Tag: yaogun

Rockin’ In the Year of the Snake

In light of the Year of the Snake’s arrival, I put together a playlist, of sorts, for CBC Music. snake rattle rollAnything to direct folks away from the madness of  China Central Television’s Spring Festival Gala variety-show-on-steroids-laced-with-Angel-Dust-and-acid madness, and what better way than with yaogun.

(though, on the Canadian Content front, we rejoice, if reservedly, as Celine Dion and Mark “Da Shan” Roswell will both appear. For those outside of China, Roswell is the most famous Canuck in China, having mastered a traditional comedic style and appearing in commercials, billboards, TV shows and more across China for the better part of the last two decades).

As always, there were a million tunes that didn’t make the cut, because, well, you gotta cut it off somewhere…

Check out my Snake Year rock playlist at CBC Music’s blog.

 

The Post Where I Use the Word “Gangnam”

To be fair, they asked me, so it’s not like I went fishing for reasons to drop one-billion-click words into this humble blog… When the Asia Society had me up to their NYC headquarters for an on-camera chat, the talk turned to Psy, the Korean mega-star, and his and “Gangnam”‘s implications for yaogun. So I try to yaogunify things.

Video, below the jump.

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Leonard Lopate Rocks…

Yesterday I had the pleasure of visiting the WNYC studios, for a chat with Leonard Lopate on his eponymous noontime NPR talkshow. In between authors of books on 17th-Century priest-scientists and the Kennedy family, we talked rock.

As of this writing, there was not yet the chance to stream my segment, but hopefully by clicking here often you will be able to check out what all we talked about.

New York has one more chance to hear from me: At NYU’s Asian/Pacific/American Institute TONIGHT, Dec 11 at 6.30pm when I’ll be screening the excellent yaogunmentary, Rock Heart Beijing.

 

The Coverage Down Under

Wherein the blogger toots a few horns of his own, because the amazing interest in yaogun Down Under was deemed worthy of a wrap-up, particularly now that he finds himself ensconced in a lovely bachelor pad (thanks to the kindness of a friend who rocks) on the Isle of Lantau, back in Hong Kong, after a whirlwind week in Australia talking to all who would listen (and some, yes, who would snooze) about the way China rocks.

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Post-Punks: Of shoes, of sunglasses, milk and more

We have heard, and seen, yaogun on China Central Television. We have seen yaogun’s only real anthem reinvented in protest. We’ve even seen that anthem of anthems (“Nothing to My Name”) reinvented for the Idol set (2009’s Super Girl, the massively popular Chinese televised singing competition):

But we have gone from an age where yaogun, occasionally, is broadcast on television to an era in which brands now scamper after yaogun. And, in the spirit of the previous post, I give you, again, Anarchy Jerks.

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