A Beijing-based music and gig review blog

There isn’t a whole lot I can say about this show that I haven’t said about most of the bands before. Skarv­ing is a solid exam­ple of ska music in Bei­jing, Wu & The Side-Effects are just what the rock and roll doc­tor ordered, and Dos Kole­gas is always good for a more than slightly drunken good time. How­ever, there were two bands there who I either hadn’t seen before ever, or had only seen once, many moons ago, so I thought I would write up this show anyway.

First of all, in a late addi­tion to the lineup, Ricky Sixx and his band played to a very appre­cia­tive crowd. I’d never seen Ricky Sixx’s band before (rumor has it the band has a name now, but I don’t know what it is), and they were a fun time. The crowd, unfor­tu­nately, ruined it for me with their antics. They were drunk, and of course so was I, but as I’ve men­tioned before, big hulk­ing white dudes mosh­ing and try­ing to crowd­surf over their friends really kind of scares me. It’s not that I don’t find drunk Chi­nese dudes less annoy­ing, just that I think they’re less likely to severely injure me if one of them bumps into me. Any­way, I didn’t see a lot of Ricky’s set because of this, but what I did see was lots of fun. Ricky is a great per­former, and plays off the crowd’s energy very naturally.

Up next was Nucleus, who fea­tured in my sec­ond ever review on this site. Despite hav­ing seen the lead singer in Migra­tory Bird infi­nitely more times than in Nucleus, I will always remem­ber him as the one who Doufu groped, and who gave us birth­day cake (it was Doufu’s birth­day, and an absolutely insane night). Read­ing back, I agree with myself on every­thing — they’re a tal­ented, mature band with one charm­ing lead singer. Still, I remem­ber not lik­ing their music that much because they were too heavy. I think my tastes must have changed, then, because they weren’t too heavy for me this time. I really enjoyed every­thing about their set — espe­cially their grungy “cover” of one of Migra­tory Birds’ songs.

And of course, Skarv­ing was great and Wu & The Side-Effects brought down the house — their drum­mer Mo is going back to Ger­many, so this was some­thing of a farewell for him — but I’m sure we’ll see both of those bands again, most likely hav­ing a fun and drunken night at Dos Kolegas.

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

The fol­low­ing review is brought to you by a good friend of mine, Mark Hiew, whose work you might have seen in City Week­end some time. He headed to China Music Val­ley on its sec­ond day, and here’s what he had to say about it…

The sec­ond and final day of the inau­gural Bei­jing CMV Fes­ti­val was a sunny, suc­cess­ful and san­i­tized affair, marked as much by its thin crowds and heavy police pres­ence as by the impres­sive array of for­eign acts, includ­ing Hot Hot Heat, Ladytron and Edi­tors. The clear blue skies were a thank­ful relief from the prior day’s soiled air, and festival-goers rev­eled amidst the var­ied range of artists and plen­ti­ful space.

Given last year’s logis­ti­cal issues at Straw­berry fes­ti­val, which included run­ning out of water dur­ing the first day, it was nice to see how smoothly CMV ran. Com­pared to MIDI or Straw­berry, CMV is a much smaller affair. Beyond its two stages, the grounds offered lit­tle more than food stalls and bath­rooms, lack­ing the flea mar­kets, local bands and smaller stages that lend the other fes­ti­vals so much of their char­ac­ter. The lack of any mer­chan­dis­ing alto­gether was sur­pris­ing, and begs the ques­tion of why the fes­ti­val orga­niz­ers didn’t set up such seem­ingly obvi­ous sources of revenue.

Also notable was the lack of booze. Friends spot­ted beer kegs set up and ready to go, but staff strangely refused to sell any alco­hol. When I asked an employee at one of the stalls why the pro­hi­bi­tion, her answer was some­what unsat­is­fy­ing: “So that you guys don’t get drunk.” But then why even bring them? Clearly, reg­u­la­tions had under­gone recently changed. Appar­ently, Straw­berry in Suzhou was can­celled due to some harmony-affecting prob­lems, which would explain the crack­down, and which also accounts for the pres­ence of far more secu­rity than I have seen at fes­ti­vals in recent years. Not that they actu­ally did much. Lined up by the side or seated in rows around the stages, they utterly ignored the crowd surf­ing or crazy danc­ing, and towards evening’s end, some had even begun to join the crowd up front.

The fes­ti­val was held at a con­verted ski resort, with the two stages (named yew 乐 and gu 谷) set up side-by-side. Per­for­mances ran back to back on alter­nat­ing stages, with gen­er­ally only a few min­utes between sets. This made it con­ve­nient for pun­ters to either walk between the two, or sim­ply to watch per­for­mances on the oppo­site stage from their own. One annoy­ance, how­ever, was that orga­niz­ers con­trolled the num­ber of atten­dees who could enter the des­ig­nated ‘zones’ at cer­tain times, mean­ing that some pun­ters had to watch from the outer zones. This wasn’t a huge issue, but at one stage I had two friends refused entry to our zone when it seemed that there was still ample room to fit more peo­ple, par­tic­u­larly by Chi­nese standards.

In terms of the crowd, CMV had a much more var­ied, less sub-cultural audi­ence than MIDI or Straw­berry, with plenty of fam­i­lies, includ­ing grand­mas and lit­tle chil­dren, brought along for some fun. It felt far less pre­ten­tious than the hip­ster fash­ion show of Straw­berry, though it also pos­sessed hardly any of the other fes­ti­vals’ uni­fy­ing rock fan com­mu­nity vibe. Per­haps they were kept away by the distance—though the hour plus com­mute from con­ve­niently located char­tered buses was quite tolerable—or the higher prices (260RMB one day admis­sion at the door, includ­ing trans­port) and lack of Chi­nese bands. Those that took a chance how­ever were treated to a rare show­case of West­ern artists, whose tunes ranged from the gloomy elec­tro rock of Ladytron to the spunky charms of KT Tunstall.

The day’s pro­ceed­ings begun with minor Chi­nese rock star Jes­sica Jiang, whose mix of gen­tle rock and acoustic bal­lads got the early atten­dees on their feet. Before her set had ended, how­ever, the younger, col­lege stu­dent con­tin­gent had begun their migra­tion from her stage to the one next door, in prepa­ra­tion for Hot Hot Heat’s set. The Cana­dian indie rock­ers played a short, fifty minute-long set, which fea­tured a mix of old and new tunes, includ­ing an extended ver­sion of ‘Ban­dages’, dur­ing which singer Steve Bays strut­ted out to the stage’s extended flank, daz­zling ador­ing female fans with his skin-tight jeans, bouncy white-boy ‘fro and sig­na­ture Robert Smith-tinged croon. At one stage, a crowd mem­ber requested a song which Steve said was “the one song that we were told we’re not allowed to play.” ‘Save Us, SOS’ perhaps?

The band’s grungy out­fits and rocker cool stood in stark con­trast to Huang Xiao Hu, a middle-aged Tai­wanese songstress who moon­lights as the Simon Cow­ell for a Tai­wanese pop idol TV show. Huang, who looks in her early fifties, sat­is­fied the older, less West­ern­ized mem­bers of the audi­ence with her mix of 90s-era Man­dopop bal­lads, fre­quently exhort­ing the crowd to sing along, before chid­ing them for their sub-par attempts. Before the crowd could tire of her ice queen per­son­al­ity, she was saved by the blind Tai­wanese composer-singer Xiao Huang Qi, who sung a duet of the cur­rent hit “没那么简单” with her before tak­ing over himself.

That was it for the Man­dopop con­tin­gent for CMV, and was fol­lowed by a string of British pop rock­ers. A very young-looking, polite Lit­tle Boots, in a glit­ter­ing lit­tle gold dress, charmed the crowd with her bright, dancy synth-pop. The set peaked with new song “Crescendo”, which she intro­duced as being per­formed live for the first time. The crowd was less impressed by Ladytron—ironic given that they were the most well-established of the day’s acts. Their gothic electro-rock, which sounded so effer­ves­cently cool in West­ern night­clubs in the early 2000s—seemed slightly out of place against the set­ting sun at an out­door rock fes­ti­val in Beijing.

Edi­tors, though, whose black dress and gloomy themes seem in many ways a musi­cal exten­sion of Ladytron, received a far more enthu­si­as­tic response. Man­i­cally intense front­man Tom Smith man­aged to hold the crowd’s atten­tion with the majes­tic power of his voice, ably sup­ported through the pow­er­ful drive of his band. This, despite each of his xie xies—which sounded more like “shi’a shi’a”—instigating gen­tle gig­gles from the crowd. Their set mixed the spiny post-punk of ear­lier albums with the sur­pris­ingly del­i­cate electro-tinged sounds of their lat­est, and was for me by far the most enjoy­able act of the day.

While many had started to leave by the time KT Tun­stall arrived, the Scot­tish singer-songwriter man­aged to keep those who stuck around happy with her sprightly per­for­mance, in which she wowed the crowd with her effort­less per­cus­sive loop­ing. Tun­stall is in fact one quar­ter Chi­nese, mak­ing her per­for­mance some­thing of a home­com­ing of sorts, and she won the crowd over early into her set when she exclaimed:

“I just learned some Chi­nese for you guys… wait, how did it go? Oh yeah… wo ai nimen!”

When I first read about this gig, all I knew was that the lineup was Car­sick Cars and Mr. Grace­less, which excited me enough to decide to com­mit to going to it more than a month before it hap­pened. Then PK14 was added to the lineup and it resolved my deci­sion. It was an expen­sive gig, I’ll give you that, and hon­estly I’m not sure it would have been worth the full 100RMB, but the pre-sale price was just right. And of course, as with almost any review of gigs at Yugong Yis­han, there were ridicu­lous and annoy­ing sound issues through­out the show, but I’m not sure that’s ever going to change. Peo­ple will always show up for a gig at Yugong Yis­han, because their line­ups are always fantastic.

Venue rants aside, I really enjoyed the show. Mr Grace­less seemed a lit­tle more ner­vous than I’d ever seen them before, but they still played a solid set. They reminded me a lot of Nir­vana, until they opened their mouths at which point they sounded a lit­tle like Super­grass. Basi­cally, they sounded like an unpol­ished cam­pus rock group who have got­ten really far, which is exactly what they are. They’re going places, that’s for sure, but they’ve got a lot of time before they are any­where near the cal­iber of the other two bands that took the stage that night.

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This was one of the best gigs I’ve seen in Bei­jing, and I defy the rest of the year to offer me one that will top it. It often hap­pens that my favorite gigs of the year hap­pen in Jan­u­ary. I don’t know why it hap­pens, but the result is that it leaves me feel­ing that there’s noth­ing that could be bet­ter for the next twelve months. Of course, noth­ing will stop me con­tin­u­ing to go to gigs, but this was way up there on my list of favorites.

To begin with, we got there right on time (ie, miss­ing the open­ing act). They were on stage when we arrived, but there’s no way we missed any­thing because I got to hear all of the songs from their EP and Douban pages. The place was packed but not uncom­fort­ably so, and the crowd was enthu­si­as­tic with­out being obnox­ious. With that starter infor­ma­tion out of the way — along with not­ing that the sound was good, at least com­pared to the hor­ror story of last week — I can get to list­ing the rather long list of high­lights for a gig with only one artist.

Eas­ily, the biggest high­light was the pro­posal that took place mid-gig. Yes, that’s right, a mar­riage pro­posal. Perdel has a song called “08年我们结婚” (We Got Mar­ried in ’08), and before play­ing it the lead singer was grin­ning at some­one in the crowd and said, “we’ve got some­one here who wants to talk to his girl­friend of ten years… to ask for her hand in mar­riage… just wait a minute, we’ve got some­thing appro­pri­ate to go with it” and started in on the song. Every­one sang along, and after the cho­rus, the guy got on stage and intro­duced his girl­friend to the crowd. She was appro­pri­ately hor­ri­fied, of course, as she got on stage and he showed the ring to the crowd and got on one knee. Of course she said yes, and they hugged and kissed, and it was adorable, and the song con­tin­ued as a sing-along. Fol­lowed by some spir­ited crowd-surfing by the key­boardist. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a pro­posal at a gig before, and while I’m not sure it’s for me, it was a great moment.

How­ever, after that, the best moments were tightly packed into the “encore” part of the evening. I have a the­ory about the encore, though, and it’s that they don’t really want to end with their song “再见” (Good­bye), so they just put it near the end and pre­tend they the rest is an encore. They didn’t even go off stage to fake an encore!

Any­way, the next biggest high­light for me was prob­a­bly the solo done by the drum­mer. It wasn’t a par­tic­u­larly amaz­ing song, but it really brought out the stark dif­fer­ences in per­son­al­ity between the dif­fer­ent band mem­bers, and for me those dynam­ics are really impor­tant in a gig. It also reminded every­one why the front man is the front man — even from behind the drums, he shone and gave some­thing to the back­ing vocals. The crowd was really encour­ag­ing, too, which was really nice. Even crowds full of fans can be asses about things like this and talk all the way through, but this crowd was fairly silent and sang along to the ‘woo-wooah’s at the end.

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