A Beijing-based music and gig review blog

The month of JUE March started off with a bang, with an epic show send­ing off some of Beijing’s most-loved bands. I skipped out on most of the show, since all I really wanted to see was the new Rus­tic lineup, but it was packed with pun­ters and that’s always a good thing. Rus­tic was great as usual, though there really is some­thing to be said for the dynamic that Ricky and Lucifer had on stage. I think Ricky leav­ing, while the right choice for him artis­ti­cally, hurts both bands a little.

When 2 Kole­gas re-opened after the epic win­ter months, it was fit­ting that it was a Ningxia night. I really didn’t care who was on the lineup, though it was all the old faves — Buyi, Wu & The Side-Effects, WHAI, Lidong. I think I just spent most of the evening wan­der­ing around say­ing how much I had missed 2 Kolegas…

The Sally Can’t Dance exper­i­men­tal fes­ti­val was held over two days at “the new D-22″ at Di’anmen, which made it dou­bly as inter­est­ing as it would have been by itself. I posted about the space, but the music was great as well. I went for the sec­ond, less harsh noise day and really enjoyed myself, and was happy to dis­cover that Li Daiguo’s music was just as amaz­ing as every­one had always told me.

Con­tin­u­ing in the theme of Sally Can’t Dance, the first JUE event I attended was the Tea Rocker’s Quin­tet, which was just as amaz­ing as you’d imag­ine a band with Xiao He, Li Daiguo and Yan Jun would be. It was held in a gor­geous guqin stu­dio in 798, and it was a delight­ful after­noon show filled with tea, music and relaxation.

Also at JUE’s 798 extrav­a­ganza that week­end, I man­aged to catch David Thomas Broughton, a won­der­ful folky singer-songwriter from Britain via North Korea who does a won­der­ful job loop­ing sounds and weav­ing them into amaz­ing songs. There were a cou­ple of inci­dents where he threw things (a water bot­tle, his shoe) that I found more than a lit­tle odd, but it was for­given for how great he sounded. I also stayed for a while after­wards to catch Lucifer’s qui­eter solo side, but they were mostly cov­ers and I left when he started to cover Adam Green.

And then it was JUE, with their big first act of the fes­ti­val, Death Cab For Cutie. This is, of course, not Death Cab but Life Jour­ney, because the entire crowd was com­prised of exu­ber­ant Amer­i­can youths, which is fine when you’re one your­self but mostly just makes you feel alien­ated if you’re not. The band put on a great show, though, and musi­cally I thor­oughly enjoyed it.

Post-rock night at Mao was just what it was adver­tised as: some of Beijing’s best post-rock musi­cians per­form­ing one after another. I got to see Spar­row, who I haven’t seen for nearly two years. They were just as good as ever, as was Glow Curve, but pen­ta­tonic and Grind­ing Ear weren’t really my favorites. How­ever, we were hang­ing with an ex-member of pen­ta­tonic and got lots of juicy band gos­sip that I have totally for­got­ten by now.

This was billed as Black Cat Bone’s last show, since Jon Camp­bell was in town for The Book­worm and his book tour, and it was pretty damn good. It started after 1AM, and it was a total change from the zen-like night at Mao, but with enough fire in the belly it was jam-packed fun, as those mas­ters of blues always are.

Another JUE offer­ing, this was a snap deci­sion on my part. With Jianghu being so close to my house, and the fact that singer-songwriters are a par­tic­u­lar weak­ness of mine, I went down to see Court­ney Wing after din­ner and I do not regret the deci­sion. It was a low-key night, with a bunch of peo­ple at some alumni party who didn’t even real­ize where they were, and the music was great. I also got to meet the lovely Qu Want­ing, who had played a sold-out show at Yugong Yis­han the night before.

Chape­lier Fou is one of those artists you really have to see to believe. Lis­ten­ing to his tracks is great, but describ­ing him is dif­fi­cult and doesn’t do him jus­tice. He’s an elec­tronic artist who uses the vio­lin, gui­tar, his voice, and what­ever else he can get his hands on to cre­ate not only inter­est­ing pieces of music but also ones that wouldn’t go astray at clubs. Check out his myspace for now, and if/when he’s back in Bei­jing, catch him. Seriously.

I have never really con­sid­ered myself a fan of trip-hop, though that’s prob­a­bly because I never really gave it a chance. It’s a good genre, though I will admit it’s not the best one to see per­formed live. I enjoyed myself at the AM444 show, but I think the music lends itself to cre­at­ing an atmos­phere in head­phones rather than in per­son. I didn’t stick around for ROM. Enough said.

One of the most antic­i­pated Shang­hai bands, though, were Rain­bow Dan­ger Club. It’s too bad I had been to Great Leap for the chili cook-off because that meant I was a lit­tle more than tipsy when I got to 2 Kole­gas. Still, I remem­ber hav­ing an amaz­ing time, even if it took me a while to remem­ber who was actu­ally there with me. I do remem­ber pogo-ing to RDC, and hav­ing the promised Jager shots with the guys from Friend or Foe. It was a super night and while I wish I had been more sober, I’m also glad I had that water break and got through it like a trooper.

Jef from New Noise had told me about how pop­u­lar pg.lost was with the Chi­nese crowd, but I sort of didn’t believe him. But when I turned up to a totally packed-out Yugong Yis­han, the proof was right in front of me. It wasn’t as fun as it could have been, stuck watch­ing the show on a pro­jec­tor, but the music was great — I def­i­nitely really enjoy their brand of post-rock. And yet again, I close out the month with a Swedish post-rock group…

There isn’t a whole lot I can say about this show that I haven’t said about most of the bands before. Skarv­ing is a solid exam­ple of ska music in Bei­jing, Wu & The Side-Effects are just what the rock and roll doc­tor ordered, and Dos Kole­gas is always good for a more than slightly drunken good time. How­ever, there were two bands there who I either hadn’t seen before ever, or had only seen once, many moons ago, so I thought I would write up this show anyway.

First of all, in a late addi­tion to the lineup, Ricky Sixx and his band played to a very appre­cia­tive crowd. I’d never seen Ricky Sixx’s band before (rumor has it the band has a name now, but I don’t know what it is), and they were a fun time. The crowd, unfor­tu­nately, ruined it for me with their antics. They were drunk, and of course so was I, but as I’ve men­tioned before, big hulk­ing white dudes mosh­ing and try­ing to crowd­surf over their friends really kind of scares me. It’s not that I don’t find drunk Chi­nese dudes less annoy­ing, just that I think they’re less likely to severely injure me if one of them bumps into me. Any­way, I didn’t see a lot of Ricky’s set because of this, but what I did see was lots of fun. Ricky is a great per­former, and plays off the crowd’s energy very naturally.

Up next was Nucleus, who fea­tured in my sec­ond ever review on this site. Despite hav­ing seen the lead singer in Migra­tory Bird infi­nitely more times than in Nucleus, I will always remem­ber him as the one who Doufu groped, and who gave us birth­day cake (it was Doufu’s birth­day, and an absolutely insane night). Read­ing back, I agree with myself on every­thing — they’re a tal­ented, mature band with one charm­ing lead singer. Still, I remem­ber not lik­ing their music that much because they were too heavy. I think my tastes must have changed, then, because they weren’t too heavy for me this time. I really enjoyed every­thing about their set — espe­cially their grungy “cover” of one of Migra­tory Birds’ songs.

And of course, Skarv­ing was great and Wu & The Side-Effects brought down the house — their drum­mer Mo is going back to Ger­many, so this was some­thing of a farewell for him — but I’m sure we’ll see both of those bands again, most likely hav­ing a fun and drunken night at Dos Kolegas.

First of all, a big happy birth­day to Dos Kole­gas. They have been kick­ing around longer than that venue every­one talks about own­ing the scene (you know the one I’m talk­ing about) and have long since been a venue for the messy week­end frol­ick­ing only pos­si­ble dur­ing the Bei­jing sum­mer­time. Oh yeah, and they always have some awe­some bands play­ing. Once you’ve been to Dos Kole­gas, it stays with you. It’s the dive bar next to the drive-in where the con­tents of your nights might be lost to your mem­ory but you’ll never for­get the place. I might be mak­ing it sound dirty and weird, but it is, and that’s what you’ll end up lov­ing about it. Last Fri­day was the per­fect cel­e­bra­tion of all that is Dos Kolegas.

To start off with, the bands were amaz­ing. I got there after the unan­nounced first act (some weird Dan­ish lo-fi or some­thing? I don’t remem­ber how it was described) and as per usual, the party didn’t start until it was creep­ing up to mid­night. The first sched­uled band up was Skarv­ing, and they didn’t fail to impress. The only other time I’ve seen them was at last year’s anniver­sary show, and then I remem­ber think­ing that I needed to see more ska in Bei­jing. I still really do. It’s a fun genre, and I should get out to see them more often. Skarv­ing has been around a while (cer­tainly as long as I have, and two years is pretty good longevity for a band in Bei­jing), and they’re a tight band. Plus, half the enter­tain­ment is in see­ing other peo­ple dance to ska.

Next up was SUBS, which is a band I have never fig­ured out my feel­ings for. I’ve seen them three or four times, and each time I either loved them or hated them. I think I need to be in the mood for them — which means, in the mood for loud, yelling, insane punk music — and I guess on Fri­day I was in the mood for just that, because I loved them. Kang Mao is a force to be reck­oned with, and it’s not every day you can just take that in your face. I think the act works bet­ter on a small stage, though, because the effect is imme­di­ate, vis­ceral, and unavoid­able. Which isn’t for me all the time, but on Fri­day I loved it.

After SUBS was Wu & The Side-Effects, who I also haven’t seen since last year’s anniver­sary. As men­tioned on this blog before, they’ve got­ten a new bass player in that space of time. While the new guy is no Checo, he’s still good, and after a year together, the band seems like the solid rock and roll act we’ve always known. I hope it’s not another year before I see these guys again.

Finally to the stage, some time after 2AM, was Buyi Band. I’ve never seen them, incred­i­bly, despite the fre­quency with which they play in my neck of the woods, but it was worth the long wait. I didn’t stay for their entire set (it was, after all, 2AM) but I stuck around for a few songs and really enjoyed them. But by then my ears were ring­ing and my feet were aching, so I took my sorry ass home to recover. I couldn’t take the sec­ond day, but know­ing the lineup I think it would have been just as amazing.

Con­grat­u­la­tions, Dos Kole­gas, for being a very impor­tant part of the his­tory of Chi­nese rock, and thank you for six years of let­ting us riff-raff get drunk on your front lawn every week­end. We salute you!