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Is Rock ‘n’ Roll alive and well in the PRC?

Wednesday, April 7th, 2010

The short answer is yes.  The long answer is yes, but it could be doing better.  Some things are indisputable: the scene here is exciting and the future is bright.

Let me just say out front that I’m no expert in contemporary Chinese music and these quick thoughts are just that, what I’m thinking at the moment.  I am a late comer to the Chinese indie rock scene.  The first time I ever really listened to Chinese rock was just four years ago when I bought my first New Pants (新裤子) album and saw them live in Kunming.  Since then I’ve seen a few more bands, bought a decent collection of Chinese rock albums (with a scattering of hip hop and electronic music) and joined the Chinese social networking site Douban (豆瓣) to find new bands and their newest tracks.  Yet I still feel completely lost and unable to say much on China’s music scene.  If you want to read some English language blogs that really do know what they are talking about I highly suggest the Shanghai based blog Andy Best, written by a westerner who has lived in Shanghai for the past 10 years, has a band, and really knows the scene and the people involved in it.  Besides Andy Best I know one more blog of note: China Music Radar, a good source on festivals, shows and Chinese music industry news.  Also, Neocha Edge is a great blog on all kinds of contemporary art and music coming out a China and is a true pleasure to peruse (even if you aren’t obsessed with China).

Way back in January I along with many other Shanghailanders (are we allowed to use that term anymore?) went to see a concert the new live music venue in town: Mao Livehouse.  It was my first time seeing a show at Mao, before I had only gone to Shanghai’s Yuyintang, the great albeit small venue that has been around for years.  The show was a showcase put on by one of the most famous indie music labels from Beijing called Maybe Mars (马兵司).  The show had been getting a lot of online press from bloggers living in Shanghai, including Andy Best, and the lineup included one of the most famous Chinese rock bands P.K.14 so I wanted to check it out.  Also there was Ourself Beside Me, 24 Hours, and Rustic.

I really enjoyed the ’80s metal hair and costumes of the members of Rustic (their music was fun and delightfully raunchy, too), 24 Hours did a great show, and P.K. 14 did a bang up job getting the crowd excited.  Here are some not-so-professional videos I took during the concert (all my videos from the night are up on my Youtube page):

Rustic

24 Hours

P.K. 14

Posted in Music, Shanghai, Video | 3 Responses »
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The Haydn Society

Friday, December 11th, 2009

My father is a lifelong lover of classical music.  When he got to Dartmouth for his Freshman year in 1941 he had a piano hoisted into his dorm room so he could practice pieces by Beethoven and Mozart.  After he graduated college (which happened only after he had enlisted as an officer in the United States Army, served in occupied Germany and the Allies won the war) he and some friends started a small independent recording company in Boston called the Haydn Society.  During the company’s relatively short life my father was able to travel around Europe and America making some fantastic classical music recordings.  While the original aim of the company was to record the complete works of Hadyn they in fact recorded works by many of the great classical composers of Europe.

Usually discussions of The Haydn Society only happen at my family’s dinner table and among my father’s friends, but as is bound to happen in this day and age information about the Haydn Society can now be found online.  One of my cousins recently discovered a graphic design blog that has been posting Haydn Society album covers.  The blog is written by the Graphic designer Javier Garcia and looks beautiful.  Mr. Garcia’s online portfolio can be found here and all the Haydn Society album covers he has photographed and discussed on his blog can be found here.  At my family’s home we still have every single Haydn Society album ever produced, many hanging on our dining room wall.  They are beautiful pieces of artwork and show the fascinating graphic design that existed in America almost 60 years ago, and I’m just glad somebody cares enough to put them online.

Many of the album covers were designed by my father’s good friend, and a man I got to know very well growing up, the artist Joseph Low.  Sadly Mr. Low passed away in 2007 at the age of 96.  I will always remember him as a true artist with a jubilant imagination.  In his lifetime Mr. Low also produced several New Yorker covers and illustrated more than a few children’s books.  The unofficial art director for the Haydn Society was my father’s college roomate Alvin Eisenman, who would later teach graphic design at Yale, and he was the one that found all the artists who produced the beautiful album covers.

As if by fate while I was writing this post I learned that Shanghai is hosting a Haydn Chamber Music Festival starting today and running until the 16th at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music.  Chamber music groups from around the world are participating and the prize money (134,000 RMB) is the largest sum ever given to chamber music group in China.  I am itching to go but I don’t really know anyone in Shanghai who would like to check it out with me.  Anyone reading this planning on going?

About a year and a half ago I tried my hand at converting some of the Haydn Society’s albums into MP3s.  Being that I am no music technician and can barely get this blog to look decent I achieved only mediocre results.  I’m going to try and put one of the song’s I managed to digitize online just as soon as I get home today.

Here are some of the Haydn Society’s album covers that Javier Garcia has photographed (again, his blog can be found here):

Designed by Alvin Lustig

Designed by Joseph Low

Designed by Joseph Low

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Handsome Furs at Yinyutang, Shanghai

Saturday, September 12th, 2009

(Via Jennywong’s Flickr)

A week ago I caught my first concert here in this crazy city.  The band was Handsome Furs.  The husband wife pair hail from another city I love deeply, Montreal.  You might know the singer of Handsome Furs, Dan Boeckner, since he is also the singer/guitarist for the excellent band Wolf Parade.

Their music is reminiscent of some of the other indie music coming out of Montreal, just with a stronger more beat driven pulse.  The band is simply  Mr. Boeckner singing and playing the guitar while his wife mans the drum machine/synthesizer.  They make a helluva lot of noise just between the two of them and while deciding whether or not I should go the concert it was their big noisy impact evident in their music videos that convinced me that the show would be awesome.  Obviously, I was not mistaken.

Not only was this my first concert but it was also my first time to Yin Yu Tang, which seems to be the premier place for interesting contemporary music.  It’s a nice place except for the fact that it would be considered small even in Burlington, Vermont let alone in a metropolis like Shanghai.  They make up for this very disappointing fact by having a large park in their backyard where people can sit at tables and drink beer under the star-less sky.

The opening act was a local band named Boys Climbing Ropes.  They were good, though there were so many people crowded around me that I couldn’t fully appreciate the music by dancing, or in fact moving my body in any way.  After getting some air out back between acts my friend and I went back in and prepared for the Handsome Furs, getting some beers staking out a spot in the back.

Even before the Handsome Furs came on, the small room we were all crowded into was sweltering.  By the end of the night everyone’s shirts were quite literally soaked through, don’t know that I’ve ever sweated that much at a concert before.  The show was everything you want from a concert, I don’t think I could have asked for anything more from my first concert in Shanghai.  Electro-clash punk indie rock really hits the spot for the young and energetic.  The show was loud, fun, crazy, and exciting in all the right ways.  The band was sweating in the stifling heat and seemed to be having as much fun as us in the audience.  We were all really into the music and they showered us with appreciation, going to great lengths to tell us how much they loved Shanghai and it’s people.  All in all a fantastic night of music.  God, I hope we get more good bands coming through Shanghai.

Here’s a video from their night in Shanghai playing, ironically enough, “Hate This City”:

Posted in Music, Shanghai | 1 Response »
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Shanghai and Other News

Wednesday, May 13th, 2009

First up, as everyone here in China knows yesterday was the one year anniversary of the devastating Sichuan earthquake last May that killed 80,000 people and left millions homeless.  While the earthquake could physically be felt here in western Hunan when it hit Sichuan the anniversary was less noticeable to me.  There were fireworks – the Hunan answer for any occasion, good or bad – and I know that the speech given during the day’s morning exercise was in remembrance of those who were killed.  Other than that though it was a normal school day, no parades or assemblies of any kind.

There is so much online about the earthquake and the anniversary so I’ll leave that to you to discover if you’re interested.  However I would highly recommend this conscientiously made video called “Afterquake” about the devastated region and the music sung by the local children.  The Shanghaiist wrote a piece about it (video included).  If you are in China watch the video on Tudou instead, it’s faster.

This week has been my first full week of teaching after being sick and then recovering while showing a movie in class, which my students loved and gave me plenty of reading time.  Teaching is one hell of a tiring profession, that’s a big lesson from my year here.  Teaching in Hunan’s sub-tropical hot ‘n humid weather means being stuck in a sweltering BO scented room (no air con) with 60 students, often with the windows closed so we can use the projector.  It gets old after awhile.  I must say though, compared to showing a movie or lying in bed sick teaching is definitely more enjoyable.  And now with only 4 or so weeks left of classes I want to make sure I get in all the important lesson plans I’ve been saving.

Tomorrow, after my last classes of the week (Hoorah for three day weekends!), I’m heading to Changsha so that can catch an early morning plane to glamorous Shanghai.  This trip is to (hopefully) solidify my future job in Shanghai after a short summer in America.  I’m getting excited just thinking about living in city of Shanghai’s caliber.  Besides the insane air quality Shanghai has many modern day comforts like micro brewed beer, cheese, and quality live music (Ratatat is playing next week and Ghostface Killah is hitting up the city in June!).  It should be a fun weekend.

Posted in Huaihua, Music, Personal, Shanghai, Sichuan, Teaching | No Responses »
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A Chinese Hip-Hop Education

Saturday, January 24th, 2009

Pure Girl Bar

-The old days of Sanlitun.

I’m in Beijing and last night (my first night here) I went out with some friends to the old haunts of earlier days.  The Chinese, French, Canadian, American, and Hong Kongers were all drinking and dancing to American hip-hop and pop techno remixes, and that was just at our table.  It felt good to be back in the mix of Beijing’s hectic nightlife scene and see old friends.  Then this morning while I slowly got ready for the day I saw that the New York Times published an article on China’s hip-hop scene, which I didn’t see last night but do hope to see some in the future.  One quote in particular stood out to me, since I am a Chinese high school teacher:

“Hip-hop is free, like rock ’n’ roll — we can talk about our lives, what we’re thinking about, what we feel,” said Wang Liang, 25, a popular hip-hop D.J. in China who is known as Wordy. “The Chinese education system doesn’t encourage you to express your own character. They feed you stale rules developed from books passed down over thousands of years. There’s not much opportunity for personal expression or thought; difference is discouraged.”

Hells yeah Wang Liang!  What he said is sadly far too true in this country.  The only way to express your abilities as a student is through your test scores, except in my class of course.  As far as music I am often…. disappointed by the musical tastes of my students.  They lack a certain willingness to stick it to the man, as it were.  There’s nothing more disheartening than having the biggest male student who sits in the back of class and who doesn’t a shit (and often says so loudly) tell you that his favorite band is the Backstreet Boys.  China could use more hip-hop and rock ‘n’ roll.  Now if only the music was just a little better…

Also, check out this hilarious Sexy Beijing video on Beijing’s hip-hop scene.  DJ Wordy (Wang Liang) is in it!

Posted in Beijing, Music, Teaching | 2 Responses »
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Rock and Roll is Outlawed

Monday, December 29th, 2008

Today I was invited to take part in my school’s daily broadcast.  Everyday after lunch and before afternoon classes there is a ten minute broadcast over the school’s speakers at a very high volume.  The girls running the English show asked to interview me.  It all went over very well and was a piece of cake.  They asked me silly questions like: “Is American school life like High School Musical?” and “What do you think of China?”

Between questions they played music, really bad pop music.  Today it was Mariah Carey and Celine Dion.  Slow boring pop music for the masses.  I discovered out that the headmaster has decreed that rock and roll may not be played over the school’s speakers.  Too disruptive and crude I was told.  Even the Beatles are off limits.  At the Beijing high school I studied at back in 2004 my fellow American students and I found out that social dancing at the school was outlawed.  Today China is looking a lot like the movie Footloose.  Though it could also be argued that the students here aren’t even interested in listening to rock and roll (Led Zepplin was not at all appreciated by my students when I played it for them a couple months ago).  It is truly disheartening that there are teenagers in the world who would prefer bad pop music to the Man-bashing rhythms of rock.

Related to this post the blog The China Beat just posted a two part story on Chinese rock and roll.  Part One  Part Two

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Music Videos from China

Tuesday, December 9th, 2008

I’ve long thought that there should be more music videos for foreign bands being made in China.  This place is filled with weird quasi-futuristic and old traditional sights mixed together into an unholy cocktail.  The Australian pop duo Empire of the Sun just put out a very bizarre music video for their song Walking on a Dream that was filmed in Shanghai.  This song and the band members remind me of the pop band MGMT, whom I happen to enjoy immensely, though their sound doesn’t seem as good somehow.  Nonetheless it’s a cool/funny music video that includes many many aspects of modern Chinese culture as the Shanghaiist pointed out.

I can’t just include a foreign made music video from China, I mean China does have its own music scene.  If you sift through all the horrible crap that people listen to over here you can find some gems.  The song “Thirty Years” by the band 山人 (Mountain Men) is good and has a cool animated music video.  The band is from Yunnan where I used to live and which has a thriving music scene.  I first heard about them from Danwei.

And last but not least a video from my favorite Chinese band: 新裤子 (New Pants).  They are a Beijing based punk/pop band.  Here is the video from their song “Bye Bye Disco”

Posted in Music, Video | No Responses »