A Beijing-based music and gig review blog

Okay, first up, and I real­ize this will strip me of most of my cred but that’s okay with me, but this was my first time head­ing to Old What? Bar. I have no idea really what kept me back so long, but I am so glad I went. Not only is it actu­ally really easy to get to in a cab (unlike cer­tain other bars on the east side of the For­bid­den City), but the space is won­der­fully small, the crowd enthu­si­as­tic and the bar staff wel­com­ing. It’s tiny and cramped and the “back­stage” area for the bands is marked only by a big green flag, but it’s got a great vibe. It def­i­nitely adheres to a rule I’ve been think­ing might be true for a while: in Bei­jing, the smaller the venue, the bet­ter the vibe.

Cred-ruining con­fes­sions aside, we got to the show after the first act — a new band called Lit­tle Fast Hand (小快手) — had played. Maybe after they play a few more gigs I’ll be able to catch them. Sec­ond up was Bai Jin (白金), which I had lis­tened to on Douban ear­lier and thought… well, very lit­tle of, to be hon­est. How­ever, as with a lot of Bei­jing acts, he was way bet­ter live than recorded. It’s really quite impres­sive that he does the whole act him­self, and he’s a very high-energy per­former, for just being one dude and a recorded synth track. He was dressed all in black with his trade­mark black sun­glasses, and belted out the songs enthu­si­as­ti­cally. Check him out on Douban and try to get your­self to a live show, you won’t regret it.

Finally, next up was Pacalolo. As with their gig at D-22, they started out with their bizarrely catchy Big Brother is Watch­ing U, which has all the mak­ings of an elec­tronic dance rock track, except with the lyrics “big brother is watch­ing you” threaded through­out. The crowd loves this song, though, and even though it’s not my favorite, it def­i­nitely tick­les my sense of the absurd every time I hear it. Other high­lights included their great cover of Daddy Cool, and of course KTV Nation and Pacalolo Remix (it’s all in the clap­ping). How­ever, the crowd favorite is and prob­a­bly will always be I Like All the Beers, which they def­i­nitely need to record in some for­mat soon because it’s a bril­liant and catchy song that I found myself singing three days later. I boot­legged it, with pretty good results, but the unfor­tu­nate thing about record­ing dur­ing a gig is that you get all the crowd’s chat­ter. Nov­elty songs aside, I hope these three save a few kuai and put out an EP because I would buy at least five of them to send home to friends.

All in all, a thor­oughly enjoy­able night of elec­tronic rock tracks at a great new venue. Check out all of the things I’ve men­tioned, because they’re all totally worth it. And finally, a use­less but rel­e­vant fact: pacalolo is the Hawi­ian word for mar­i­juana. Take that one to your trivia night!

If I didn’t already think that the JUE fes­ti­val was a great idea, this gig bring­ing one of Shanghai’s best bands to the cap­i­tal sealed the deal. It’s not often that Bei­jing and Shang­hai coop­er­ate and let their tal­ent cross the other city’s bor­ders, but that’s part of what makes JUE such a great con­cept. Shang­hai has a lot of tal­ent to offer, and if this gig was any­thing to go by, it makes me want to head to the Paris of the East for a week­end just to check out their under­ground scene.

But I’m get­ting ahead of myself.

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I have had the mis­for­tune this win­ter to always man­age to choose the cold­est night of the week to head out to D-22, and last night was no excep­tion. At least this time, I made the trip by taxi and not train, but the fact still remains. Unlike pre­vi­ous chilly nights out Wudaokou way, though, there was no draft inside D-22. There was no room for a draft, as it seemed like every punk rock fan in the area had got­ten sick of there being no gigs for two weeks in a row and had packed into the tiny lit­tle area. It was great, though, and just how I like my venues — packed to the rafters with no emer­gency exit strat­egy. The extra level of dan­ger adds a cer­tain je ne sais quoi to the evening.

Fire safety codes aside, the night went well. I arrived towards the end of Fat City’s set which, to be hon­est, worked out well. “Exper­i­men­tal noise” is not a genre I can very eas­ily get into, and I’m sorry to say that see­ing it per­formed live didn’t help its case at all. They did make some inter­est­ing sounds, and when­ever a song started out I was inspired to lis­ten, but after four min­utes of effec­tively the same sounds being manip­u­lated, with­out lyrics to accom­pany them, I was far more inter­ested in my beer and my gig mate than the music.

Then, just before 11PM, Our­self Beside Me was up. I’d heard of the band a while ago, back when I first found out that D-22 had given rise to the Maybe Mars record label and was check­ing out all the bands that called the venue their home. I ran into them again when look­ing up Hang On The Box and see­ing where the mem­bers had gone after­wards, but I had never both­ered lis­ten­ing to their music since I never saw them listed as play­ing in Bei­jing. As soon as they took the stage, though, drain­ing their beers before they started to play, I knew I was in for a good show. Read more

Before I get stuck into this gig review, I should men­tion yet again (I think this is the third time) this arti­cle at Neocha EDGE. It explains both Nancheng Brother and the tra­di­tion of crosstalk, which is a form of comedic per­for­mance that can be found all around China — most often for us for­eign­ers, as some strange fast-talking radio play that makes your taxi dri­ver split his sides and swerve on the road. This is what makes Nancheng Brother both inter­est­ing and valu­able as a group — the crosstalk. Sure, it’s slightly inac­ces­si­ble to the for­eign punter — even if you speak Chi­nese bet­ter than most, humor is by far the last fron­tier of lan­guage learn­ing — but it’s impor­tant that such a group exists. I can’t speak for Chi­nese peo­ple, but I would imag­ine that with­out groups like Nancheng Brother, crosstalk would grow old and stale (as it has done pre­vi­ously, in its long tra­di­tion), eas­ily being for­got­ten in a world of col­or­ful vari­ety show humor and rehashed West­ern rock and roll. By revamp­ing both tra­di­tional music and crosstalk, they’re bring­ing a tra­di­tion back into the vocab­u­lary of Chi­nese youth, which is an admirable and, in many ways, impor­tant thing to do.

All that said, the gig last night was great. Packed to the rafters with young Chi­nese peo­ple (not a taxi dri­ver to be seen), Jiangjin­jiu was alive. The show was billed as the band’s first unplugged show. (It wasn’t, really, of course; there were still mics and an elec­tric bass gui­tar, but points for try­ing.) It was meant to bring a sense of close­ness with the band, and I think that Jiangjin­jiu was the per­fect place for it. Not only is the venue small and inti­mate even on a quiet night, but it pos­i­tively thrums with life when it’s stuffed full of happy, tipsy pun­ters enjoy­ing some great music and bril­liant com­edy. It was well worth the 50RMB for stand­ing room only tick­ets, even if we had to stand by the door and watch over other people’s heads.

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A friend of mine has this super­sti­tion that what­ever you are doing, how­ever you are feel­ing as one year ticks over to the next, that is the way your com­ing year will be. I’m not sure I sub­scribe to it entirely (though, look­ing back on pre­vi­ous years, it’s been true on more than one occa­sion), but hope­fully this year it will stick for me. This year at mid­night, I was feel­ing slightly drunk on more Tsing Tao’s than I’d pre­fer to admit to, in between amaz­ing live music acts, chat­ting with my new best friends by the bar at Mao Live. If that is a pre­mo­ni­tion of what is to come for me in 2010, I can more than get behind that.

For me, choos­ing a New Year’s gig was a no-brainer. There were a few good line­ups out there, but Mao Live had three of my favorite Bei­jing bands in one place, and three oth­ers I’d only heard good things about. To say that the Y100 was worth it would be a gross under­state­ment; it con­tended for favorite gig of 2009, and only lost the title by a hair.

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