A Beijing-based music and gig review blog

This week­end saw the unveil­ing of two new things in the Bei­jing live music venue scenes: the ren­o­va­tions at Dos Kole­gas, and the new Maybe Mars space at Di’anmen. I was lucky (and maybe just crazy) enough to get around to see­ing both first-hand.

First up, the ren­o­va­tions at Dos Kole­gas. They’ve taken over the old bath­room area in the front and extended back­stage, with room for more instru­ments and — just a guess — booze. The bath­room sink area next to it has been turned into a bar, but was empty on Fri­day; appar­ently it will play host to food events, like when they bring in a sac­ri­fi­cial lamb. Unfor­tu­nately for the wall­flow­ers amongst us, they’ve boarded up that door­way at the side of the stage, which means no more side-view pho­tos. The good news, though, is the new toi­lets. Even though there wasn’t any run­ning water on the first night, they still proved to be a step up. They’re squat toi­lets, and though there are male and female des­ig­na­tions, they’re func­tion­ally uni­sex. It might not be any cleaner, but then, what’s Dos Kole­gas with­out a lit­tle messy bath­room action?

Sec­ondly, there’s the “Unnamed Space” at the cor­ner of all the Di’anmens. The Sally Can’t Dance fes­ti­val went down really well, and their lit­tle unnamed space at Di’anmen is really lovely. It’s hid­den behind the most pop­u­lar chest­nut roaster in town, and though there was noth­ing in there but some quilts on the walls for sound­proof­ing, I’m pretty sure it’s going to be awe­some. There are plans to keep it open dur­ing the day as well, with per­haps a cafe space at the front, a record store, and any­thing else they can fit in. The bar area looked small, but even if you habit­u­ally can’t a drink back there, the space is very close to a handy 7/11. Which, it shall be noted, was cleared of all the cheap 500ml cans of beer by the end of Sunday.

All in all, venues look like they’re on the up and up. All we need is Yugong Yis­han to do some­thing about their sound sys­tem and Mao to do some­thing about their ven­ti­la­tion and cool­ing for the sum­mer and we’ll be pretty much set, gig-goers.

Good news, every­one! Ditan Folk Fes­ti­val is back on this year, and the lineup is just as good. Some high­lights include: Shan Ren (my all time favorites), Ma Tiao, Xiao He, Wan Xiaoli, and a bunch of locally inter­na­tional acts. Check out the whole list below the cut; I’ve got links to all the artist pages I can, and will be updat­ing the gig guide accordingly.

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Mod­ern Sky just sent out a spec­tac­u­lar EDM about their bands’ upcom­ing trips over­seas, so I thought I would pass on the news. While this blog is about bands play­ing in Bei­jing, I sup­port get­ting more Chi­nese music out to the rest of the world, and the fol­low­ing Mod­ern Sky groups are really tak­ing on the world.

First of all, they men­tioned the Re-TROS/Gang of Four tour in Aus­tralia, which has been reported on in for­eign media such as Faster Louder (a favorite site of mine back in Aus­tralia), The Vine, and The Dwarf. And if you have a VPN, you can also check out a pod­cast inter­view with FBi’s Radi­ant (this page also con­tains a pod­cast with my ex-boyfriend’s band, creep­ily enough). They got some great write-ups, and as much as Re-TROS is not my thing, I’m really happy for them and for what it means for Chi­nese bands to follow.

Next, they announce that Queen Sea Big Shark will be head­ing to SXSW this year! They will be per­form­ing four times, at the IODA, Mike Galaxy/Band, Bill­board Mag­a­zine and Rolling Stone Show­cases. Con­verse is foot­ing their bill. Their new promo pic­ture is amaz­ing and I can’t wait to hear the recep­tion they get out of Texas.

Then, some­thing we also already knew, that New Pants will be play­ing at Coachella this year. They’ll be head­ing up against some big names like The Strokes, Kanye West, Duran Duran, PJ Har­vey, and much more. I’ll be inter­ested to see reviews of this one. The EDM also men­tioned that there will be New York gigs announced soon, so I’ll keep my eyes open for that.

Last but not least, they revealed that Hedge­hog will be going on tour in the US with Xiu Xiu in Sep­tem­ber. This isn’t sur­pris­ing, as Xiu Xiu has been friends of Mod­ern Sky fes­ti­vals for ages. Hedge­hog has been over to the States before, so it will be inter­est­ing to see if they get a sim­i­larly warm wel­come this time.

A cou­ple of weeks ago, Jake Newby posted a link to a New York Times video cov­er­ing a bunch of Chi­nese music fes­ti­vals — every­thing from Midi to Zebra to Mod­ern Sky. He wrote it off as cliche, and while I think in ways it was, I think it’s also a pretty good over­all intro­duc­tion to the indie music scene and the way it’s com­ing to be accepted — in very small ways — by the gen­eral pop­u­la­tion and the gov­ern­ment. I mostly say so because I recently found the accom­pa­ny­ing arti­cle, which gets into a bit more detail on the mat­ter. It still rests largely on a lot of broad gen­er­al­iza­tions, but I think most of it is pretty fair. It doesn’t go into the his­tory of rock music in China, but it presents the scene at large as it stands at the moment. Of course, there’s still a long way to go for a lot of China — read­ing over at Andy’s blog about what the expo has done to the Shang­hai scene makes me glad to live in Bei­jing — but it does point to the chang­ing views. Yes, accep­tance is cur­rently ten­ta­tive, based on how much money can be made from it, but it’s a step. Things change slowly, not overnight.

Any­way, I’m not much of an ana­lyst, but I’d rec­om­mend read­ing it to get a gen­eral view of the chang­ing view and stance of the gov­ern­ment on rock music in China.

Accord­ing to this arti­cle on Jinghua, Mao Live­house was shut down last Fri­day due to breaches of fire safety codes.

I didn’t read the arti­cle per­fectly thor­oughly, but it doesn’t seem to men­tion when they will reopen. What I do know is that at least this weekend’s gigs (which included what was going to be the Gig of the Week) are can­celled. I’ll be keep­ing an eye on Douban as things unfold, but all I can tell for the moment is that every­one is pissed off.

And this right after Shanghai’s Mao Live­house was put on demo­li­tion notice? There’s prob­a­bly no con­nec­tion, but all in all it doesn’t seem to have been a good week for the Mao Live­house name.

My first reac­tion? Even I could have told you Mao was break­ing fire safety codes. As one Douban mem­ber astutely put it, “maybe the owner didn’t have enough guanxi…”