Bang On A Can play Beijing

Museyon Guides

Want proof that your club is hot? How about a surprise show from a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer. That’s just what happened at Beijing’s D-22 (242 Chengfu Lu, Beijing; +86 6265 3177) this Friday night. And it’s just another sign that the city’s up-and-coming music scene is starting to be taken seriously (no, make that super-seriously) on the international level.

Museyon Guide Nick Frish writes in with the scoop from the Beijing Music Festival — full of surprise shows and super-cool lineups. Genre-bending New Yorkers Bang on a Can were in town for an official booking at the festival, but showed up at D-22 for a surprise show. Then Hometown Hero Xiao He took the stage, ditching his guitar for a laptop and keeping the crowd rapt, reports Frisch.

Want to hear it for yourself? You’ll soon be able to catch Xiao He Stateside. He’s playing a series of NYC shows from November 3-8 — starting with a performance with fellow Museyon favorites Carsick Cars at powerHouse Arena (37 Main St., Brooklyn; 718-666-3049) — before embarking on a U.S. tour with stops in D.C., Philadelphia, Chicago and more. For more info check out myspace.com/pekingxiaohe. For more on Bang on a Can visit bangonacan.org/events/upcoming, for updates on their current international tour, which stops in Shanghai, Scotland, Portugal and more.

and convinced that as well as one of the most important musicians in

Beijing he is also one of the most underrated. It is easy to explain

why he is so little known within the scene. Part of it is just

technical. He performs rarely and is constantly changing the form and

lineup of his band. To make things more confusing he keeps changing

the name of his band

and convinced that as well as one of the most important musicians in

Beijing he is also one of the most underrated. It is easy to explain

why he is so little known within the scene. Part of it is just

technical. He performs rarely and is constantly changing the form and

lineup of his band. To make things more confusing he keeps changing

the name of his band

Watch it here

http://www.echinacities.com/main/news/ExpatsCorner.aspx?n=1359

Beijing’s got clubs. Loads of them. Million dollar venues with expensive sound systems packed with foreigners and wealthy young Chinese drinking expensive bottles of bad whisky. You’ve got your Club Banana, your GT Banana, and your Coco Banana; China Doll and its semi-legitimate child China Doll 3.3; and drunk student favorites Mix and Vic’s. But if techno and back-to-back-to-back Fatman Scoop ‘Put Your Hands Up’ remixes aren’t your thing and you don’t want a depressing Sanlitun karaoke band, where do you go for live music in the capital?

D22
The best place for punk music in Beijing. Located in Wudaokou D22 is an eclectic place with a clear mission – to bring real, raw, and unfiltered quality to its audiences whether it be in the form of punk, jazz, experimental noise metal, or weekly film screenings. Despite the international student neighborhood – the D22 website is available in English, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese – D22 is a venue frequented by serious music fans of all ages. The owners have experience running clubs all over the world and are serious about music and film – I met co-owner Charles Saliba on the set of the movie ‘Kite Runner’ where he was serving as an extra, standing in the cold 12 hours a day, in the hopes learning more about the filming process. The best new Chinese bands from Joyside, to Hedgehog, to Carsick Cars can all be seen regularly at D22, thrashing through sets of new songs, enveloped by an oppressive cloud of cigarette smoke.

Yugong Yishan
Located in the hip fun Gulou area the new Yugong Yishan is a powerhouse venue serving up music events nearly every night of the week. Occasionally they feature international acts – French band Air played two sold out shows there a couple of months back – but more exciting is the local talent they tirelessly feature. What distinguishes Yugong Yishan from the other venues on this list is the range of acts they present. Hip-hop nights including break dancing and DJ battles are followed the next night by a Chinese folk group, and an electro-pop act the night after that. Dorothy Adams indefatigably books and promotes everything from Beijing electronic artist Dead J’s album release to this year’s New Year’s Rock into 2009! party. The sound system is decent and the coat check keeps your outerwear safely way from cigarette smoke and spilled drinks.

The Star Live
Not everyone loves The Star Live but the size of the venue and the booking power it has makes it the only place to see certain foreign acts. A block from the Lama Temple and across from Ditan Park The Star Live is on the 3rd floor of the building housing Club Tango – a favorite destination for techno-heads and foreign DJs – and a massive subterranean karaoke complex. Rapper Talib Kweli performed there with salsa/rock/hip-hoppers Ozomatli last October and the large (mostly foreign) crowd worked up a sweat dancing through both energetic sets. During his set Kweli invited a local rapper up on stage with him to spit some rhymes in Mandarin and this mix of styles and cultures exemplifies the Star Live approach. This New Years Eve sees a number of big club DJs bring in 2009, January 2nd is a hip hop night and the 4th is XF-Times Project which bring together a number of indie rock bands.

MAO Livehouse
Located in the heart of Gulou, MAO Livehouse is another serious music venue. Behind a grungy bar area with graffiti covered walls lies a boxy, unadorned, concert hall with a decent sized stage and powerful sound system. Like The Star Live, ticket prices tend to run around 40-50 yuan and up but despite the occasional hip hop night the music is squarely, unashamedly, rock and f-in roll. Most of the acts are Chinese but there are foreign guests as well and this New Years legendary punk band The Queers (read more about the show here) will be tearing it up, supported by classic Beijing punkers Brain Failure and Demerit. Shows start at 830 or 9pm to the chagrin of those who like to mellow a bit between work and rocking out, but this may have something to do with their location in a residential neighborhood.

2 Kolegas
It’s a little difficult to find 2 Kolegas, hidden as it is behind Beijing’s drive-in movie theatre, but it’s well worth it. 2 Kolegas proudly describes itself as ‘Beijing’s Hottest Dive-bar and Live Music Venue’ and that description’s not far off. The music runs from garage rock to folk and reggae. There is a lot of rock at 2 Kolegas – quality indie rock by Chinese and foreigner bands and touring acts often presented by Tag Team Records. The atmosphere is grungy and comfortable and there are often impromptu and sometimes unfortunate jam sessions going on. 2 Kolegas apparently means two good friends but it always feels more like a half dozen. Sometimes it seems half the people at this Chinese-owned bar came down to Beijing from the same city together. They’re friendly and welcoming and soon your new friend slips off the bar stool beside you to get behind the bar and serve you another drink.

The first time I went there I met a certain Mr. Longface, a tall Chinese with… a long face, whose claims to be a cellist who sometimes worked as a sushi chef in Haifa, Israel seemed completely manufactured. Yet, as the night wore every bit of the story was a verified – by his ‘brother’ who owned the place, by another friend from their hometown, by a dreadlocked Norwegian with perfect Mandarin and Spanish who’d spoken to Longface’s Israeli girlfriend earlier that evening on the phone.

Like Mr. Longface live music is unpredictable; you don’t know what you’re getting into or where it will go. Sometimes the guitars squeal like drowning cats and sometimes they ring together in harmony. That’s part of the joy of it, finding a new favorite band, an act you’d never heard of who speaks to you with their music. Chinese or foreigners, guitars or guqin, Mandarin raps or Mongolian throat singing - you never know what’ll find in Beijing’s dark smoky clubs but there’s a lot of good music out there and these are the places to find it.

For more info on how to get to there and back
And more Beijing events

D-22
242 Chengfu Lu, Wudaokou
Half-way between Wudaokou Subway Station and Peking University East Gate
成府路242号
五道口地铁与北大东门之间
6265 3177
http://www.d22beijing.com.cn

The Wudaokou station is on the Line 13

Yugong Yishan 愚公移山
West courtyard former site of Duan Qirui Government, 3-2 Zhangzizhong Lu,
Gulou
张自忠路3-2号段祺瑞执政府旧址西院
6404 2711
http://www.yugongyishan.ning.com

Take the Line 5 to Zhangzizhonglu

The Star Live 星光现场
Ditan Park
3/F, Tango, 79 Heping Xijie (50m north of Yonghegong subway station), Dongcheng District
地坛公园
东城区和平西街79号糖果三层（雍和宫桥路北50米）
6425 5677
http://www.thestarlive.com/en

The Line 2 and 5 both stop at Yong He Gong – just one block from The Star Live

MAO Live House 光芒
111 Gulou Dongdajie,
Gulouright behind Nanluoguxiang and just east of the Drum Tower
鼓楼东大街111号
6402-5080
www.maolive.com

2 Kolegas 两个好朋友
21 Liangmaqiao Lu, Nuren Jie
Inside the drive-in movie theater park
亮马桥路21号汽车电影院内
燕莎桥往东500米路北汽车电影院内
135-5227-6845, 136-9118-0119
http://www.2kolegas.com/indexen.html

At a mere year-and-a-half on the market, Beijing indie label Maybe Mars has become the most compelling label in China. Backed by the crew at Beijing’s D-22 music club – which has been called (affectionately, of course) a “hardcore music dive bar” or the “CBGB of China” – and run by the musicians themselves (Yang Haisong, lead singer of PK14, is head of the label), the outfit has signed some of the hottest bands in China and has placed major emphasis on the art of recording, resulting in some of the most acclaimed albums in Chinese rock’s short history.

This month, in honor of the long-awaited debut album from Ourself Beside Me, the label (in cooperation with Split Works’ Jue Festival) is bringing the rockin’ all-girl trio to Shanghai for the first time, backed by their big guns: Carsick Cars and Snapline. Here’s what you need to know:

Ourself Beside Me
Formerly known as Ourselves Beside Me (why-oh-why do so many bands have to go for a Chinglish moniker? QueenSeaBigShark, I’m pointing the finger at you, too), this all-girl trio is one of the most hyped bands in the Beijing scene at present. Frontwoman Yang Fan’s early membership in the defunct female punk band Hang On The Box (in the years when they were actually pioneering riot grrrls, not their later glamour years) guarantees her a spot in the annals of yaogun legend, while a messy former relationship with Joyside lead singer Bian Yuan (matching him drink for drink) only adds to the mystique.

Their new album (the Shanghai show will act as the album release party) features Yang Haisong on production; their tunes are instantly catchy, bringing things back to noisy rock n’ roll basics. Seeing them rock the stage can make you fall in love with live music all over again.

Carsick Cars
These ambassadors for the new Chinese rock sound have spread their noise around the world. Indeed, Carsick Cars just might be the most famous band in China. They’ve been personally approved by Sonic Youth – the template for their feedback-infused sound – with frontman Shouwang’s (the artist formerly known as Jeffray Zhang) Thurston-esque guitar playing (which often involves chopsticks, violin bows and other squeal-inducing noise tricks) generally receiving primary attention. Nevertheless, he’s backed by an ultra-tight rhythm section comprised of bassist Li Weisi and drummer Li Qing, both members of Snapline. They’re working on a new album with a ‘poppier’ sound, so expect some new tunes when they arrive this time around. Nevertheless, make sure you don’t smoke all your Zhong Nan Hai’s before the finale …

Snapline
Take two members of Carsick Cars (Li Weisi and Li Qing, now on guitar), add a nerdy vocalist with no stage hang-ups (Chen Xi) and tie it all together with a drum machine – that’s Snapline. Despite the shared membership with Carsick Cars, Snapline creates a far darker sound, with a pounding bassline and Li Qing’s equally acclaimed (if less assuming) guitar work filling the gaps. Their industrial-flavored debut, Party is Over, Pornostar, was produced by Johnny Rotten-comrade Martin Atkins (drummer for Pigface and Public Image Ltd.), who signed them immediately upon first hearing them (proving to be his major coup).

Zhi Jiang Dream Factory, January 17 (6255 4062)

BEIJING — As I prepare for a new foreign assignment, it’s time to mention a few of the things that I’ll badly miss about Beijing. In almost seven years of working here, I’ve come to see Beijing as one of the world’s great metropolises, even if its scruffy exterior lacks the surface charm of many other capitals.

A casual visitor sees only the skyscrapers, traffic jams, smoggy skies and crowded sidewalks – and the overwhelming scale of the massive gates and palaces, thronged by tour buses. It’s clearly a business and political capital, but there’s a more intimate side to the city that you can fully appreciate only when you live here for years.

Here are eight (an auspicious Chinese number) of my favorite Beijing discoveries:

1) The music and art scene, the most exciting of any city in China. Last Friday, for example, I spent the afternoon wandering through galleries of multi-media art installations at the 798 art district in Beijing’s eastern suburbs, as adventurous as anything in New York or London — and then a few hours later witnessed an amazing performance of electronic noise by our resident guitar genius, Zhang Shouwang, who plays with several experimental bands at the D-22 rock club in the university district.

2) A dazzling diversity of restaurants and regional cuisines, fueled by the appetites of a city that truly appreciates food in all of its forms. Food culture here is elevated to its highest form, not by wealth but by a desire to savor the taste of a thousand local cuisines from across a vast country.

3) The informality, generosity and humor of the Beijing people. Nobody stands on ceremony or wears tuxedos here — I’ve seen locals opting for shorts and sandals when they go to the theatre to watch an evening of ballet. And yet this informality and pragmatism helps Beijingers solve problems that would bedevil other cities.

4) The hutongs — the narrow old brick alleys that twist and turn through Beijing’s historic heart. Though disappearing under the pressure of commercial development, the hutongs are still a presence here, and they give a unique glimpse into the history of Mongol-influenced northern China.

5) Revolutionary ballet. There’s nothing quite like a performance of The Red Detachment of Women, the favorite ballet of the Cultural Revolution, with its elegant ballet dancers pirouetting as they fire Kalashnikovs and toss grenades at evil capitalist landlords. The music is stirring, the dancing is passionate, and the Chinese spectators slip into nostalgia for the old days that seemed simpler and easier.

6) Outdoor skating on the imperial lakes of Hou Hai. Although this city is blazing hot in the summer, it’s also a true northern city – something that Canadians can appreciate – and it’s cold enough in January to freeze the man-made lakes near the Forbidden City. Yes, the ice is a bit rough and bumpy, but it’s indescribably pleasurable to be skating within sight of ancient temples and hutongs.

7) Beijing’s recreational softball league, a Sunday afternoon tradition of mine for many years now. It’s not just the foreigners who play — there are the Taiwanese and Koreans, and there are even a growing number of Chinese who demonstrate an uncanny ability to crank the ball past the warning track in centre field, even if they don’t always know the rules for tagging up on a sacrifice fly.

Cheap efficient taxis, driven by garrulous cabbies who are surprisingly honest and helpful. Aside from the occasional metre-hiding scam among the airport cabbies — now largely stamped out, although you have to stay alert — the vast majority of Beijing’s taxi drivers will do their darnedest to get you where you want to go, no matter how complicated, at an inexpensive price. And they’ll give you a receipt at the end of the ride.

Em Pea Sans from our nation’s vibrant capital - By Morgan, Dec 08, 08

MP3 Monday is a weekly SmartShanghai column, serving up mp3s from bands living and making music in China (or coming to China, or thinking about coming to China, or whatever). Right click on the links and choose “Save Link As…” to download ‘em. Click play to rock ‘em.

Your intrepid MP3 Monday correspondent was in Beijing over the weekend and managed to catch up with Maybe Mars record label co-creative mogul/ D22 bar manager Nevin Domer to talk about the label’s upcoming releases.

Maybe Mars, if you don’t know, is a Beijing-based record label founded in 2007, home to the (inter)nationally-revered post punk band PK14, and a crop of the new wave of Chinese rock acts like Carsick Cars, Snapline, Demerit, AK Akubo, The Gar, Guali, 24 Hours, White, and today’s MP3 Monday band, Ourself Beside Me.

Although there isn’t a specific sound or genre that unifies the roster, they’re very much joined by a certain visual style and creative attitude that springs from the collectivist musicians community of Beijing. If you talk to anyone at the bar about D22 and Beijing, the analogy that inevitably arises is CBGBs in New York in the mid-70’s. Just as CBGBs was a one-time stage and watering hole to The Ramones, Blondie, The Dictators, The Dead Boys, Patty Smith, Talking Heads, and Television, so too D22 has come to serve as a similar social and creative anchor point to the diverse and seemingly incongruous sound of the aforementioned BJ bands.

When you hang out there you get the impression that one day someone will write a nice oral re-telling of this one snap-shot of Beijing history a la Please Kill Me, talking about who was fucking who, who was shooting what, and who was a real asshole.

Anyways, here are some songs off the debut album from all-gal three-piece, Ourself Beside Me due out at the start of next year. I picked the first one because it reminds me of PK14 (PK14 frontman Yang Haisong produced the CD) and the second one because it reminds me of Jesus and Mary Chain. Yep. It does. I’m not prepared to justify that though.

Ourself Beside Me – Here I Come

Ourself Beside Me – Oh Jim

According to Nevin, Maybe Mars “has really blown up over the last year” with international attention being shown to PK14 and Carsick Cars. Carsick Cars, for example, is currently mulling over an invitation to play in Russia as well as a U.K. music festival. The label is also solidifying their national domination, looking to bring their bands regularly to Shanghai and Guangzhou, as well as increasing their appearances in “second tier” cities like Wuhan and Nanjing.

Although there is already a bit of a buzz about new wave act Snapline’s latest album, virtually every other band on the roster is also releasing recorded material by the end of this year or the first half of next year. Specific release dates are hard to pin down exactly, because part of the process of releasing albums in China is getting government approval for them. But with all these new albums coming out, expect to see way more Maybe Mars bands playing shows in Shanghai.

And way more MP3s being pirated by yours truly.

Ourself Besides Me will be in town January 17, accompanied by Carsick Cars, for a Maybe Mars record label showcase at the Zhijiang Dream Factory. That one is being organized by local rock promoters Split Works, and should be quite the big ticket for January. If that show goes well, Nevin says Maybe Mars will look to do similar label showcase concerts in Shanghai every other month or every three months.

Bottom photo of Ourself Beside Me by Matthew Niederhauser. He’s so great.

Classical music is sometimes the grandest of art forms, sometimes the most shiveringly intimate. Although the deepening economic crisis may mean that we won’t see too many more spectacles on the order of Stockhausen’s three-orchestra “Gruppen,” in Berlin, or the high-tech pandemonium of “Die Soldaten,” at the Park Avenue Armory, other highlights of my concertgoing year—Mitsuko Uchida playing Mozart in the dining hall of Marlboro Music in Vermont; the brilliant young guitarist-composer Zhang Shouwang casting a minimalist spell in a Beijing rock club; a sound-and-light installation by John Luther Adams humming away in a closet-sized room in Fairbanks, Alaska—suggest that the classical scene will remain lively even if some big organizations fall by the wayside.

Messiaen, “Turangalîla Symphony”; David Robertson conducting the St. Louis Symphony, Carnegie Hall, New York City (February 15th).

Zhang Shouwang, solo improvisation, D22, Beijing (March 27th).

John Luther Adams, “The Place Where You Go to Listen”; Museum of the North, Fairbanks, Alaska (April 2nd).

Schubert, Piano Sonata in C Minor; Mitsuko Uchida, piano, Carnegie Hall, New York City (May 9th).

Mozart, Piano Concerto No. 12; Mitsuko Uchida playing and conducting musicians from Marlboro Music, Marlboro, Vermont (June 28th).

Bernd Alois Zimmermann, “Die Soldaten”; Claudia Barainsky, Claudio Otelli, Steven Sloane conducting the Bochum Symphony, Lincoln Center Festival at the Park Avenue Armory, New York City (July 5th).

Kaija Saariaho, “Notes on Light”; Anssi Karttunen, cello, and Susanna Mälkki conducting the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Mostly Mozart Festival at Rose Hall, New York City (August 14th).

Mozart, Clarinet Concerto; Kari Kriikku, clarinet, and Osma Vänskä conducting the Mostly Mozart Orchestra, Lincoln Center, New York City (August 15th).

Stockhausen, “Gruppen”; Simon Rattle, Daniel Harding, and Michael Boder conducting the Berlin Philharmonic, at Tempelhof Hangar 2, Berlin (September 20th).

Leonard Bernstein, “Mass”; Marin Alsop conducting the Baltimore Symphony, United Palace Theatre, New York City (October 25th).