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
Couple of things headed to NYC stages, though, perhaps not exactly the ‘stages’ that one might expect to hear about from a blog about yaogun. We’re talking about the theatre, and audiences get a couple of glimpses into Chinese music and beyond in the near future…
(Americans looking to experience yaogun in the more traditional setting should stay tuned; updates on some US dates are coming very soon…)
Continue reading “Chinese Music on Stages Near You (New York City)”
Sub Jam, the “experimental art organization” headed up by poet, critic and musician Yan Jun, just put online an archive that is a treasure trove for fans seeking China’s outer-edge music history. Compiling over ten years’ worth of events, publications and photos, there is a lot to go through. But anyone interested in a window into how the edge of yaogun mapped itself out should head there and check it out.
Sub Jam’s, and Yan Jun’s, story is you might say, typical of yaogun in its atypicality…
Thanks, yet again, to Beijing Daze for the skinny on the fundraiser held, over the weekend, for Liang Heping:
Beijing Daze’s review of the show is here. A total of just shy of RMB134,000 (just over US$21,000) was raised via ticket sales and an auction that consisted of items ranging from a guitar smashed by grunge-rocker Xie Tianxiao (aka XTX) – who had, back in the day, smashed more than his share of guitars that he could barely afford to purchase, let alone destroy; in his not-so-early-days, he brought along to shows an extra smashable guitar that often went unsmashed – to autographed guitars and albums and more.
Our best goes out to Liang Heping; his wife told the gathered crowd that Liang has regained “minimal use of his hands” and we hope that the healing continues.
photo of Liang Heping (right) and Cui Jian from the late 80s via Weibo user 只爱右
It is not, in fact, a bit late in the new year for a looking-ahead-at-the-year-to-come post, since the Year of the Snake is a mere week away. Thus do my thoughts turn to what lies ahead in 2013…
In light of a recent piece in ChinaFile on the wackiest bunch of Shanghaiers in the land – and, for anyone in Beijing this weekend, in advance of the band’s performance there – I thought it appropriate to revisit the phenom that is Top Floor Circus.
The band’s frontman and founder, Lu Chen, who started out singing pop songs following his love of karaoke, dismissed Nirvana as the worst band ever when he first heard it, but came around soon thereafter, deciding that his goal was to make a band louder than Nirvana. Lu is finally ok with his pop roots: as he told ChinaFile, “we don’t mind being a pop band.” And he is bringing that pop to more folks than ever…