Ramblings on YAOGUN, Chinese rock music, by the author of Red Rock: The Long, Strange March of Chinese Rock & Roll
The artists rockin’ in the PRC
There has been talk for a while now about the possibility of a 3D film based on Yaogunner Number One’s 2010/2011 New Years’ Eve and Day concerts. For those two shows, Cui Jian turned the tables on his former employers, the Beijing Symphony Orchestra. Cui had blown the trumpet for the group through most of the 80s, until the Orchestra told him that his extra-curricular pop and rock activities had to stop. Luckily for us all, he chose yaogun, and left the Orchestra before the
decade was up.
A belated and large thanks to all involved in March 24’s Red Rock launch at the Gladstone Hotel…!
(Thanks to Anna Withrow for shooting pics!)
I did some yappin’ (here, on China’s journey from Mao to now via Deng Xiaoping’s Journey to the West and beyond)…
Through Cui Jian’s career, and onwards, to the present…
Nova Heart did some playing (here, lead singer Helen Feng and bassist Bo Xuan, he formerly of Hedgehog)…
Al Di, former journalist (ALDTV is something that must be experienced to be understood) and current Live Nation China promoter/booker/man-about-town; Helen Feng, she of Nova Heart; and I did some more yappin’…
…And folk-yaogunners Shanren played a final set, that had the crowd doing what the band called Chinese Disco Dancing.
Highlight of the afternoon: An audience member approaching me in advance of the talk to ask if I was, in fact, the drummer from RandomK(e), which, luckily for both of us, I was. He’d seen us play a few years ago and dug it. Then he found out I wrote the book he was there to learn about and, well, the rest, is history.
Big thanks to the folks at TINARS, as well as those who traveled from China to participate, and, of course, to all who came, in person and in spirit.
Stay tuned for video evidence… Here’s the video evidence, with big thanks to Meredith Wright:
Red Rock from Meredith Wright on Vimeo.
Ladies in Gentlemen, I present to you: Shanghai in a Nutshell.
Our hero arrives, thanks to the good graces of the Canadian Consulate, off of a fourteen hour plane ride just dazed enough to get himself to the Death Cab For Cutie show, to finally get a chance to see one of our hero’s musical heroes.
Said concert leads to the invitation to not only check out this band:
…but to do so from the corporate boxes of the Mercedes Benz Arena, one of the slickest and, because of what it represents to the future of the industry, most important arenas in the world.
In said corporate boxes, sipping freely- and eagerly-poured hootch, our hero receives an invitation to address a group – nay, the group – of foreign correspondents 
on the virtues, vices, venality and, yes, sure, venerability of yaogun, the subject that has brought him back to the People’s Republic, a subject that kept him in the People’s Republic and the subject about which he has spent approximately a fraction of his time thus far expounding upon.
Meanwhile, he has Brunched like the Expat Kings of Olde Shanghai
at the legendary dining room overlooking the colonial past of the city and toward, across the river, at its future – and, if our hero was being honest, and excited, and one to prognosticate on such matters, the future of the world – thanks to the good people at the Shanghai International Literary Festival, who have invited him to squeeze in what was an exciting and engaging conversation with his publisher, Old China Hand, proto-yaogunner, and much more on the topic of how Chinese rock music has come to this point into an otherwise packed schedule.
(Oh yes, and our hero did, in fact, make it into local rock institution Yuyintang to catch local rockers the Fever Machine outrawk Beijingers Steely Heart, so there was, in fact, some yaogun in these, his first hours in-country)
Ladies and gentlemen: Pay attention to this part of the world. Magical things happen.
More to come, including jaunts into the university system, a return to the Capital, and more…
Witness the global power of rock ‘n’ roll as three insiders from the front lines of China’s explosive rock music movement talk about the musical phenomenon Yaogun and rock’s impact on the cultural transformation of China. Join music journalist and ALDTV host Al Di as he talks with Nova Heart’s lead singer, Helen Feng and author Jonathan Campbell at the launch of Campbell’s book, Red Rock, The Long, Strange March of Chinese Rock & Roll. This special afternoon TINARSevent features rare performances by two Beijing bands, Shanren and Nova Heart who appear courtesy of Canadian Music Week. Presented by This Is Not a Reading Series, the Gladstone Hotel, YGTwo Productions and The Toronto Review of Books
Details:
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Gladstone Hotel, Main Ballroom, 1214 Queen Street West
Special Afternoon Show Doors open at 1 pm; Event begins at 1:30 pm
Admission is $5 or FREE with purchase of a book
Facebookers: Join the event here
For more info:
Jonathan Campbell at jon AT jonathanWcampbell (dot) com
This Is Not A Reading Series: Anna Withrow awithrow AT rogers (dot) com
Before all this goes down, Campbell will be on a China Tour of Unprecedented Proportions. Details are here, and also here.
And while we’re on the subject of live appearances (because we are, after all, quickly approaching jWc’s Feb 14 Toronto Reference Library talk, about which a nice blog post was written by the library folks), why not check in with yaogun making its way into the wider world, live.
While Chinese bands touring abroad is not exactly front-page news, it is still news-y when bands hop the Great Wall for gigs overseas. In the first few weeks of the Year of the Dragon, there’s been some action on the yaogun-abroad front.
Proximity Butterfly went on a two-week Australian tour from mid-Jan through early Feb.
Three bands (AV Okubo Xiao He and Nova Heart) plus a talk and slideshow from photographer Matthew Niederhauser in Sydney. Photos of the event are here.
Shanghai duo Pairs hit New Zealand for a two-week tour late Jan-early Feb; also in New Zealand in early February, was Chinese reggae outfit Long Shen Dao.
More importantly, though, are the upcoming chances to check out sounds from China in a city near-ish you.
Carsick Cars, Nova Heart, Duck Fight Goose (whose 2011 album, Sports, is pictured at left) and, word is, others yet to be officially added are heading to South by Southwest (aka SXSW), the massive festival-conference that takes over the clubs of Austin, Texas. Presumably these bands will use the cross-continental opportunity to hit an additional city or two while they’re in our neck of the woods. Details to come…
One of the afforementioned bands, the well-traveled Nova Heart, will cross yet another international border and head to Canadian Music Week, taking place in late March in Toronto. In 2009, the Toronto festival brought a delegation of China industry folks, including yours truly (and had Lonely China Day perform). This year, southwestern-Chinese folk outfit 
Shanren 山人 will also make the trip. Shanren comes through Canada on what they’re calling their Shangri-La to North America tour, and it is a tour that is extensive enough to warrant a crowdsource campaign to raise money:
Tuesday, March 6 – Pianos, New York, NY
Saturday, March 10 – Ollie’s Point, Amityville, NY
Sunday, March 11 – The Blockley, Philadelphia, PA
Wednesday, March 14 – The Outer Space, Hamden, CT
Thursday, March 15 – Chameleons, Pittsfield, MA
Friday, March 16 – Dock Street Underground, Staten Island, NY
Saturday, March 17 – Ran Tea House, Brooklyn, NY
Sunday, March 18 – Iota Club & Café, Arlington, VA
Monday, March 19 – Iota Club & Café, Arlington, VA
Tuesday, March 20 – The Saint, Asbury Park, NJ
March 21-25 – Slacker Canadian Music Fest, Toronto, Canada
More to come, I’m sure, in the near future. For now, we hope for a day in the not-so-distant future, where touring Chinese bands are such a regular occurrence that the excitement raised is from their respective fanbases, rather than the media at large. On that note, a blast from the past, Subs’ tour poster from 2006 — a tour which I put together and narrated in blog form — that sums up, in a mere nine just-grammatically-imperfect-enough words, the state of affairs that remains today:
