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…

For once in my time see­ing for­eign bands play in Bei­jing, this show had a local open­ing act that was per­fectly paired with the vis­it­ing group. While Xiao He and Jef­frey Lewis’ music doesn’t sound the same at all, their philoso­phies and sense of explo­ration with music are undoubt­edly sim­i­lar. I feel like Xiao He explores music through manip­u­lat­ing the sound of it, while Jef­frey Lewis does so through his lyrics. I loved both of their per­for­mances, though, and for me it rep­re­sented a return to some of my favorite music.

But first, I’ll talk about Xiao He. He’s a quirky kind of fel­low, and you never know what you’re going to get. I’ve seen him twice — once at a Maybe Mars show­case, and once at a Time Out folk event. I enjoyed him at the show­case, but due to a lot of fac­tors (not all of which were his fault), the Time Out show was not very enjoy­able. He is exper­i­men­tal with sound, and that can often turn me off some­times, but this time at Yugong Yis­han, he was just the right amount of crazy. He didn’t do a song with a two-minute silence, but he did mash up Chi­nese pop songs and reduce them into tiny snip­pets that he wove together into a song. And his scream­ing and wail­ing when he sings is pow­er­ful, a lit­tle bit weird, but fits his sound per­fectly. Though some­times Xiao He has an off night, it’s always worth check­ing him out in case he’s amazing.

Then, after a brief excur­sion for cheap beer, we went once more into the fray for Jef­frey Lewis. Now, I had only periph­er­ally heard of Jef­frey Lewis a long time ago, when I had delved beyond The Strokes and into their cir­cle of musi­cian friends — Ben Kweller, the Moldy Peaches, etc — but I never seemed to have room in the anti-folk part of my heart for him. I respected and loved lis­ten­ing to his nine-minute His­tory of Punk on the Lower East Side (which has since turned into The Com­plete His­tory of Punk), but beyond that I couldn’t get into it. That said, many an anti-folk hero has not become a favorite until I have seen them live (Adam Green comes to mind), and that’s what hap­pened at Yugong Yis­han. Not only is Jef­frey Lewis’ music more raw and there­fore more inter­est­ing when per­formed live, but he deliv­ers a full enter­tain­ment package.

He’s also a car­toon­ist, so he did three short pre­sen­ta­tions — one on the his­tory of Com­mu­nism in Rus­sia, one was a fic­tional black-and-white piece about a detec­tive, and one on the his­tory of Com­mu­nism in China (it was more cute than sub­ver­sive; check it out on YouTube) — with a pro­jec­tor splash­ing the back wall with his illus­tra­tions. It was great to see and highly enter­tain­ing, and gave the show well-earned breaks. But the music was just as enter­tain­ing, because his lyrics are amaz­ing and the music just enhances them. I can’t remem­ber the name of the song, but there was one about spend­ing your time wisely that really res­onated with me, and reminded me why I love anti-folk (what­ever that term is meant to mean) — they’re usu­ally bril­liant lyricists.

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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The gen­eral atmos­phere at this gig was one of great excite­ment, and I can’t say that it’s unex­pected. Not only were the bands at this gig huge, and all in one place at the same time, but for both local and for­eign fans alike, the fact that they’re head­ing over to South by South­west (SXSW), America’s largest indie music fes­ti­val, is noth­ing short of impres­sive. Maybe Mars has sent con­tin­gents over to Amer­ica pre­vi­ously, but there’s just some­thing about SXSW that’s excit­ing, and a show­case like this see­ing off the bands reflected that completely.

I arrived very much on time, to a largely Chi­nese crowd, and was very pleased to find a free CD in my hand on the way through the door. A com­pi­la­tion CD high­light­ing the bands play­ing at the gig, as well as “bonus” tracks from three of Maybe Mars’ other acts, it was titled The China Inva­sion Tour 2010, what they’re dub­bing the trip to the United States, and it’s a per­fect com­pan­ion to the show. If you didn’t make it, though, check out the down­loads sec­tion at Maybe Mars for some sam­ples. I have to say that I have often been dis­ap­pointed with the lack of energy in recorded songs here in Bei­jing, but hav­ing seen these acts live it imbues the record­ings with an energy that makes me love them rather than just like them.

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