Sub Jam

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…

Revisiting Cui Jian

When I found, on my various internetty feeds, sources and whatnots, references to an interview conducted by VICE magazine of Chinese rocker number one, Cui Jian, my attention, like many other China-watchers and -blatherers, was piqued. After all, who isn’t constantly on the lookout for Western media mentions of Chinese rock and roll?

More For the Holidays…

On Xmas, 1998, as they generally did on most nights, Beijing punks flocked to the Scream Club. But this time, it was different. It was Christmas. And: There would be an album.

Seeing China, and Rock, Through Yaogun

I was I was recently asked to join Down: Indie Rock in the PRC director Andrew Field for a post-screening Q&A session at the North by Northeast (NXNE) Festival in Toronto. The film follows Field’s explorations through the music scene in 2007. The host of the afternoon, the festival’s film programmer, used the word “revelatory” on several occasions to describe the impact Field’s film had on him and could have on potential audiences. That’s definitely something I was ready for: The number one reaction I get when I tell people that I’ve written a book on Chinese rock music is confusion. That there might be such a thing is not something that crosses your average mind. And let me be clear: I’m not surprised that this is the case.

The Best So Far: The Aughts

…one man’s view of the best records to come out of China’s rock scene takes us into the new millennium. 

China’s great wall of Canadian sound

Canadian bands like Hollerado are making inroads with Chinese audiences hungry for western rock ‘n roll.

The Music Biz and China

So Maclean’s magazine just ran a story on one Canadian effort to bring its music industry into the Middle Kingdom. Yes, yours truly was quoted in the piece, but it sheds light on an important, if small, idea. We can talk (and write) about China’s musical output and of the international bands performing there, but there is something lacking in all of those discussions: China’s music industry.

Red Rock: The Long Strange March of Chinese Rock & Roll (excerpt)

Excerpted from Chapter 1: The Rocker’s Paradise, from Red Rock: The Long Strange March of Chinese Rock & Roll by Jonathan Campbell. Copyright © 2011 by the author and reprinted by permission of Earnshaw Books. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Do not say that we have nothing. 
We’ll be the masters of the world.
—“The Internationale”

Peking Punks