A Beijing-based music and gig review blog

First up, a dis­claimer. I got a free ticket to this show through a friend. I prob­a­bly wouldn’t have paid the full 260RMB for the expe­ri­ence, but I might have paid the 180RMB pre-sale price. I had never heard of British Sea Power before, and wasn’t par­tic­u­larly inter­ested in them, and I find a 260RMB price tag a lit­tle too much for a band that isn’t going to pack out the place with all the fans they have (and British Sea Power didn’t). Just because a band is for­eign and vis­it­ing for a fes­ti­val (they’re play­ing Ocean Midi this week­end) doesn’t mean they nec­es­sar­ily deserve such a high ticket price, and I think it dis­cour­ages Chi­nese peo­ple who might have been more inclined to check out a for­eign band — espe­cially with the epic Chi­nese opener they had.

Set­ting aside ticket prices, though, I have to say I was most excited to get to see Muma & Third Party again. I first caught a glimpse of Muma at Straw­berry Fes­ti­val 2010, and I was deeply impressed even after hear­ing only three songs. Of course, I fool­ishly never bought his CD, but that will def­i­nitely change now that I have seen them again. As I said more than a year ago, Muma is an intense per­former, and being so close to the stage this time was such a treat. Their music is the best kind of dark rock, heavy and gothic with­out being com­pletely oppres­sive, and I enjoyed it immensely. One thing that did con­fuse me was that there were back­ing vocals and extra instru­ments for which there was no expla­na­tion, and dur­ing the set I thought it was a bit taste­less that he use a back­ing track rather than get a full band, but I was relieved to find out after­wards that there was a guy behind the mix­ing table mak­ing all these sounds hap­pen. I can only assume that his pres­ence on stage with his com­puter would have ruined the aes­thetic of the per­for­mance, and while that’s prob­a­bly true, they could have just stuck him in the cor­ner, not invis­i­ble behind the mix­ing table. Any­way, I thor­oughly enjoyed myself, and his forty minute set was exactly as long as I wanted it to be.

British Sea Power, on the other hand, I didn’t care for very much. Which is strange, because given my taste in music they fit the bill: upbeat indie rock with cutely quirky band mem­bers. How­ever, after about six songs, they started to all sound the same, and it’s music I’ve heard before already. As I said to those I went with, I prob­a­bly ruined it for myself by lis­ten­ing to my favorite cutely quirky upbeat indie rock band before I arrived, but Muma should have cleansed my palate and left it ready for some great indie rock. What­ever the case, British Sea Power didn’t impress me at all. And to make things worse, they played for nearly an hour and a half. When songs start to sound the same after half an hour, you don’t want to have to stand through another hour of it. So instead, I lis­tened to what I wanted to, and then went and had road beers with a like-minded friend.

Photo from 草央♥ on Douban

Straw­berry Fes­ti­val was, quite sim­ply, an amaz­ingly good time. There are things I would change but there are more things I wouldn’t, and cou­pled with the good luck of the first warm sunny days we have had in this city since, oh, Sep­tem­ber last year, it made for one of the best music fes­ti­val expe­ri­ences of my life. And I don’t say that lightly.

But of course, a three-day fes­ti­val is far too long to sum up, so here I’ll give you the high­lights from each day, fol­lowed at the end by some things to remem­ber. If I missed any­thing, or if any atten­dees read­ing have a dif­fer­ent opin­ion, I encour­age every­one to com­ment! Fes­ti­vals are large places, and every­one expe­ri­ences the same days dif­fer­ently, so please! Com­ment away.

So with­out fur­ther ado… a Read More link. (Because this got way too long.)
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