The Yaogun Diaries, part 1

Part of a series dealing with rock music in China, mostly Beijing because that's what I know. 摇滚 (yáogǔn) is the Chinese word for rock music, the two characters literally meaning "shake" and "roll".

Introduction

When I first went to China back in 2006, one of my goals was to learn as much as I could about music there. Being the musical omnivore I am, that included everything from traditional folk music to academic Chinese Classical music to pop and rock – whatever I might find there. Somehow I never managed to see a Peking Opera show, but I saw dozens of rock bands, and the whole phenomenon of rock in China fascinated me.

While it's undeniable that rock music is a Western art form in its origins, it's also undeniable that it has had an impact all around the world. I think this is in part because rock is not a clearly defined genre, but a kind of cultural chameleon. It can absorb various outside traditions and remain rock. This is nothing new – it started back in the 60s when elements of European Classical music and the music of the Middle East and India started to filter into psychedelic rock. As I see it, rock was born out of the union of rhythm and blues (at the time mostly confined to predominantly black communities) with country music (primarily a white form of music), so it should be no surprise that rock is good at melding what may seem like opposites. Over the decades since its birth, rock has mated with just about every possible form of music on the planet, and its bastard offspring can be found just about everywhere you could point on a globe.

So it should come as no surprise that there is rock music in China. I've even had reports that rock is starting to make inroads in North Korea, though in a highly constrained form that mostly resembles 60s surf music – all instrumental, thus avoiding any questionable lyrical content. The government of the People's Republic of China is also known for censorship, though it is nowhere near as restrictive as North Korea, and musicians there have their own methods of dealing with it. We'll get to that later.

I went to a lot of shows at clubs, theaters, and festivals over the last two and a half years in Beijing, and you can get some descriptions and photos on my China blog by searching on the music tag. Like any thriving music scene, Beijing has artists that cover a wide variety of styles, from raucous classic punk to acoustic singer/songwriters, from experimental noise to sweet technopop. Some of them come off as derivative of their Western prototypes, some of them are wildly original. Some of them sing in English, some in Chinese, and some in other languages. All in all, there are easily a couple dozen artists there worthy of international attention, and from my own difficulties, I know how hard it can be to learn about them. There is precious little information, even in Chinese, to guide you, and a lot of it is extremely difficult to come by outside the country. So I'd like to share what I've learned, and help bring together some of what's available elsewhere on the web.

First up, there is an online directory, Rock in China, that has a lot of information, most of it in English. It's an evolving resource with user-created content like Wikipedia. I've been contributing there myself, and will continue to do so as I have time and facts. I've also contributed and updated artist bios on Last.fm for many of the bands I know. A lot of Chinese rock is available for download at VeryCD, though I'll leave it up to others to determine the moral/legal status of what's there – it's also in Chinese, though I've found that even with limited language skills, it's possible to make my way around. I can give some lessons for those who are interested – just ask.

And now, since it seems like it would be a shame to end this post without covering something specific, I'll tell you about...

Re-TROS

This is one of very few Chinese bands which is available on CD in the US. Their first album, Cut Off!, was released by Tag Team Records, and they’ve toured in the US, including a spot at SXSW in 2007. Their first album lists their full name as Reestablishing the Rights of Statues – later items have called them Rebuilding the Rights of Statues. The Chinese version is 重塑雕像的权利 (chóngsù diāoxiàng de quánlì), which can be translated either way.

That American release (actually an EP) is a 2007 re-release of something that came out in China on Badhead Records (a division of Modern Sky) in 2005 with one added track. Both are called Cut Off! I have the Chinese version. As the story goes, Brian Eno was working in the same studio where they were recording, liked their music, and ended up doing some guest keyboards on some of the tracks.
Stylistically, they are most closely related to Gang of Four, Bauhaus, Joy Division, Pere Ubu and early Talking Heads, though they are distinctive enough to avoid any charges of being mere copycats. Their lyrics are almost entirely in English.

TV Show (Hang the Police)

There's also a video for this song, which you can watch online:


I first saw them live in November of 2007 at a little club called 2 Kolegas, which is a great place located inside the grounds of a drive-in movie theater, along with a number of other bars and restaurants. It was my first time going to the place, and it was not easy to find. The taxi driver had no clue (at that time I spoke very little Chinese), so it was lucky I’d looked at a map and knew the general location. It was a triple bill, starting with Subs, then Re-TROS, and finishing up with Hedgehog. I’ll talk about the other two later.
Re-TROS put on an amazing show, very intense with energy and commitment, probably including imperfections but much too enjoyable for me to care.
The lyrics, which deal with social issues bordering on politics, were pretty much indistinguishable. Lead singer 华东 (Hua Dong) is extremely emotive in a jerky David Byne kind of way.
Bassist Liu Min (刘敏) is less demonstrative, providing solid low end and backing vocals. Ma Hui (马晖) is mostly simple, but quite imaginative on the drums, with lots of unconventional patterns and unexpected accents.

2Kolegas is a great place to see a show, not such a great place to take pictures since the lighting is pretty minimal. You can read my original post about the show here.

After that night, I didn’t get a chance to see them again until June of 2009, at the release party for their full-length CD with the unwieldy title of Watch Out! Climate Has Changed, Fat Mum Rises... (including punctuation), which is out on Modern Sky in China. So far no outside release that I'm aware of.

My Great Location

This show was at Yugong Yishan, which is much bigger, with better lights and sound than 2Kolegas, though lacking the cozy dive ambiance.
This band was great before, but have since grown into something truly awesome. The new material is rather atmospheric on the CD, though the live show was every bit as intense as before.
Liu Min even handles lead vocals and melodica at times.
Hua Dong sometimes sets aside his guitar to concentrate on singing. When he does this, there are often taped guitar parts filling in. These “non-live” elements are mostly unobtrusive and do not detract at all from the impact of the show. I have also written about this show here.

In short, this band is one of the best bands in China, well able to hold their own with any band anywhere, both live and in the studio.

Rock in China entry: http://wiki.rockinchina.com/index.php?title=Re-TROS
Band home: http://re-tros.com/face.html
Band Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/rebuildingtherightsofstatues
Tag Team Records: http://www.tagteamrecords.com/
Modern Sky: http://www.modernsky.com/

Note: All images and audio files presented here are in the interest of increasing awareness of Chinese rock in the English-speaking world. If you are the owner of the copyright in any of them and object to this free promotion, let me know and I'll remove the offending media.

Wondering what sort of rights statues should have

One of the few Chinese bands known outside of China is Rebuilding the Rights of Statues (called ReTROS for short, and occasionally known by their Chinese name, 重塑雕像的权利 ). Their first EP was on Tag Team records, which has distribution in the US, and they even played SXSW in 2007, and have a page in the All Music Guide.

I’ve seen them before, but when I found out they have a new CD, I had to go see them again.

They were playing at Yugong Yishan (愚公移山), which is pretty convenient for me. I rode my bike again.

The opening band was The Offset: Spectacles – or something like that, involving one or more gratuitous punctuation marks.
They’re originally from Hong Kong, but have relocated to Beijing because the music scene here is more suitable to their style.
I’d say they fit right in with this scene. For one thing, they’re a trio with a female member.
They use neither a drummer nor a drum machine, relying on the guitars and keyboard to keep the rhythms going. The use of violin and a very distorted combo organ gives their music some variety, but on the whole I would not rank them near the top of the capital’s bands. They are noisy and deliberately noncommercial, both of which are also Beijing standards.

ReTROS, on the other hand, are near the top.
They are intense, unique, and artistic, and in spite of a complete lack of typical stage presence, are really entertaining. Hua Dong (华东 ) rarely faces the audience when singing or playing guitar, but he is so into the performance that he gets away with it.
Liu Min (刘敏 ) also doesn’t face the crowd. They seemlessly integrated recorded guitar, bass, and rhythm parts into the show, allowing them to play melodica, or concentrate on singing.
They played pretty much everything on their first EP as well as the whole new album, and while their studio work is very good, they are so intense and energetic live that even the memory of it makes listening to the CDs a little bit of a letdown.
After they finished, I bought the new release, which is on Modern Sky, the premier “indie” label in China – I’m not sure what kind of distribution that gives them outside the country. I also picked up another recent Modern Sky CD that they had at the table – Casino Demon’s Teenager.

Randomly rebuilding underwater hedgehogs

After reading about Beijing’s music scene for a year, I’m finally starting to get out and see what the buzz is all about. Last weekend I caught Guaili, Hedgehog, Snapline and Carsick Cars at Yugong Yishan, and this weekend I headed out to 2 Kolegas for Random K(e), SUBS, Re-TROS and Hedgehog.

This time I managed to talk RR into going with me. I was pretty sure he would enjoy it, and he was such a concert-hound back in LA that he’s been showing symptoms of withdrawal in Beijing. Neither of us had been to this club before, and the address was kind of strange (which is nothing unusual in this town): inside the drive-in cinema on Liangmaqiao Road. Right.

We had the taxi driver drop us off in the middle on Liangmaqiao and started looking for street numbers. It took us a while to find it, but there it was, a drive-in cinema, closed for the season of course. There’s a collection of restaurants and bars inside around a little pond. I guess we looked like rockers, because a parking lot attendant asked me, “Jiuba ma?” Jiuba (joe-bah) is a very handy Mandarin word: bar. He pointed off to one side, and we saw the 2 Kolegas sign.

The word “dive” would be appropriate here. It’s a pretty small place, with walls mostly consisting of bare red brick. Graffiti on the outside, snapshots of bands taped on the walls on the inside, prices for food and beverages hand-written stuck all over the place. We paid our ¥40 each (about $5). Gin and tonics were ¥20 ($2.60) and beers ranged from ¥15 up. The place was left than half full at this point, and the crowd seemed to be mostly foreigners.

RR looked around and said, “Yeah, this is already my favorite club in Beijing.”

First up was the oddball band of the night in more ways than one. First, Random K(e) consists entirely of foreigners (Brits and Americans by the sound of the voices); second, it’s not a trio; and third, they’re all guys. The first tune was very good and reminded me a bit of Radiohead, but from there on they took on a variety of styles. Instrumentation was electric guitar, electric bass, drums, and a guy who played both upright electric bass and a laptop with a bank of effects devices. Refreshingly, the guitarist actually had a pretty decent singing voice. They played with a visual backdrop of various still and moving black and white images projected over them, making photography pointless with my camera.
Next up, SUBS. I saw them do a few tunes months ago at Star Live, and I found the female singer so annoying I had to flee. The three guys backing her this time started out with a spacey instrumental tune that was quite good, kind of a post-punk Pink Floyd. But then Kang Mao came out in her funny hat and started screaming. When she settles down and sings, she seems to have some talent (aside from her looks), but she never settles down for more than a few lines of lyrics at a time before returning to shredding her throat.
Totally blurry picture, but I kind of like it. I can’t help thinking this band would really be something if she would just tone it down a few dozen notches.

RR came up to me after being AWOL for a bit (just lost in the crowd). He said he’d seen Hedgehog’s drummer going to the bar and getting a bunch of cans of Coke. So that’s where she gets her energy!

By this time it was getting very crowded and hot inside. Of course everyone was bundled up in heavy coats and layers of sweaters and scarves, which makes for a really awkward situation when there’s no coat check.

I’ve been looking forward to seeing Re-TROS (Rebuilding the Rights of Statues, which has got to be one of the oddest band names ever in any country) since I first heard about them. I’ve got their EP, and like it quite a bit.
They did not disappoint. In typical Beijing fashion, the band is a trio with a female member, in this case the bassist. She and the lead guitar player arranged their microphone stands to face each other, so they were both sideways to the audience. Can’t say I’ve seen that done.
The lead vocals are a bit like a snarly version of David Byrne, and the music reminded me a fair amount of Gang of Four, though not so funky (or is it pseudo-funky?).
They are known for English lyrics featuring social and political commentary, but in a live setting it’s kind of hard to get much of that. Aside from the almost scary intensity, meaning is mostly reserved for the studio versions.

This time, Hedgehog was the headliner.
Their performance was similar to the one I saw last week, just a slightly different set list and a different drum kit. It seems to be the standard at clubs here for there to be a house kit that all the bands use.
For the light show, a series of images of the band was projected onto them, again making photography difficult.
Near the end of the final song, the guitarist pulled his strap over his head and dropped his instrument to the floor, finishing out the tune on voice only. Then when the others finished off the song, he staggered backwards and fell to the ground.
He was still lying there as his bandmates headed backstage. Atom came over and shook him, but he didn’t appear to move.
She hurried over behind the drum kit and got one of her cans of Coke, then brought it back to him.
She lifted his head up to pour some in his mouth. Eventually he sat up enough to drink on his own.
Now that’s rock ‘n’ roll. Either that or a Coca-Cola endorsement.

Once the music was over, we headed out straightaway. Not much reason to hang out at 1am in an uncomfortably warm room filled with smelly smoke.