A Beijing-based music and gig review blog

If you haven’t been pay­ing atten­tion to the Split Works lineup for JUE Fes­ti­val this year, you’re miss­ing out. Not only on some great shows dur­ing the offi­cial fes­ti­val time­line (March 9–25), but also this weekend’s show, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart. If read­ing the arti­cle I linked to there doesn’t make you want to get up and get to Yugong Yis­han this week­end, take a lis­ten to their stuff at MySpace, which has been behav­ing itself lately. They’re one of the bet­ter exam­ples of indie pop I’ve heard in a while, with a won­der­ful 80s style to them, mak­ing them feel like a curi­ous revamp of The Cure. Plus, open­ing for them is Chi­nese indie pop won­ders, The Life Journey.

Get pre-sale tick­ets in the fol­low­ing var­i­ous ways:
预售热线 Ticket Hotline：1870 113 3908 （Mon.–Fri., 10am-6pm / EN & CN）
预售方式 Pre­sale Avail­able From：
1. 淘宝 Taobao：http://shop34274764.taobao.com/
2. 愚公移山 Yugong Yishan（Mon.–Sun., 5 pm–midnight）
3. 可百尼尼Crêpanini（Mon.–Sun., 9 am–midnight）地址Address：三里屯北路81号那里花园1层酒吧街对面 1/F, Nali Patio, 81 San­l­i­tun Beilu

For me, this felt like a very trun­cated ver­sion of the Straw­berry Fes­ti­val. Last year, I went all three days and while the ticket lines were a night­mare on day one, I gen­er­ally felt pretty good about it. I think that watch­ing the slow dete­ri­o­ra­tion of all the per­fect prepa­ra­tion that goes into a fes­ti­val area is almost as fun as catch­ing the bands. The flip side of that is that when you turn up on day three where everything’s tram­pled and dirty, you don’t feel like you were a part of mak­ing it that way, and it all just feels… unsanitary.

None of this was helped by the alco­hol ban that I didn’t hear about until I got there. I don’t like get­ting drunk off my face at fes­ti­vals, but I like to have a beer on a hot day in the park, so I really dis­liked the ban. Of course, peo­ple still got their beer, and by the time the sun started set­ting, one of the stalls behind the love stage and some enter­pris­ing ayi man­aged to smug­gle in enough beer for who­ever heard about it.

I’m sure the cheng­guan had their rea­sons for the ban — how­ever unfounded they might be — but I won­der if any­one will ever learn that putting rules like that up at a chaotic fes­ti­val? Isn’t really going to work. I went to a fes­ti­val with camp­grounds in Aus­tralia one year where this group of guys had taped goon sacks to them­selves to smug­gle alco­hol on the grounds. Oth­ers filled sham­poo bot­tles with vodka. And that was just because they were stingy bas­tards; there was alco­hol at the fes­ti­val! Never under­es­ti­mate the population’s cre­ativ­ity when it comes to get­ting alco­hol with their music.

In other things non-music related, I was really unim­pressed with the food choices this time around. I gen­er­ally love fes­ti­val food, and China does it really well, but this time just sucked. There were life­less sand­wiches and spaghetti, the oblig­a­tory chuan’r and rou­ji­amo meat sand­wiches, but even the noo­dle choices were unin­spir­ing. Where’s my quail egg chuan’r??

The com­bi­na­tion of turn­ing up late and hav­ing to explore the grounds didn’t make for the best music-seeing expe­ri­ence, I must admit, but I did get to see some solid favorite acts of mine. First were Life Jour­ney. I went down to the front-ish for a while, but after get­ting burned in the sun and wind, and real­iz­ing that they were going into the bal­lad sec­tion of the show, I moved back. I’m not dig­ging their cur­rent sound as much as I used to; it’s all feel­ing a lit­tle bor­ing to me, so I hope they make some upbeat tracks soon.

Later on was Zhou Yun­peng, the blind folk artist who seems to have cap­tured everyone’s heart. Last year he per­formed at the smaller Love Stage, but this year he was at the main stage, the Straw­berry Stage. The crowd was incred­i­ble, and the dif­fer­ence was clear. Last year, every­one sat in front of the stage qui­etly with some peo­ple in the back stand­ing on the con­crete. This year, the crowd stretched on for ages, every­one stand­ing and singing along. It was inspiring.

I also got to see all of Hang­gai’s per­for­mance, which reminded me just how much I love them. I was with a friend of a friend from Mon­go­lia, and he said they were kitschy and he didn’t like them because they were just revamp­ing old folk tunes and doing noth­ing orig­i­nal. While I think it’s a valid point, that doesn’t negate the fact that Hang­gai rocks. They have an incred­i­ble stage pres­ence and energy that just doesn’t show any­where else. Their recorded tracks might be great, but their live per­for­mance is where it’s at. No won­der they’re tour­ing the world these days.

We capped off the evening with a brief look-in at the Queen Sea Big Shark per­for­mance, which was as much flash­ing lights and bright red cos­tumed as you’d expect it to be. They’re play­ing to such huge audi­ences at these fes­ti­vals, it never ceases to amaze me that they can play smaller venues with­out a hitch.

Unfor­tu­nately, I didn’t get to see a lot of the minor acts, but I did enjoy the inclu­sion of the Tai­wan stage. When I sat down on the grass near it to eat lunch, I didn’t know what stage it was (by day three, almost all the flags were taken down from hav­ing been ripped by the wind), but as soon as the young woman on stage started singing, I knew that it was the Tai­wan stage. Nobody makes adorable indie pop quite like the Taiwanese.

On the whole, I would def­i­nitely say that I enjoyed myself. There were some draw­backs, atmos­pher­i­cally, but the music was still good, as was the com­pany, so we made the best of it. And some­times, just hav­ing some­one to bitch with about not hav­ing any beer is just as enter­tain­ing as shar­ing a beer with them.

I have to apol­o­gize for not get­ting this review out there ear­lier, and for the fact that this is going to be very trun­cated, but here we are now. I have to say that Music Fun­hill was a very inter­est­ing music fes­ti­val to be at, in a meta sort of way. Look­ing at it as part of a hand­ful of music fes­ti­vals I have been to, it had good points and draw­backs that were dif­fer­ent from the oth­ers I’ve been to, which all amounted to an expe­ri­ence that felt… well, more inter­est­ing than any­thing else.

First of all, let me go through the music I saw there. Because I couldn’t miss work on the Tues­day to get out for SuperVC (believe me, I was totally gut­ted), I picked the Wednes­day to head out with a friend. Because of sched­ul­ing hic­cups or some­thing, we missed the first two acts that I wanted to see, Spar­row and Steely Heart. So the first act up was The Life Jour­ney, who did not dis­ap­point. They played a lovely set, though I do recall that it was full of a lot of their slower songs which made the whole thing… drag a lit­tle, espe­cially to some­one like me who has seen them many times before.

Next band we saw was Perdel. This was my first time see­ing Perdel, and they were a rev­e­la­tion. I’d heard their name bandied about before, but never really gone out of my way to lis­ten to their tracks or see them per­form — the one chance I had, at Straw­berry ear­lier this year, was foiled by ticket sna­fus. I was greatly impressed by them, though. I really liked their music, liked the lead singer’s voice, and imme­di­ately couldn’t wait to see them again at Mod­ern Sky Festival.

After that was Free The Birds, which my friend and I watched from the food stalls, fairly far away from the stage but still within hear­ing dis­tance. They were quite good, putting on an ener­getic and enthu­si­as­tic show that we could feel and appre­ci­ate from a great distance.

We stuck around for Hang on the Box, too, but they weren’t as amaz­ing as we’d hoped. They were punky chicks, that’s for sure, but there was some­thing whiny and annoy­ing to the lead vocalist’s voice, and the rest of the band just sort of looked bored. I was inter­ested to know how immensely cold the lead singer was, though, wear­ing a mini skirt in the freez­ing night.

How­ever, the high­light of the show is unfor­tu­nately an act that I have not been able to track down. They were a lit­tle folk act that played on the Daisy Stage, which never got a lineup released before the fes­ti­val started. It was the band in the photo above — an adorable two-piece folk out­fit. The girl’s name was An, but I’ve for­got­ten the guy’s name. They were incred­i­ble and I’d really love to hear more of them, but with­out any infor­ma­tion on them I fear it’s going to be a wild goose chase. If any­one knows, from the photo and descrip­tion, please let me know!

And that’s all I really have to say about the bands. What I appre­ci­ated about this fes­ti­val, and what was really inter­est­ing to me, was the whole orga­ni­za­tion of it. The buses from the city (just east of Guo Mao sta­tion) ran smoothly and eas­ily. I prob­a­bly waited for half an hour to leave, which passed fairly well talk­ing to a friend. The bus ride was another half an hour or so, which wasn’t too bad once we got out of the city — it was inter­est­ing to see a new side of Bei­jing as we drove away from it. Then, while it took a lit­tle ask­ing where to buy the tick­ets (because we appar­ently couldn’t see the GIANT signs in front of our faces), but there were so many staff around every­where that it was easy to ask. We got our tick­ets, went inside, and most of the time was spent wan­der­ing around.

Who knows what hap­pened to the sched­ul­ing of the first two bands, and I will admit that the fact that they were a bit off the whole day con­tributed to my leav­ing the place early, but hon­estly it didn’t really mat­ter. Wan­der­ing the grounds was fun in and of itself, see­ing the local peo­ple peer­ing over the walls, tak­ing pho­tos with the var­i­ous peo­ple employed to dress up as Dis­ney char­ac­ters or renais­sance mas­quer­ade ball-goers, and just breath­ing in the fresh air.

A final men­tion should go to the food stalls. There was your reg­u­lar giant chuanr and noo­dles, but there were a few great inclu­sions at Music Fun­hill that I loved — Korean fat noo­dles, quail egg chuanr, and some much-appreciated warm drinks. It was all highly enjoyed at din­ner time, espe­cially on such a cold evening.

Over­all, the main impres­sions I came away with were: well-organized, highly (over-?) staffed, but almost… what’s the point? They started the fes­ti­val on a day every­one still had school and work (and it rained), and for the rest of the time they seemed like they were mak­ing up time and spent energy. Still, I enjoyed the few bands I saw (and the frus­tra­tion of find­ing one but not know­ing their name!) and had a nice time in a big empty field away from the pol­lu­tion of the city.

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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I’m always a lit­tle wary when it comes to see­ing a ben­e­fit con­cert. There seems to be a lot of hype around them with­out much sub­stance; the bands brought out are either too small to rec­og­nize or too large to be acces­si­ble for the aver­age punter but this show was dif­fer­ent. An effort by the Chi­nese Red Cross Foun­da­tion, this series of con­certs through­out Bei­jing were staged to raise money and aware­ness for chil­dren with con­gen­i­tal heart dis­ease. There was a show on Thurs­day at Star Live with Ashura and Caffe Latte, and one next Fri­day at Yugong Yis­han with JOMO, Gem­ini, and Gala. The event I chose to attend, how­ever, was the Fri­day night Star Live show with Future Bicy­cle and The Life Journey.

To start off with, the show had a pretty good turn-out. While the crowd wasn’t what you’d describe as “pumped”, they were all watch­ing and enjoy­ing the music in their own quiet way. There were barely any peo­ple drink­ing, hardly any smok­ing, and I’m pretty sure myself and my gig part­ners were the only for­eign­ers there. Whether that’s because I didn’t see this event adver­tised any­where on the reg­u­lar for­eigner chan­nels (except for the Bei­jing Gig Guide, of course), or because for­eign­ers were dis­cour­aged by the con­fus­ing “how much to donate” ques­tion (which was very sim­ple; Y50 was your base dona­tion but if you donated Y100 you got a set of signed post­cards by all the groups), I’m not entirely sure. Either way, it was inter­est­ing to be treated like a VIP, get­ting your photo taken as you came through the door and with your dona­tion card, just because you’re a for­eigner with her ear to the ground.

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