A Beijing-based music and gig review blog

I stand by my ear­lier state­ment that there have been too many bat­tle of the bands in Bei­jing lately, but I will say that this par­tic­u­lar night at the Tiger Trans­late show was well worth the exis­tence of another bat­tle in the fray. It was my first time going to Mako Live­house; actu­ally, let me admit that the whole night was an excuse to see Perdel again, and it was just handy that they were play­ing for the last time dur­ing their Tiger Trans­late stint at Mako Live­house. Mako — for those of you who haven’t been there — isn’t nearly as daunt­ingly hard to find as you might imag­ine it to be. You sim­ply get out at Shuangjing sta­tion Exit C, walk in the direc­tion you pop out (east) until you get to the Car­refour. There, you don’t take the large road going south, but the smaller one just east of it, and even­tu­ally on your left you’ll see some­thing that looks like a park­ing lot. Behold, Mako Livehouse!

Inside, Mako looks a bit like Tango Third Floor — or, for peo­ple who haven’t been there either — a con­crete ware­house. How­ever, Mako is smaller than Tango (but big­ger than Mao, for another con­crete venue com­par­i­son), and though it def­i­nitely feels like some­where they fourth wall is well in place, it’s more inti­mate than Tango. I liked it, though I prob­a­bly just liked the fact that they waived the 70RMB cover charge because we’d missed three of the bands. Lit­tle did the door staff know that the only bands we would want to see were yet to come.

We arrived in the mid­dle of some announce­ments made by some very sparkly and coiffed hosts, got some beers (15RMB for Tiger, obvi­ously; not bad), and waited for the next band. We thought we had missed every­thing except for Perdel, but the band that came on stage next was a band called Loco­mo­tive Gen­tle­men. The lead singer (pic­tured above) was the spit­ting image of a Japan­ese actor, which amused me all the way to the end of their set, but that’s not why I enjoyed them. Their music was just the brand of indie Britpop-style rock that I enjoy, and they had a great pres­ence on stage. It didn’t sur­prise me that they were still stand­ing by the semi-finals, along with other names that I’ve been hear­ing around the cir­cuit for ages.

Then came the vot­ing, which was done by indus­try folk, none of whose names or com­pa­nies I man­aged to catch. The four bands were Loco­mo­tive Gen­tle­men, Hell City, Emit­ter, and Pre­cip­i­ta­tion. Emit­ter got the most votes by far, and along with who­ever else won the semi-final rounds will be headed to the finale this Fri­day at Tango Third Floor. I was a lit­tle upset for my new­found favorite band, but I’m sure I’ll see them again before long.

Finally, Perdel took the stage. They were as good as they ever are, ener­getic and enter­tain­ing and engag­ing of a crowd who had very clearly been drink­ing 15RMB Tiger beers since 8:30. I was slightly dis­ap­pointed by the change of lyrics to one of their new songs (the name of which may or may be “I had a tree and I made it beau­ti­ful”), but that’s mostly because I wasn’t able to sing along like the fan­girl I am. They played a solid set, though, and then my gig part­ner and I had a lovely time stand­ing around out­side watch­ing the bands pack up their cars and leave with their girlfriends.

Okay, so the show wasn’t actu­ally called “Sum­mer Lovin’”, but it may as well have been. The tick­ets had the reg­u­lar door/pre-sale divi­sion, but if you came as a cou­ple your tick­ets were a hair cheaper than get­ting them pre-sale. There was a whole video sec­tion after the first act enti­tled 我们永远不分手/We Will Never Break Up, with videos from the bands talk­ing about what love means to them inter­spersed with ran­dom cou­ples say­ing the catch­phrase (我们永远不分手). It was all com­pletely sac­cha­rine, but then maybe I’m just cynical.

Hon­estly, the rea­son I went was to catch Perdel again. I know, I should really make room in my review reper­toire for some new peo­ple, but there’s just some­thing about see­ing a par­tic­u­lar band so many times that you know their act almost as well as they do. And Perdel is an enter­tain­ing show. As I’ve said before, there’s some­thing impor­tant about hav­ing a proper lead­ing man, and Perdel has that in Mao Chuan, in spades. He’s charm­ing, enter­tain­ing, and engages the audi­ence. This time around, because of the theme of the show, he got all the guys in the audi­ence to hug the girl on their left, whether or not they knew each other. I’m not really one for stunts like that, so I hugged the girl friend I was stand­ing to the right of (though, in ret­ro­spect, that prob­a­bly embar­rassed me more than let­ting a stranger hug me). Which isn’t to say that the oth­ers in the band aren’t great per­form­ers, but with­out that strong leader in front, I think Perdel would be pretty lost.

But before Perdel was Gao Shan, a solo singer-songwriter with a lovely lilt­ing voice, per­form­ing with her friend on gui­tar. I’m on record as say­ing that you have to be some­thing excep­tional to impress me as a singer-songwriter, and espe­cially as a female vocal­ist, but there was at least one song that caught my atten­tion about Gao Shan. Unfor­tu­nately, it was the one she intro­duced as out­side her usual style; there was some­thing a lit­tle edgier about this par­tic­u­lar song than the rest, which was pretty generic female singer-songwriter. There has to be some­thing a lit­tle off about a female singer-songwriter for me to truly enjoy her music, but Gao Shan was a lit­tle too pitch-perfect.

Unfor­tu­nately, that’s where my night ended, miss­ing Jacky Danny (though he was meant to per­form between Gao Shan and Perdel) and Mao Yige, but hard rock and rap aren’t nec­es­sar­ily my favorite gen­res. Hope­fully next time I won’t need to leave early!

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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Before I get stuck into the review of the bands I saw at this year’s Mod­ern Sky, I’d just like to say that, across the board this was a far bet­ter effort than last year. Even though Chaoyang Park was much closer to me per­son­ally, and despite the fact — or per­haps because of it — that Mod­ern Sky has put on more fes­ti­vals this year that I’m sur­prised any­one on their staff can still stand let alone set up stages and stalls, this one went off with­out a hitch. The hor­ren­dous lin­ing up issues that we expe­ri­enced at Straw­berry ear­lier this year weren’t present at all, either, and though they’d run out of sched­ule book­lets to hand out on the third day, every­thing else seemed to work out just fine. There was beer, good weather, and great atmos­phere — what more could you ask for?

Well, here’s what I got:

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