Interview: Jon Campbell on Why You Should Care About Chinese Rock and Roll

Jonathan Campbell moved to Beijing in 2000 to study Chinese and “figure out what to do with” the Master’s Degree in International Studies he received from the University of Washington. Almost immediately, he was thrust into China’s fledgling rock music scene, first as a drummer, and later as a writer, promoter and agent. Red Rock: The Long, Strang March of Chinese Rock & Roll is his first book. Asia Society Associate Fellow Jeffrey Wasserstrom calls it “a rollicking account of how a global genre was transformed as it sank down roots in a very special setting.”

Souvenirs is available for download. Pay What You Want.

Josh Feola: From Memorial Day Miracle to somewhere else.

Josh Feola may run pangbianr, be one half of Damage Blanket  (the other being his ace girlfriend, Lulu) and may write real long articles for Smart Beijing. But to me and countless others, he will also be the boy who witnessed hundreds of people getting soaked by a high powered water cannon at an NBA game.

Reykjavictim writes about his shows in Wuhan, Guangzhou and HK.

Here’s Adam from Reykjavictim talking about his recent shows in Wuhan, Guangzhou and Hong Kong. Why is it the best? Just fucking read it. I’d usually break this in to two parts, but fuck that, it needs to be read in one go. Print it out and bind it. 
If you disagree with with any of this, please don’t come and talk to me about anything. We’re never going to click, we’re never going to ‘get’ each other. Let’s save ourselves the heartache. You go about our business and I’ll go about mine and we can live open open heart heart.

Live Shanghai Music Week

Bringing down the cold with me, I found myself in Shanghai to partake in what the city and music scene had to offer. I’ve done the whole touristy thing before – saw the bend, was mortified by Nanjing road, chased tail at Windows, you know, graze the surface. But this is was my true introduction, and I gotta say, Shanghai is quite the temptress. Here are some rambling thoughts, facts, nuggets for the three days I got way too comfortable there. And be sure to check back the next few days for footage from some pretty wicked shows.

IVAN BELCIC – DRUMMER FOR DEATH TO GIANTS

It’s not every day you experience something like the sound of Death to Giants.  Genre hopping, vocal shredding and at times just plain weird, DtoG is a a mashup of styles that is hard to put your finger on but will get you hooked with their unique style.  Luckily I got to the bottom of all that as I had the chance to talk with the better half of the group.  That’s right, the fucking drummer, Ivan Belcic.

Now to be fair to our readers, the genre of Death to Giants doesn’t technically fit into our scope but then again, I’m not aware of a death-pop specific blog out there.  Afterall, we’re a blog about music and drummers; not to mention, Ivan’s got plenty of personality so this won’t be just another boring blog post you breeze through on the shitter at work.   This will be one that leaves red marks on your legs because you rest your elbows there and you forget to move them because you become so engrossed reading about the song Girth vs Length that you lose yourself for a few minutes locked back in the nice big handicap stall.

Now, get yourself some fucking Kombuchi, take an Adderall and tune into Death to Giants on Bandcamp and read along.  Today is not just about you.  And if you have to pick just one song to listen to check out Stegosaurus Rex.

BEIJING MUSIC JOURNAL

MP3 Monday: Ben Ben

Today we take a look at Ben Ben, one of Beijing’s more intriguing indie rock ciphers. Originally from Taiwan, Ben Ben represents this persistent phenomenon in which a musician moves to Beijing for its perceived musical manna, its mythical underground community, then quickly gets pretty disillusioned with the whole thing, then comes back because fuck it, it’s really the only solid option. Actually most people who get burnt out on the music grind here just drop out entirely, but Ben Ben’s kept at it. After three years of ping-ponging between Taipei and Beijing, writing songs and finding the right people to play them live and on record, she finally releases her latest, Sacrifice Mountain Hills, on Friday at Mao Livehouse. Here’s a quick look at how she got to this point.

Han Han - No More Sports for Duck Fight Goose?

Han Han is the hairy face of seminal Shanghai band Duck Fight Goose, who have just been confirmed to be supporting Slash when he plays at the Mercedes Benz arena Mixing Room.

People like Duck Fight Goose’s electronic heavy post-rock. Really. A lot.

“I think that album “Sports” is the greatest thing by anyone anywhere in a very long time,” says Enrique Maymi, a veteran of venerated garage rock band The Brian Jonestown Massacre on Slink Rat (Xiao Zhong of Shanghai band Pairs’ tumblr).

MP3 Monday: Festival Dark Horses

So the big thing on the agenda for this forthcoming long weekend, of course, is the Music Festival. Two music festivals, actually. MIDI (Day 1, Day 2, Day 3) and Strawberry battle it out from April 29-May 1, both sporting lineups heavily emphasizing local rock, punk, metal, folk, and electronic names that, at first glance, seem far too familiar to even the casual Beijing music watcher. But let’s get real for a minute. You’re not at the festival to see Hedgehog orSubs or Nova Heart again. Maybe you are, but that’s secondary to just having a lark outdoors with your friends, smuggling warm Tsingtao’s into a public park and laying on some grass while the sound waves roll over you.

That said, here are a few lesser known entrants to this year’s festival fray. A few dark horses, one of which literally sings about horses. Take the time out to patronize the side stages/early time slots to check out a few of the bands that might be headlining the future MIDIs and Strawberries.

Archie Hamilton from Split Works fancies my wife. Probably. Pt 1.

Originally, I wanted to sit down with Archie Hamilton from Split Worksand go through a Split Works show of his choosing and look at how they arrive at certain ticket prices as I’m curious as to how promoters arrive at a certain price. But we ended up talking a whole bunch of other shit, that I’ll cut in to two parts because you probably have a whole heap of torrents to start downloading.  

We talked quite a bit about the Godspeed You! Black Emperor tour as it was just a few days before and Archie was obviously excited about it. It took me awhile to transcribe this so apologies for the delay.  

For Split Works to break even for Godspeed they needed 1,900 tickets across two cities – which means they need around 850 people a city, pre sale. 

Split Works generally run landed offers which means the artist pays for their own flights, but for Godspeed they did factor in 15% flight share in to the offer. But once they landed it’s all local costs. Local hotels, local transport, customs, freight, looking after the band, production and venue hire.  
 
Side note here. If Split Works can bring a ten-piece band, each carrying 50kgs of luggage and gear over for two shows and keep tickets to 240RMB pre sale. Why the fuck is Slash playing a Hennessy sponsored event for 980RMB?  
 Slash seems like one of those guys that Chinese kids love the shit out of and it seems a bit of a shame that they will have to fork out a whole shit tonne of cash just to have to wait until the first encore for him to play a song they’ve actually heard before.  

So here’s my chat with Archie.  

(you can read part 2 at the link too)

[Culture Bureau]: Nevin Domer

When I first moved to Beijing in 2009, I was eager to get plugged in to the local music scene. It took about thirty seconds for me to be pointed in the direction of Nevin Domer, who was then the booking manager at legendary venue D-22 and COO at local indie label Maybe Mars. Nevin was my spirit guide for my first year in Beijing, when I was working a real job. Afterwards he became sort of my boss, when I took over booking duties for him at D-22. Not long thereafter, he launched Genjing Records, his vinyl-only passion project, which has a ton of events coming up in the next few weeks. I’d write more in this intro but I am literally maxing out the total number of characters I can input into this box. This interview is really, really long. Grab a six pack:

Thruoutin tour diary part II

This morning Jia Huizhen, Yao Sichen and I left Wuhan, back in traffic for a couple hours, to the train station where we took a fast train to Zhengzhou, Henan. From Zhengzhou we spent a hound dog total of 7 kuai each to take a little green train to Xinxiang. This small city was just that… a small, dirty city. On the other hand, there was a pretty cool place called ArK Live House that we played at.