Ich Bin Ein Beijinger

Midi Music Festival 2007

The Midi Music Festival has become a real cultural phenomenon, drawing young people from all over the country and giving me increasing hope that the still-marginal rock culture has reached critical mass and momentum. This year, I hear there were 80,000 people on the first day, and the line for tickets was nearly a kilometer long, wrapping from the east gate of Haidian Park all the way around the north side. Organizers did a terrific job of crowd control and security, but I still worry whether the auhorities will squash the thing next year--especially if there's as much dope-themed stuff for sale as I saw this year:

   

With our Ayi on break, I've been on baby duty and couldn't get out to Midi for any of the other days--just Friday, the day we played. I hear Hate Space from Denmark played an amazing set on the first night--pure Thrash, delivered good 'n tight. Friday didn't see nearly the crowds as the first day, but still quite a good turnout. I got there just after noon and was greeted by a busload of fans from Tianjin, all decked out in their Metal gear. They even had an authentic, slutty-looking Metal chick in tow. One can never have enough of those, you see. I met people who'd come from as far as Chongqing for the show.

I managed to catch Robert Gonnella's new band, Raging Mob, on the Gibson Guitar stage just before we went on. Robert lives in Beijing and organizes a soccer league here, but he's still the lead singer of the vintage 80s German Speed/Thrash Metal band Assassin, which he tells me played some shows in Russia just last week. Raging Mob's quite good, and Robert's an excellent performer.

The guy with me in the picture below is called Chen Chao, and he says he came all the way from Huangshan in Anhui just to see Chunqiu. You can see him front and center in the crowd shot I snapped as we were setting up, second pic below. I could see him singing along with every song. After doing several interviews and a whole lot of mugging for pics with fans, I spoke with Chen, who paid the band a very high compliment: saying that when he listens to us he feels like he's not just listening to music, but partaking of a distinct form of culture. Very kind indeed!

The amazing thing was that all the bands were actually ahead of schedule: Usually, you get rushed on and off stage, but on Friday at Midi in Haidian Park, there was ample time, and organizers actually had us add two songs to our originally planned set.

It felt really good. I was enjoying watching the audience so much--they successfully crowd-surfed a guy who must have weighed 140 kg, and moshed in a manner most joyous--that I found myself forgetting to move around on stage at various points.

Chunqiu will be playing a zhuanchang (a nice long headlining show with only one other support act) in Beijing some time in June. Watch this space for details.

Andy McKee, "Shanghai." Amazing guitarist.

You've probably already seen this guy's YouTube videos. Absolutely amazing. Check out his rendition of Toto's 80s hit "Africa," and the song "Drifting." His playing reminds me of (an updated) Stanley Jordan and Michael Hedges, rest in peace.

Chunqiu to play Midi Festival after all

A wonderful surprise this evening! I got a call from Zhang Fan at the Midi School, who said that Miankong (面孔) can't play the Festival this year, so Chunqiu is on. (I posted earlier about my disappointment that we hadn't applied before the deadline this year). We'll be playing on May 4 (my favorite day) at 2:40 in the afternoon. It was loud where I was when the call came, so I couldn't quite make out whether he said main stage or the second (Gibson guitar) stage. That's where we were last year (the pic's from last May), and I thought there were more people at the Gibson stage than at the main, at least the afternoon we played. Either way I'm really relieved, and psyched to play. If you haven't been to Midi, by all means go. The festival just keeps getting better and better, featuring a steadily improving caliber of foreign and Chinese acts alike. As much of a draw is the crowd itself--a whole generation of rock kids who literally come from all over the country, with their tents pitched and blankets spread out on the grass, just getting into the music and having a good time. Puts a smile on my face.

Greenpeace and the Midi Music Festival - Good news and bad

First the good news: The Midi Music Festival is going Green. and Peaceful. Beijing's marvelous annual band blowout, which takes place from May 1 to 4 this year in Haidian Park, will be working closely with the global environmental organization to promote green consciousness.

Sze Pang Cheung (a.k.a. Kontau, on the left), who has headed up communications in China for Greenpeace for the last four years or so, and Fish Yu, outreach campaigner, came by the Ogilvy office today to give me the low-down on what's happening with Midi. They'll have a booth at the festival, and will debut an environmental doc called "The Planet," shot by big-name European filmmakers and featuring interviews with some serious environmental heavyweights. They've also listed 10 or so main stage bands and half the bands on the secondary stage to do short environmental spots that will be shown during breakdown/setup between bands. And they're bringing Dave Stewart, formerly of the Eurythmics, out to Beijing for the festival. He'll be busting out some old Eurythmics hits, I'm told.

I gotta say, these Greenpeace guys not only dress the part, but they practice what they preach: When the tea lady came into the meeting room with paper cups, Fish quickly asked her to bring ceramic ones--which you see before them above--instead. Respect. They're very cool guys who are obviously committed to their cause, and I'm hoping to help them out however I can. Some years back I spoke with Greenpeace's international director Gerd Leipold here in Beijing, and he impressed me, frankly, with his embrace of globalization, his pragmatism, and his PR savvy. He comes from the PR world, actually, if I recall. (Correction: I recall incorrectly, as Kontau tells me). Same is true of Kontau: He really has his head around marketing.

Okay, so now the bad news: My damned band won't be playing at Midi this year. Not on either stage. For the first time in years. It's our own fault, too, because 1) we didn't sign up because a certain Yunnanese bandmate of mine couldn't tell us by the deadline whether he was coming back from Kunming in time for Midi, and 2) because a certain high-ranking Midi School official (hint: he has the same name as my wife) told me when I called him today to see whether I could wheedle Chunqiu's way onto the roster, if only on the secondary stage, that he thinks we ought to lose our singer because his voice lacks that leather-lunged liliang that Metal singers are supposed to have. Fuckity-fuck fuck fuck. Dave Stewart's looking for some Chinese musicians to help him out on stage; maybe I'll put my hand up to play bass for him. Admittedly, I was no big fan of the Eurythmics, though I do love Annie Lennox's voice, and songs like "Who's That Girl" and "Here Comes the Rain Again" had lovely melodies despite the New Wave synth I so loathe.

A Tang Dynasty music video thought lost

I met in Shanghai on Thursday afternoon with Tudou.com founders Gary Wang and Marc van der Chijs. Just beforehand, I was showing their video sharing site--which was China's first and remains one of the handful of leaders that has a good shot of surviving the coming die-off--to some colleagues and on a whim did a search for my old band.

What I turned up, to my delight, was this video that we shot for the song "Time at my Heels" (跑在时间前面，or 时间 as it was also known) from our second album Epic. We weren't happy with it at the time, and decided not to release it, but it was broadcast once on a regional (Hunan) station if I recall only once. Lucky someone got hold of it. It's kind of cheesy, but it's the only rock video from that album, so I'm glad it's there. There's also a bunch of old TD videos from songs like "A Dream Return to the Tang Dynasty," and some live stuff from a TD show in Germany.

Gary and Marc, by the way, are totally cool guys. Wish them luck on the Lhasa-to-Kathmandu bike ride they're planning for the end of April. And watch for a big announcement from them next week.

Melted. Your. Faces.

All modesty aside, we fucking rocked on Friday night. May have been the best show we've played in years. Everything felt right: the crowd was completely amped, all throwing the horns, moshing and crowd surfing in a civilized sort of way, and doing this unison, arms-linked headbang I've only seen Chinese Metal audiences do. Our sound was good, too--at least through the monitors on stage. Yang Meng sang well, I thought: a stark contrast to the night before, when he couldn't really hear himself (Joel and Brendan were at that show, and thought the mix buried Yang Meng's vox). On Friday we performed the acoustic song "Shan Hai Jian" for the first time live, and it went over quite well. The bewitching Chinese-American radio personality Helen Feng, who also happens to be lead singer of Warner recording artists Ziyo! was there, too. She's super cool, very smart and switched on, and I value her input. Her only real criticism was that our drummer Diao Lei sacrificed a little accuracy for performance; he wasn't completely on point, she said, and I confess that's true, but he made up for it, I thought, with his enthusiasm.

Metal Fest Friday

Chunqiu/Suffocated (Zhi Xi) axeman Kou Zhengyu turns 28 on Friday, and he's celebrating as he has for the past six years by putting on a big Metal fest. Kou's one of the coolest guys and best players on the scene, well loved by pretty much everyone who knows him.

See the reminder a few posts down, which has details about our Thursday show at Star Live, which will showcase some of Beijing's Chinese folk-inflected bands. (Spring & Autumn, despite our foundations in Metal, has some discernibly Chinese minzu stuff going on musically). Hope to see some of you at one or both of the shows! Come up and introduce yourselves.

And ponder with me if you will the deep mystery of why so many Metal bands insist on rendering their logos in that illegible thorn-like font. I have no idea what the two of the three on the bottom of this flyer actually say, but the bands--Evil Thorn (there they go with the thorns again!), Ritual Day, and Bloody Climax are all actually pretty fun.

By the way, we rehearsed tonight in a new place in Beijing called Jin Nezha (金哪吒) near Gulou, at 9 Baochao Hutong (宝抄胡同9号). Great place with excellent amps and drums, clean rooms, and only 40 kuai an hour for the big room. Sorry, didn't think to write down the phone number but I'll post it later.

Reminder: Chunqiu (Spring & Autumn) Shows Thursday & Friday

Hair's gonna fly, heads will bang, and the Cloven-Hooved Prince of Darkness will have his due on Thursday and Friday night. Please do come check out my band, Chunqiu (Spring & Autumn). We're playing the Star Live (Xingguang Xianchang, 星光现场) on Thursday and at the New Get Lucky (Xin Hao Yun, 新豪运) with a few other bands--including Suffocated, which will rock your face quite off.

If you want a great venue, come to the Thursday show. If you're more into the lineup and the venue doesn't matter as much, come to the Friday show: that's bound to showcase some of the 'Jing's  finest Metal acts. Both shows start 9-ish. Oh, that's me on the right. Hail, Satan.

SXWS Day 2

I'm developing a real fondness for Austin--the hospitality of the local folks, the evident pride they have in the music culture that's grown up here, the efficiency with which the town's handled the massive inflow of people for the Festival. Wandering 6th street and hearing all this music--some of it fabulous, some of it, meh--I keep thinking whether it'd be possible, one day, to do something like this in a city in China. Maybe when my kids are grown up and playing in bands.

The panel on the Chinese music industry I just appeared on seems to have gone over well: we had one curmudgeon in the crowd to said we sounded like a bunch of condescending ugly Americans, but I think he was just put off by the fact that everyone on the panel was a North American. He seemed to paritcularly dislike me. i believe the concensus among others listening was that the guy was a dick.

The other panelists were Michael LoJudice, who runs North American operations for Beijing-based Modern Sky (he was heavily sedated, having had his wrist broken by a bounder for one too many stage dives the night before), Adam Lewis, from Planetary, which bring indie acts to China; my friend Jon Campbell, who works with the Midi Festival, also brings bands over, and is an all-around great person to know on the Beijing music scene despite our sometimes widely divergent musical tasts; and Matthew Kagler, owner of Tag Team Records, which has at least one verh good Chinese band--Lonely China Day (寂寞夏日, EP cover pictured left), a band now moving in a sort of electronic-heavy Mogwai direction but which used to play pretty straight-ahead, Chinese-inflected guitar rock and frequently opened for Chunqiu back in 2002 to 2003. Matthew says they're going lap-top, which to me, an unreconstructed rock guy, is disconcerting. He's brought them and another Beijing band I haven't heard, "Rebuilding the Rights of Statues," to SXSW and says they were well received at their show last night.

For the most part, judging from questions from the audience, they didn't approach with preconcieved notions (excpet the correct ones, about piracy and other IPR issues), were genuinely curious, and asked some very intelligent questions. I'd say a good third of them raised their hands when moderator Vickie Nauman asked whether they'd been to China.

Alas, the timing of the panel caused me to miss the Metal party--a genre conspicously absent from this festival. It's really dominated by post-punk Indie rock bands, though a few of those I've found to be quite entertaining. Tonight I'm hoping to meetup with my old colleague from Linktone, Mark Begert, who has settled in Austin. He's always fun. I'm hoping he'lll join me in seeking out some of the more brutal musical offerings available.

The musical highlight for me so far, by a long shot, was seeing Hayseed Dixie at a club called MoMo's. I had to pull Jon Campbell and Martin Hansen, project manaer of the Danish Rock Council who spends a lot of time in China, away from the horrid Brit-pop band they insisted on seeing so that we could hoof it down to Momo's in time to catch Hayseed's 1am set, and even though we arrived late, I was in utter ecstasy.

Hayseed Dixie's a Nashville-based quartet composed of: a smoking banjo player, an acoustic bassist, a guitarist who doubles on fiddle, and one of the meanest mandolin players I've ever seen. They''re most famous for their country/bluegrass covers of AC/DC songs--thus the name-- but there were some other fabulous surprises in last night's set--including Queen's "Fat Bottomed Girls", replete with vocal harmonies and sped up about triple speed, and a rollcking version of Duelling Banjos. I snagged their set list, which you can see to the right. You can see they did the Sabbath tune "War Pigs," which must have been a gas--had to content myself to watch it on YouTube here, it's awsome--as well as Aerosmith's "Walk This way" and Motorhead's "The Ace of Spades." I'd love to see these guys come to China. Jon, make it happen man!

I'm flying out tomorrow, and going to miss lots of great music. But I'll be spending the weekend with my two best friends--meeting Drew's new girlfriend, and possibly Dave's. They've both settled in the Midwest--Dave (left) in Chicao, where this picture was taken six or seven years ago, and Drew (right) in Madison. I'm glad they've lost the goatees. So late Ninetees.

A bunch of us bought Drew a banjo for his 40th birthday in October, and he made a funny little YouTube short you can see here. Knowing him he's probably highly proficient on the thing by now.

Austin, adieu. I really hope to come back next year.

Pete Townshend at SXSW

Absolutely nothing to do with China--oh wait, something the Who's Pete Townshend said about rock and politics did resonate with me and my thinking about the Chinese rock scene--but I took good notes as this massively iconic figure presented the keynote to the SXSW Conference and Music Festival, and thought I'd share some of what he said.

The Who has iong ranked among my favorite bands, and as much as I love Roger Daltrey's voice, loved the late Keith Moon's drumming, and adored the more recently late John Entwhistle's bass lines, it was Townshend who of course was always the sould of the band. For me, they're the band that produced for me ranks as the most perfect album (Who's Next, though Quadrophenia is up there among my all-time loves too) and best rock song ("Won't Get Fooled Again") to date.

So naturally I was thrilled to hear Townshend speak. He was lucid, as expected, and funny, at time way out there in space, especially when talking about his new project, which will formally launch with a webcast news conference on April 25. That project, which he calls "The Method," was based on the rather abstract concept originally behind Who's Next: that seminal album was originally written as another rock opera in the vein of Tommy called Lifehouse, but the concept-album idea was scrapped. (See the Wikipedia article on Who's Next for the whole story.)

"The Method," which will be Web-based, will supposedly allow subscribers to sit for a musical "portrait," based on inputs (physical? verbal? it's not enitrely clearr) supplied by the subscriber. The result is a unique piece of music corresponding to the subscriber. Townshend says he came up with the idea back during the creation of Lifehouse but "in 1971 there were no computers powerful enough to do what I wanted." He was told, "Nice idea--but you should get treatment. That came later. [audience laughs]."

In his own words, as nearly as I was able to transcribe:

You come to the Website and we give you a piece of music. You own a third of the copyright. This music is elaborated; we bring it all together, and play it in a big event. We gather and share our music together. My idea is that it might sound terrible, like a plane going by, or the gentle undulations of the sea.

On the Punk Rock revolution, he had this to say:

Punk triggered something. It vented something that was there, that needed to be vented. There was nothing wrong with the Electric Light Orchestra. There was nothing wrong with Ian Anderson's [sic] Yes. I was shopping the other day and heard some music, and said, "What an interesting blend of folk and classical--and it was fucking Yes."

Oh, and this is what made me think of Beijing rock, where a political/dissident patina gets painted onto so much music as a marketing ploy, or out of juvenile, misguided iconoclasm:

I didn't know what politics was when I was a kid. If we're going to make [rock music] political, let's make it fucking political.

Hallelujah, brother Pete. I have no objection per se to politics in rock music: I just want rock musicians to acknowledge that most political issues we confront just aren't that simple. For me, 99.99% of the time, reducing any issue to rhyming verses and a repeating chorus is just bullshit sloganeering that doesn't contribute to intelligent discussion. If I had a choice between allowing the ideas of rock musicans or, say, college professors to influence my political thinking, the choice for me wouldn't be a tough one.

Austin Day 1

Total sensory overload. Austin's legendary 6th Street is all it's cracked up to be--and I the real SXSW festivities haven't even begun. The biggest problem that I face is that there are too many bands and not enough time. I've seen some fabulous guitar players. You can see that Stevie Ray Vaughn really imprinted on his hometown.

Jon Campbell, drummer of Beijing-based blues outfit Black Cat Bone and another experimental band, was on the same flight as me and we hit the town together last night. We both observed that the clubs,though numerous, weren't all that much different from some of the places we play in Beijing: equipment that's roughly on par, the same sort of no-soundcheck, slapdash set-up, rush-you-on-and-off kind of thing that musicians in Beijing experience.

Had the best meal I've ever eaten off a paper plate last night: chopped beef barbeque at a place called The Iron Works, just a five minute walk from the hotel. Too many people have recommended a place called Salt Lick for me not to try it. This morning, I had what were without a doubt the best Huevos Rancheros I've ever eaten, at a place called Jo's on 2nd Street.

Heading over to the conference now, which (wisely) starts in the afternoon: the assumption is of course that everyone's out 'til the wee hours taking in music and libation.

SXSW-bound

In about 19 hours I'll be boarding a plane bound for Austin, TX, where I'll be speaking later in the week on a panel at South By Southwest about the Chinese music industry. Thanks to those who commented earlier and asked some good, tough questions.

South By Southwest has turned into more than just a music festival: Right now, the tech geeks have run of the place, and then the film nerds. Wish I could have made it at least for the tech conference. Read up on what's happening there at Read/WriteWeb, which has a man on the ground blogging away about some sessions he's attending.

I'll also take the opportunity after the conference to visit my two best friends, Drew & Dave, who live in Madison and Chicago, respectively. We played in a progressive rock band called Freefall together in college, and the weekend promises to be full of great food, music, and lively conversation.

Shameless Promo: Upcoming Chunqiu Shows

We've got a couple of shows coming up toward the end of the month in Beijing, and I'd love to see some of you in attendance.

Some of you might not consider yourselves "Metal" people, but as many can attest, Chunqiu (Spring & Autumn) is different: I'd like to think we add quite a bit of melodicism without sacrifice of ass-kickery. There's reasonable complexity to our compositions without being wanky and self-indulgent. And there's definitely a touch of Chineseness to the music. Some hear hints of Celtic, Bluegrass, Mongolian and TUrkic Central Asian music in the mix too... So come check us out!

We're playing Thursday night, March 29, at Star Live (that's 星光现场). It's widely regarded as Beijing's nicest live club, and is located above Tango, across the Second Ring Road from Yonghegong, the Lama Temple. Don't know what other bands are playing, or exactly what time we go on, but you're safe if you show up 9:30 or so. Tickets are probably 30-40 kuai. Sorry, don't know that either, but will update as I have info.

We're also playing Friday night, March 30, at the New Get Lucky (新豪运) at Nurenjie. Again, details to follow; tickets there are usually 30 kuai, I think. Hope you can make one of the shows!

Frog in a Well: My own little corner of the Chinese music scene

Dan, who's an expat playing music down in Shenzhen, was good enough to respond to an earlier post asking what people might want to know about the Chinese music scene. Reading through his list of questions (which appear below as asked) I'm made painfully aware that my scope of knowledge is dated and narrow. Taking a crack at his questions/topics:

1. guess I'd be ready say something about trends you see in the music scene

The long tail phenomenon, for sure: More heterogeneity in music, a splintering of genres, and increasing awareness of the disparate subgenres of music that exist in the West and developed Asia, and what those subgenres mean in the sociocultural contexts where they emerged. This has been going on for a long time, but has been kicked into high gear by the ready availability of CD catalog cut-outs, pirated CDs, and of course P2P file sharing networks, which are highly developed in China. Look at the magazines available these days both offline and on, and you realize that Chinese music fans these days outside of the mainstream are current on all the microgenres. Chinese bands are placing themselves in a global musical context. Unfortunately, there's still a lot of crap music at the head of the long-tail curve, and even out along it, most Chinese music I'm hearing is still in an imitative stage, but I think we're moving out of that. Awareness of the endless possibilities will open up musical innovation--I hope.

2. popular themes that people write about

Here, my ignorance is appalling. I really don't read lyrics most of the time, unless I happen to see them scrolling across the screen (which means I'm in a Karaoke, which means I'm in some business situation and liquored up and listening to pop pabalum, and then you know what that's all about--I love you, why'd you leave me, come home). Occasionally someone will tell me "Hey, so-and-so is a good lyricist," but in those cases the lyrics are so abstruse that I can't be bothered to make sense of them. In the Metal genre--my little corner--there's surprisingly little of the gore (Death Metal), the swords-and-sorcery (Power Metal), the balls-out blasphemy (Black Metal) that are typical themes for those subgenres in English: like Chinese poetry, you get a lot of imagistic stuff, some (admittedly maudlin) emotive stuff. I run across a lot of songs about the power of music to move people. Wish I could say more.

3. some of the specific "China" challenges that bands face here when they're starting out

It's tough in most other cities, I imagine, without a lot of decent venues and other "infrastructure" like good guitar shops and a pool of decent musicians, but in Beijing at least I'd say the "China" challenges are outweighed by the "China" advantages: A relatively low bar, cheap and plentiful rehearsal space, no pay-to-play deals at venues, a decent number of venues, and very little genuine competition. Plus there's keen interest from the foreign media and academic establishments, so you get easy press and patronage. Very few bands are really going to "make it," but almost anyone who doesn't completely suck can get to the point where they're playing paid gigs a couple of times a month.

4.if it is (or is not) possible to make a decent living playing music in China

Nope. Not what I'd call a decent living, not for the vast majority of musicians, not right now. If salvation comes, it'll come with mobile downloads, and that's going to have to wait until there's some significant uptake of 3G service. I do believe that full-song music downloads will become popular as they have in Japan (where 95% of all digital music downloads were mobile in 2006), and in Korea. But it'll be years before we see musicians in marginal genres--say, oh, like rock!--make any decent money in China. 

5. maybe something about how bands use the internet for marketing (if at all)

They do: Lots actually have MySpace sites, and there are BBSs and sites like DemoCN that are available for musicians to use. Most bands are so pessimistic about selling CDs that they just allow downloads via their sites, in the hopes that they'll become viral hits and people will come to their shows.

6. Other main music scenes (ie, everything aside for Beijing)

Chengdu was looking promising for a while: a slew of bands from that city came to Beijing back in 2001 or 2002 and I heard some that I quite liked. But it's been quiet of late. Shanghai doesn't have a lot of bands, or that big of a scene, but there are two bands from there that I think highly of: Crystal Butterfly and Frozen Fairyland. In Shenyang there's a really brutal Metal scene. Same with Tianjin: there are some really scary Metal bands out there, some of whom I've seen perform in Beijing. Names escape me. Kunming has produced some good bands and musicians, but they've mostly found success only in Beijing. The Kunming scene, from what I can tell, has a lot of ephemeral jam bands with rotating line-ups, just right for the backpackers who float in and out of that city.

7. If there are regional style niches (is there a city that may be equivalent to early 90's Seattle, for example?)

If so, I don't know about it. Beijing really still dominates.

8. Stuff about local hip-hop

I honestly don't know. I like hip-hop plenty, but I've not really checked out the local hip-hop scene insofar as one exists.

9. Any interesting fusion releases (ie, modern music sounds mixed with traditional Chinese instruments) that don't suck?

I've done a bit of that in the two original bands I've played in, and I'm always surprised not to see more of it going on. Where I've seen it done successfully is with bands like Confucius Sez, to some extent with Second Hand Rose, quite well with Buyi, and again, with that Shanghai band Frozen Fairyland.

I'd be happy to elaborate on any of this for anyone who's interested. Thanks, Dan--this is good prep for my talk in Austin.

What have you always wanted to know (but were afraid to ask) about the Chinese music industry?

I'm headed in about a week to Austin, TX, where I've been invited to be on a panel at the South by Southwest Music Festival, on China's music industry. Of course it'd have been better if my band had been invited there to play, but even I can tell we're not "alt" enough for that honor. I've not spent time in Austin before, and hear it's a cool town; that's Beijing E-I-C Jerry Chan tells me of some good restaurants I plan to try, and your suggestions are welcome.

More important are your suggestions on things that I ought to talk about--things that I might overlook from my up-close perspective, but which people who bother to come to the panel should hear about. Doubtless, piracy and file sharing will come up--I have my take on that. And censorship: I have a POV on that as well. The moderator has said she'll throw me questions on the digital music scene--Internet downloads and mobile music, which I know something about, but that's pretty dull stuff, and a few good stats will put most of those Qs to bed.

What do you want to know about the music industry here?

By the way, Jeremy at Danwei alerts us to (yet another) article on the Beijing music scene, this one in The Fader. Right-click and "Save Target As" here to download the whole issue as a .pdf. The magazine's fetching editor-in-chief, Alex Wagner, came out here herself to report it. A bit of fact-checking might have helped; it has me as former bassist of TD, not lead guitarist, and it refers to Cui Jian as "Jian" at some point. But otherwise, not a bad read. There's a high style bar among rock scribes, and Ms. Wagner's mag clears it consistently. Nice prose, even if some of the old tropes about Beijing--draconian censors, metastasizing Starbucks, badly-named real estate developments--are a bit tired.

Old Tang Dynasty photos (Jan 99) and Reflections on a Watershed Year

This morning my sister Mimi, a professional photographer who co-runs Beijing's Yoga Yard, sent me these pics she took from my old band's launch concert for our second album, Epic (演义). They're 8 years old now, taken just five months before the Great Rift. (I've asked her to collect a bunch of stuff for a forthcoming documentary on global Metal that will feature some Beijing bands, including Suffocated, Chunqiu, and Tang Dynasty. I may be posting more of these--photos of the old rock scene as it was, back to the late 80s and early 90s, as I dig 'em out and get 'em scanned).

That night--an incredible high point in my life--was also marred by tragedy: Ding Yi, older brother of TD's lead singer/guitarist/co-founder Ding Wu (with the black Gibson), overdosed in the early hours and never woke up. Ding Yi, who had been resentful of me to begin with, was especially so that night, and not without reason: he was ill-treated by security people and initially prevented from going back stage, while my family was ushered in and treated like VIPs, right in front of him. Apologies from me didn't help at all.

When I talk about my departure from the band I often make half-joking reference to our "Yoko Ono problem"--Ding Wu's girlfriend, with whom I had an awful relationship--and more seriously to the immediate catalyst, the Belgrade embassy bombing, over which let's just say there was some disagreement within the band. But there was a lot of other deeper stuff too--things that had mostly to do with me being an American. It started early: I could up and leave in June of '89, I never faced real economic pressures, I could always treat music as largely a hobby. No matter how good my Chinese got, I was never living in the same world that the rest of the guys were.

Reflecting on the month following the May 9th '99 incident in Belgrade, I realize now what a major watershed it was in my life. My circle of friends changed practically overnight, from preponderantly Chinese to preponderantly expatriate. I went from living with a Beijing-born singer to dating an ABC (American-born Chinese) reporter. I plunged headlong into the world of the Internet: literally days after I formally quit, I had a job offer as editor at for an Internet start-up. I stopped playing music and didn't rejoin a band until early 2001. That's about when I managed to re-establish a sort of balance in life--vocation/avocation, Chinese/expat circles of friends, comfort with my (aspirationally) bicultural identity.

And that's about the time I realized that for me, living in Beijing was going to be about existing normally--having a life in which I didn't feel like a sojourner, someone observing from a dispassionate distance, where I felt like I was integral to the world around me. I ended up dating, then marrying, a Beijinger--a girl I knew from the rock scene, but who married me in spite of my affiliation with it. When I realize now how normal my life is now--a career, a family, very comfortable digs, a city that feels genuinely like home, some wonderful musical outlets, and now this blog--I gotta say I think at least it's going in the right direction.

It's my son John's first birthday today. I sat him in front of the computer just now and showed him some of those old pictures of Dad in his rock get-up, and he giggled and pointed. Probably the right response. My response was harder to understand: I felt a little like crying, but I felt incredibly satisfied, too.

Brother Jay's Big Gay Musical Nominated for Best Original Script

My brother quit his job as a high-flying lawyer in San Francisco to write musical theater, and he's doing well in his new career. His first original show, Insignificant Others--I'm not counting something he wrote with the quaintly 80s title Upwardly Mobile while at Stanford--just nabbed a nomination for best original script from the Bay Area Theater Critics Circle. Says Jay:

This honor comes as a total surprise, especially considering the musical was still in workshop in 2006 and has not had its commercial release yet.  In fact, we didn't even know we would be up for consideration or that any BATCC members came to see the show.  (They usually don't attend workshops or in-concerts.)

The other nominees in this category are Morris Bobrow for Shopping! The Musical  (now in its 10th month at the Shelton Theatre in Union Square) and Stew and Heidi Rodewald for Passing Strange at Berkeley Repertory Theatre.  Curiously, Vanities by David Kirshenbaum (world premiere at Theatreworks) was not nominated, and that show is moving to Off-Broadway soon.

In any event, we are very happy with this unexpected recognition by this body.  (Incidentally, Homeland was not up for consideration given its limited four day run at the end of the year.)

The little fucker's always been more talented than I. His stuff is very moving. If you're in the Bay Area and get a chance to see any of his shows, do go. Funny how we once played together in what was, bar none, the world's worst rock band, called Fallout.

China's Best Thrash Metal Band, Suffocated

Make no mistake: Suffocated (窒息)fucking rocks. They've recently released their debut CD, Dead Wind Rising, and I can say of it that for the first time there's a Chinese Metal recording genuinely on par with western Metal bands.

Here they are at the press conference they had yesterday at Melody in Beijing. I put in a little guest appearance to throw the horns with the boys and tell the media that these guys rule.

Kou Zhengyu, lead guitarist (second from left), plays with me in my own outfit, Chunqiu (春秋) Spring & Autumn), and has from the very inception of the band back in 2001. He's a truly awesome player--taste, chops, and none of the ego ordinarily associated with being a guitar-god. You can see us on YouTube here, here, and here. I'm not going to bother to imbed these because it may roll slowly if you're reading this in China. I'll dig up some Suffocated vid links too.

E-mail me or leave a comment if you're interested in picking up a copy of Suffocated's CD--don't be put off by the Cookie Monster vocals, because there's amazing musicianship going on and some good lyrics--or if you want a copy of Chunqiu's disk, which we put out last year. Cheap cheap!

Cousin Arvin Wins a Silver Bear

  Holy Shit. My first cousin Arvin Chen (my mom's younger sister's older son) won a Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival for his short film Mei, which he shot in Taipei. It's a nice piece set in a noodle shop about the owner, his daughter who helps him out there but longs to study abroad, her young co-worker who's in love with her.It's just what a short should be. He'll be working on a new feature soon, which I've seen trailers for, and now that he has Das Bear, he's bound to find funding for it pretty easily. It's sort of Woody Allenesque (he compares it to Manhattan), and it promises to be very good. Arvin's a USC Film School graduate, and apprenticed under Edward Yang Te-ch'ang. He won't admit it, but he''s a heck of a good guitar player too. He's always been quiet and pretty modest, but he's actually one of the funniest individuals I know--savagely witty when he wants to be. With my younger brother Jay writing and producing musical theater in the Bay Area now--his second one, Homeland, just debuted in December--I'm betting I'll have a brother with Tony and a cousin with an Oscar before it's all over. (My Grammy hopes perished long, long ago).

Speaking of films at Berlin, one Chinese film I helped out on (translated the screenplay) was then called Lost in Beijing, but screened in Berlin, as I understand it, under the name Pingguo (Apple, the name of the female lead played by Fan Bingbing.) I haven't seen it yet, but read one pretty nasty review of it from the Hollywood Reporter, but the reporter lost credibility with me when he called director Li Yu a "first-time director," when she's done at least two films I know of--the Lesbian film Fish and Elephant and another festival success called Dam Street (or Hong Yan). I personally liked the "Lost in Beijing" screenplay quite a bit. Anyone seen it yet?