Andy Best

The Mushrooms are the most popular home grown rock band in Shanghai. We recently saw them headline at Yuyintang on New Year's Eve, a show that got so packed that there was an inevitable visit from the rozzers. 

Well, it's time for round two. It's now the lunar new year and The Mushrooms will headline YYT again. Also featuring on the bill are DCW, Momo and Little Nature.

It's on the Friday (12th).

The Mushrooms also cropped up in the Shanghai Daily lately, although in a generic and suspiciously out of date article. Despite it's publishing date being Jan 29th of this year, it talks about one of the guitarists having just joined the band. A year ago now.

I feel weird linking any of those papers. Their writing on the subject of culture is inconsequential. They spend more time committing things to the memory hole than reporting. We can always play a game of guessing why they chose to recycle this now. Slow day at the office? 

Who cares. Go to the show.

Huanyin, Andybest. Indeed.

So. Poor Jake has no life right now for various reasons and I'm going to start up some extra posts like I used to do. This is the reporting on other music writing around the Shanghai scene blogs type thing.

Firstly Douban. We've been talking a lot about Douban lately and how it's like Facebook or Kaixin but with no annoying apps and has feeds for your bands and books and movies etc. 

So logged in just now to see it has adopted a Facebook style combined feed frontpage. That's it on the picture. It's good. It will always be good because all the items are related to music, bands, books and films. They have added something new though, a kind of status update like on regular social sites. The new look is fine - but I hope it's not a precursor to it adding happy lobotomy Happy Farm games and stuff like that.

Elsewhere.

Dan Shapiro is still flying the flag at City Weekend, trying to keep some kind of interest going there. Lately on his blog we've had an informative post on the city's recording studios, a review of the BCR CD and a preview of the upcoming Jue Festival.

Check it all out here.

Zack Smith is still plugging away in a lonely room at Layabozi. Lately he's written something about us, thanks. Check his weekend picks too. 

China Music Radar are still wound up about festival organizers just plain lying about their line ups at official press conferences. I would be too, read it, it's outrageous. Now the CMR people are aware of this they find it happening all over the shop. Check out the latest installment. 

Finally, Adam over at Luwan Rock notes that post-rockers Hualun are in town to do some recording. Read about that here. 

Not that long ago I wrote this post and briefly mentioned some photos we shot for a project supporting PETA's China website. I also mentioned that Jake was writing it up for Time Out.

So. It's mainly for Chinese language mags and sites but we are holding off to avoid the wrong type of attention to the show, which hasn't happened yet. Believe me, if we didn't have a strategy of gradual roll-out, I'd have been talking about nothing else on the blog.

Well, the Time Out feature is now public. Also, a friend of mine based in New York, Mickey Z, wanted to write this up and submit it to some editors he writes for. He shot high first and went for broke. It paid off and Discovery Channel have run it on their Planet Green website. Check it out.

Here is Mickey's Article there.

They will also send a China based writer to cover the show at Yuyintang later this month. But for now - please tweet/link/repost/write the sh*t out of that link. Like now. Do it. This is Discovery Channel's site reporting on going's on at Yuyintang and linking local bands.

More photos after the jump.

So, we've just finished recording the 3rd Podcast of the second season, look out for that at Jake's blog soon. 

We mentioned a couple of things. We talked about Douban and 'following' your bands there to create a feed for them. Also, we mentioned Schwarzenegger's viral phrase girlie men and how in the China rock scene the girls were often way cooler and more badass than the guys.

No sooner had I finished that, I logged into Douban and caught some new pics by bands that feature girls. 

Shanghai all-girl rock band Second have just uploaded this 'backstage' gallery. Despite a brief break to find a new guitarist, they still appear to be active. That's bassist Xiao Zhu pictured to your right. 

Boys Climbing Ropes have finished adjusting their Douban page. As well as the CD liner bed shot they have settled on songs Whale Song, Dirty Bots and Night Boy. They are all available for download, if you are signed into the site.

And while we're on the subject of cool gals on the scene why not throw in these ones. It's Xie Han from Ourself Beside Me and then the undisputed queen of China rock Kang Mao of the Subs. So what's wrong with that, Arnie?

So. Fans of proper heavy music rejoice. OK, the quality is not so good. But, stick with it as it goes through to a second song. I was taken with their new grind sections with slow but punishing beats and a guitar that sounds like it's tuned right down ... right down to hell. 

Sorry. When I get into metal, all writing bets are off and out comes the cheese and cliche. By the way, death to false metal, satan's minions await you.

So here's someone else's footage from the same night. It's Chaos Mind and their song Just Waiting For.

I've been home all day nursing a sore head, more on that later, and just wanted to blog some bits and bobs.

Jake's piece on Candy Shop and the PETA show at Yuyintang came out in Time Out this weekend. We were not going to do any off-Douban promotion until after the show, to stay off the man's radar until it was in the bag. But, we did. So yeah, shameless self-promotion there.

Over the weekend I met some blog readers at the shows, all nice people. And I think some of them didn't know Jake's blog. So. Yeah, there are two blogs. We kind of cover each other.

Jake is here.

I'll leave it up to Jake to review the BCR show fully. Although the head, yeah ...

I was so happy to see a good crowd going off for BCR but it was a bit spoiled by some a**holes. Some complete w*nkers were just standing around doing random two handed pushes on people with a run up, but not really dancing or joining in themselves. Others, like the tall guy with beard and beret, were throwing their elbows into bystanders heads. A mosh is a mosh, but people at the fringes could barely dance. At one point said tall guy and some other guy I never saw before just floored poor Super Sophia in what could only be described as an attack. 

No matter what kind of mosh, indie-show jumping or metal windmilling, there is a kind of code where everyone is in it together and knows the limits. Right at the end, I randomly caught that c**t's elbow in my face and then backed into a clash of heads. Ouch. Josh, how's your head?

Finally, we were having a laugh at/with Time Out over lunch today. We're all happy that Time Out ran the music feature and it's definitely the best of the ex-pat mags already. It's just that the editor has called the lifestyle (buying guide) section consume. Steve joked that the fashion section should be called conform and the news obey.

There was some big show or other on at Dream Factory tonight, but it was of no consequence to metal and hardcore fans as Yuyintang hosted the battle of the -cores.

Loudspeaker hardcore

Forget and Forgive emocore

Chaos Mind metalcore

Six Shot deathcore

Newcomers Lala Ying supported.

Of these five bands, Lalaying and FAF are the younger newcomers and the other three are well established bands who thoroughly embody their style. 

Good turn out and plenty of true fans ready for some heavy music. Lalaying got a good reception but are new and need a bit of development. They broke up their thrashy set with a sweet ballad and only the bass player looked really badass in her spiked neck collar.

FAF were the first to get the crowd moving with a longer than usual set. Ding Ding intro'd their Story of the Year cover version as their favourite track which was odd as their opening two original songs Escape and Parasite were the clear winners. The crowd had a good time, but they were waiting for the real hardcore. 

Six Shot had the perfect slot. At this point the room was as full as it was going to get and they were they first experienced band on. They have improved a lot since I last saw them and have pared down their sound into relentless grinding. This was as violent a mosh pit as I've ever seen at YYT. Full of mad windmills, straight out punching and non stop action. The most impressive sight was the girls giving as good as the guys and never shirking from the pit centre. The band were badass and the front man even growled/gurgled the brief banter between tracks. It was metal heaven and such a great show.

Then we passed 11 p.m. and a bunch of people disappeared. A pity as Loudspeaker and Chaos Mind are equally as good as Six Shot. Loudspeaker used to be a skate punk band but then they changed their sound into hardcore. They continued right where Six Shot left off.

I was wondering on the pod about bands in Shanghai who are developed and can play full sets. I shouldn't discount the metal scene. The three headlining tonight acts tonight all had unique sounds with a modern edge to them and sh*t can they rock the room. Hell United just keep getting stronger.

Howard Zinn passed away yesterday. Maybe you don't know him or have only heard of him in passing but compassionate and decent people everywhere have lost one of our brightest lights.

Most people will know him through his masterwork:

It redefined history away from the sickening, oppressive narrative of 'great men' and rulers, of victors law.  It shined a light on our history much the same as did Edward Said in his work Orientalism. Edward is also gone now. 

Well, we still have another of our own great people in Amy Goodman and her show Democracy Now is where i'll take the tribute from:

Let me take this opportunity to urge you to watch Democracy Now. They have a show every weekday, it's an hour long and free at the site. You will see real journalism that asks the right questions and then listens. Pretty much all other news outlets are shallow and agenda based in comparison.

Let's finish with a Howard quote that I took from Mickey Z's write up:

Not that long ago Zhang Qian Qian (pictured) came down to Shanghai to play Yuyintang. It was midweek and I missed it.

Zhang is one of the best indie-folk artists around and incorporates many elements into her work. I'm always impressed with her fluttering vocal style and well judged sense of tempo that keeps slower songs full of subtle energy. She is is also well known for being more extroverted than her contemporaries.

Go now to her page and listen to the tracks there (live).

While we are on the subject of indie-folk. 

I was having a look around Douban's band pages. They are called 音乐人 musicians at the site.  These are relatively new at Douban and the Chinese underground has moved there gradually over the past year and a bit. Douban is a social networking style site with 2.0 functions that is geared towards music, books and movies. It has a couple of million subscribers but is still nowhere near the user numbers of mainstream sites. Well, it's not mainstream, is it.

So anyway. Now the figures break down like this. A new or part-time band with a couple of demos up will get 3-500 subscribers and their songs about 5-800 listens. This after being active for a few months. A listen is counted by individual members and once only per member.

Popular bands like the Maybe Mars bands or New Pants or whoever now get around 5-8000 subscribers and 8-10 000 listens per track. This is a recent thing too. So it's definitely growing. Basically, a good band on the underground could now use their Douban base to fill up any gig they play and create an honest revenue from shows. 

However, when I looked at the list of top performing musician pages I got a shock. Right up there with the 10 000 + club were Shanghai indie folk acts Coverpeople and Mogu Hong. Look at Coverpeople's page. The average amount of listens is over 20 000 and the best almost 40 000. They triple the numbers of the best Shanghai rock/indie band, The Mushrooms. Although the shows are not comparable, perhaps almost inverse. Who knows what it all means at this point, but there it is.