep your ear to the ground. Zajia Labs held a win­ter sol­stice dumpling-making event, where 150RMB bought you all you can eat, all you can make veg­e­tar­ian dumplings until their mas­sive quan­ti­ties ran out, and all you can drink mulled wine and beer. It was an amaz­ing night, rounded off with a lovely lit­tle folk jam ses­sion with Jurat and Xiao Budian from Shanren.

I am leav­ing out two other shows I went to because I barely felt as though I went at all: I was only there for Res­i­dence A and, as men­tioned, there really isn’t any­thing more I can say about how amaz­ing they are and how much I love them. Next up: I’ll write about the D-22 Decem­ber 30 gig, because it deserves a post of its own.

I went to D22 on a ran­dom Wednes­day evening think­ing that I was there for Mr. Grace­less. I’ve seen them before, thought they were alright (the first time I saw them, I com­mented on their cardi­gans…), so I thought I was going to have an aver­age night out drink­ing with my friends. One of whom has been rav­ing about Res­i­dence A for a while. And it’s not that I don’t trust this friend’s point of view, but we don’t always see eye to eye, so I was a lit­tle skep­ti­cal, but hope­ful, that I would like them. Luck­ily, they were absolutely amazing.

But I’m get­ting ahead of myself.

We arrived in the mid­dle of Youxi’s set, which was just as well. Youxi is a duo, a girl on drums and a guy on gui­tar, and they were wear­ing red tops and white and black bot­toms, respec­tively. If that wasn’t enough of a give­away, they cov­ered “Seven Nation Army” as their last song, firmly cement­ing their place as White Stripes wannabes. They dis­played very lit­tle orig­i­nal­ity, and it was over­all pretty dis­ap­point­ing. Which isn’t to say that they won’t grow out of it — they’re a new band — but for now, I’ll give them a miss.

In fact, I almost for­got that they had played by the time Res­i­dence A took the stage. I wasn’t expect­ing a lot, so I was sit­ting up the back with a beer when they played their first song. Halfway through, I couldn’t take it any­more, and I went up to the front where nobody else was stand­ing. Their energy was infec­tious, and I couldn’t imag­ine just sit­ting there stone-faced watch­ing the show from my seat, like every­one else was doing. Admit­tedly, it was a Wednes­day night, but I was sur­prised that peo­ple didn’t start mosh­ing imme­di­ately. I can’t really put my fin­ger on what genre they would be best described as, but they cer­tainly embody the spirit of rock ‘n’ roll. Their music is loud, guitar-heavy, and often­times anthemic. Their per­for­mance style is great — the lead singer is crazy in just the right way, star­ing wide-eyed at the audi­ence as well as grin­ning and jump­ing around stage. They are absolutely hav­ing fun on stage, and it’s infec­tious. I enjoyed myself so much watch­ing their set, and it was com­pletely unex­pected. I’m look­ing for­ward to the next time these guys play.

Last up were the head­lin­ers, Mr Grace­less. Last time, I described them as unpol­ished cam­pus rock that sounds like Super­grass and Nir­vana, but I was right in my ini­tial assess­ment: they’re like Blur, only Chi­nese. And don’t get me wrong, I like it. I love Blur, and Mr Grace­less has a great sound. But after twenty min­utes or so, I knew that the rest of the set was going to be the same. I’m will­ing to bet that a lot of the malaise I felt watch­ing them was due to the fact that I hadn’t been expect­ing to fall in love with a new band the way I did with Res­i­dence A, so quickly and unequiv­o­cally, that any­thing before or after just seemed a bit point­less. I’m sure I’ll see Mr Grace­less next time and think the same things, but I prob­a­bly won’t walk out on them.

For me, this time, the stars of the show were Res­i­dence A. Get your­self out to see them, and check out the songs on their Douban. It’s worth it.

There’s always some­thing dif­fer­ent about going to see a for­eign act in Bei­jing. It’s not just that the crowd is filled with for­eign­ers, or that the music is some­how more famil­iar than any­thing you hear from a good Chi­nese band, but there’s always some­thing else, some­thing that makes the night mem­o­rable. Some­times, it’s some­thing as sim­ple as Yugong Yishan’s power cut­ting out in the mid­dle of Andrew Bird’s set, but some­times you have per­form­ers like Die! Die! Die! that leave you speak­ing about it for days afterwards.

I hadn’t heard of Die! Die! Die!‘s per­for­mance style before I got to the gig, where a friend of mine told me that they went absolutely nuts on stage, and brought their act off stage and into the crowd. We’ve all seen that before — crowd­surf­ing while play­ing a gui­tar or singing — but this is some­thing com­pletely dif­fer­ent. There wasn’t a part of D-22 within mic cord range that wasn’t climbed and per­formed on, and most likely bro­ken. The lead singer — while off-stage, just an unas­sum­ing blonde guy with Buddy Holly glasses — climbed up the amps to the sec­ond floor of the venue, break­ing the smok­ing angel on the way down, per­formed count­less times in amongst the mosh pit, mosh­ing along with his gui­tar, he climbed up onto the bar and broke some of the fairy lights and smashed his face into the Matt Nei­der­hauser por­trait of Our­self Beside Me. He lay on the ground in spilt beer and cig­a­rette ash and got up for hugs and more mosh­ing. It was, in a word, insane. And I loved every moment of it.

The music prob­a­bly wasn’t really my style — noisy and deranged and anger-inducing — but the per­for­mance mixed with the unpre­dictabil­ity of the crowd made for a hell of a show. One thing I will say about the crowd is that they enjoyed them­selves. A bunch of for­eign guys started mosh­ing right at the begin­ning and didn’t stop. And this isn’t a bunch of skinny 60kg Chi­nese boys throw­ing them­selves at each other, these are six-foot 90kg New Zealan­ders push­ing and shov­ing and falling to the floor. It was all in good fun, as any mosh pit is, but you could see the tiny Chi­nese spec­ta­tors around them look­ing pretty scared. A few brave souls joined in, but if it weren’t for the smiles on everyone’s faces, I would have been more scared of get­ting trampled.

After the high­light of insane lead singers and fevered mosh­ers, it’s hard to remem­ber the Chi­nese acts of the night. The B-Side Lovers have given up resem­bling Hedge­hog and put on an electronic-infused acoustic set that nearly bored me to tears with­out Atom beat­ing the shit out of her drums. Bird­strik­ing were okay, but the singing (or lack thereof) really brings down the feel of the songs. They prob­a­bly had the most energy of the night, though, as Wan­der­lust really just felt like two kids on synths play­ing in their dorm room — which is prob­a­bly what they are.

Check out a video of Die! Die! Die!‘s last song of the night below the cut or here on Youku. Read more

I described this gig to my friend before going as an “ambi­ent rock” night, and I think on most counts I was cor­rect. I will admit, we didn’t get there in time to see The Fly­ing Man­tas (if they did indeed play, they cer­tainly got it over with quickly, as I didn’t get there that much later than the start­ing time), so I’m not sure of the over­all effect, but I came away from the gig feel­ing as though I’d lis­tened to some great, if a lit­tle soporific at times, loud ver­sions of quiet rock.

The first band we saw was Me Too, who have been hit­ting the stage most often with bands like Lazy Camels and Candy Mon­ster — both solid rock acts. Me Too are no dif­fer­ent — a solid act, if a lit­tle dis­tant in their per­for­mance of their brand of rock — but often they sounded more like the house music had been turned up really loud, rather than being a live band. I did like a cou­ple of tracks of theirs — Exist (存在) and Present (礼物) were espe­cially enjoy­able — but on the whole it was a very low-energy per­for­mance, and not exactly what I had expected.

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