Andy Best

OK, I am about to spoil the shit out of the (vampire) movie The Lost Boys, in case you haven't seen it. Well it was out in 1987, so come on.

So. Reports are in that Canadian actor Corey Haim has passed away from a suspected drug overdose. This is not surprising given his public history of meds addiction. 

Everyone has people they associate with a certain time of their lives and for me teens = Corey Haim because of the movie The Lost Boys. That and he's just 18 months older than me.

It's funny - and this is going to be divisive for others around my age, not to mention film fans - because practically every other famous 80's American studio pic that people get misty eyed about seems terrible to me when I revisit it. The movies of John Hughes, who also passed lately, are awful on so many levels especially the ones I loved. I can't watch Ferris Bueller's Day Off without wanting to hurt someone. I want to brick the TV when I hear the down here, it's our time speech from The Goonies. Raiders of the Lost Ark is borderline racist and the action sequences often make no sense.

But The Lost Boys holds up - because it is an outstanding piece of film making.

No ... really. Every set piece and every beat that a big movie like that should hit is nailed with extreme prejudice.

The setting is perfect, a seaside fairground town, seen mainly by night. The first 30 minutes are a relentless barrage of perfectly judged scenes. Perhaps one of the greatest first acts in commercial cinema.

Flying in over the night ocean.

The boys on the carousel at night.

The People Are Strange montage of the town and the freaks and geeks who populate it.

The rock concert at the beach at night.

The comic book store.

The motorbike race out to the cliffs.

Michael drinking the blood in the underground lair.

The you are one of us scene on the railway bridge.

Another thing it gets dead right (pardon the pun) is the use of horror. This is one of those movies in which the horror is second to the other genre elements. Like the monster to Frankenstein or the Zombies in the mainly comedy Shaun of the Dead. When it does bring in the horror - it does it 300%.

The big reveal is not that the boys are vampires, we know that. The surprise is that they show Michael "who you are" by revealing what kind of vampires they are - the kind with monster faces that rend the flesh from their victims, bite their skulls open, spray the scene with gore and then toss the bodies onto a pyre.

When David (Keifer Sutherland) walks up from that scene and says "you will never grow old and you will never die ... but you must feed" ... I'm telling you ... fuck bullshit movies like Twilight. The Lost Boys is an unabashed entertainment pic but other true vampire pics like, say, Interview With The Vampire, don't get close to moments like that one.

In the middle of it all was little Corey Haim. As Sam, Micheal's little brother and observer to his journey to and from the dark side, Corey is supposed to be a kind of comic relief. But he was so much more than that. And it made him a star.

Read around the net, the articles, the blogs and the comments. See how many times you read this one:

"Death by stereo!"

R.I.P., bud.

Friday night at Yuyintang and an evening organised by newly formed label Zhu Lu He Feng. Here's the line up:

Yin

A mix of styles with the label being represented by Pinkberry and Sonnet. The label has been officially running for two months or thereabouts so it still has another twelve to get a CD out and beat it's nearest rivals. Unless you count the Miniless collective as a true label, that is. 

Yin opened the night. They are a student cover-band who play stuff like Greenday. After that was Manbanpai. They are the full line-up version of Hama. Hama is the singer from Second and this is her side project. They played well composed pop numbers with a folk/bluesy vein at a polite volume. They youngish local crowd especially liked the lead guitarist's soloing.

Next up were the more experienced acts from the label. Pinkberry turned it up a bit and ripped into their pop-punk set. It's pretty much the same set as their first run of shows but with backing from Yang Fu and Lezi from Sonnet. They had good energy and singer Xiao You regained some of her old form in the second half of the set. That left Sonnet to close the night. Sonnet play "post-pop" and pride themselves on being playful and clever. However, they have just lost their bass player and replaced him with samples tonight. With Yang Fu tied up with multiple duties they lost some of the movement and verve of the usual live show. 

Yuyintang seem to be struggling with their new sound desk at the moment and a feature of seven bands I saw in the past two days was muddy and overbearing bass. Let's hope they get it sorted in time for a huge run of amazing shows lined up for the next six weeks that includes Hedgehog and Reflector.

Now, why am I making a point of posting this? 

This is why. Watch this video of the last time they played Yuyintang. They tore the place up and it was rammed. Believe me, stick with the vid and after the one minute point you'll start to see the throng of people going nuts. People love 'em. Great track too.

Jake wrote up the Maybe Mars gig at Mao this weekend and we also shared some thoughts about the scene on the podcast. As far I was concerned the subjects were done for a while.

And then Zack wrote up the show at Layabozi and got everything going again in my mind.

After noticing/being annoyed by the same stuff as us, Zack makes a good point at the end about expectations:

So, on the pod we talked about the scene punching over it's weight. Where did the demand for a larger venue come from? What's the history. The history, that includes ventures such as 4Live, came to a point when a combination of independent promoters started to get regular shows going at the Dream Factory. This included Yuyintang and Splitworks, also people like Abe Deyo, Brad Ferguson and Frank Fen. 

They had just started to creep over the break even line despite many problems and challenges when this happened: 

So, they pulled out again three months later having fucked it all up decided they weren't satisfied with the deal. And then, barely eight weeks after that, SOMA announced they were teaming up with Japanese investors to open an even bigger venue in Shanghai - Mao. This was highly questionable. The progress made at the Dream Factory had still not answered the question of whether the scene could sustain a larger venue at this point, and in this political climate. Even that progress had been set back by the actions of SOMA taking it over then pulling out again.

Soma then came out with re-assuring statements. This would be a livehouse revolution for Shanghai. They would move in their studio and focus on scene development and long term planning. They were aware of the issues and history and wanted us to know that it was not simply a vanity project or an elaborate face-saving plot. But then, after the initial oversight from the partners left them to it, everything has been run on a shoestring and skeleton staff. 

Here's the thing: everyone, me included, wants the venue to succeed, that's why we go there and buy tickets. So why are we so worked up about the shortcomings, especially in the opening stages?

Exactly because we DO want it to succeed and all the signs are pointing towards failure. We have just over three short weeks before the six month point, which is usually a make or break point one way or another. Talk to anyone who worked on 4live: the venue is not big enough to survive on one sell-out show a month. Talk to anyone who worked on 4live again: how do neither-big-nor-small venues with one big event a month get by during the middling/average attendance days - the bar. 

Would anyone like to comment on the bar at Mao?

On the opening day, an extremely nice guy from Mao Beijing told me that they floated the place on investment for two years until numbers went up. Let's hope the same support will be on display here.

Having seen Guai Li at the third Maybe Mars Shanghai showcase on Saturday night, I was inspired to pop back to their Douban page. They don't seem to pay much attention to it but I was happy to see the recent addition of a high quality recorded track there.

It's great and represents the band well so go there and listen now

Guai Li's douban page - "gas"

In other news, Hedgehog are rolling back into town on the 18th supporting USA's The Thermals. That's at Yuyintang.

Were you a one time big fan of Bare Naked Ladies? Do you like indie rock that is funny and at the same time musically rewarding/infectious? Shanghai based rockers Stegosaurus? Are on the verge of finishing their first CD and bringing the genre back into style. Check out four demos at their page here.

Melodic death metal legends Fearless are still my favourite Shanghai metallers. They now have a label listed on their Douban page 17 studio so look out for additions to the two instrumental demos already there. Here's their new logo too.

OK, I'm done for now.

Anyway, a mate of mine just put some of his show pics up on Douban so I thought i'd repost a couple here. They are of Guai Li and Carsick Cars.

At the start of this I was quite happy to see a special article on Dingxi Road pop up on CNN Go's city page for Shanghai. Followers of the blog know all about the area for two reasons:

1) It runs down the middle of Shanghai's downtown music district. 

2) I'm always blabbing on about it.

See the sidebar for the F-via Ghetto page or check out these E-cities maps from my last post on it.

However, knowing it's the site of most gigs in town via places like Mao, Yuyintang Logo,  Anar and Sus2, I was a bit startled to see 'mediocre bands' in the title.

Wait, here's the article in question

There is a special section on Yuyintang from which the idea of Chinese bands not being very good comes from. Now if you had been to Yuyintang "a few times a month" for the past year, you probably would have seen some newer bands who were not up to scratch, sure. But you also would have seen some amazing shows by great bands. Readers of the blog will know, and have been to, legendary shows there by The Mushrooms, Cold Fairyland, Carsick Cars, Bigger Bang, TooKoo, Boys Climbing Ropes, 24 Hours, Ourselves Beside Me, Hedgehog, Chaos Mind, Six Shot, Loudspeaker, Sonnet, The Miniless Collective, Hard Queen ... I'm just throwing names out here. There are many more.

Now, sure, we all have our own opinions and tastes, but why focus on that YYT section and then write 'mediocre bands' in the article title - essentially writing off all Chinese bands as the cream of them pass through the F-visa Ghetto. 

Well, the editor often writes the titles and makes that decision in mainstream journalism. So perhaps the editor is just clueless about the music scene here? But seriously CNN WTF! 

But a local mate of mine codename Johnny Rocker sent me some photos which included this one. Ha. 

The Guardian have reported on a shocking story from Beijing that brings home a certain issue here to the arts community.

Basically, landlords came to parts of 798 and told studio owners that developers were getting the land and they had to evict immediately. The artists, of course said no as they had contracts and leases ranging from 5 to 30 years on the buildings. They wanted to check the details first. Finally, fearing that the buildings may be demolished during the night on Sunday, they stayed over - and a gang of 100 masked men showed up with bats and knives. The photo shows the current situation.

I have recently written about the Expo and Top Floor Circus - 

- and one of the big issues in Shanghai regarding the Expo has been accelerated gentrification and demolitions. The band brought the song in question back partly as a reaction to the forcing out of 0093 studios. 

Let this story be a reminder, again, to those of us writing about the Expo and related issues, who also claim to support the arts here. There is a wider context and many issues. It is irresponsible and dangerous to report it while ignoring the negatives. Shame on anyone who is buying the hype and enthusiastically backing the brand. 

Where to start with this?

The day has finally come. 

OK. Fei Yue shoes are Shanghai made canvas shoes that are simple, affordable and have for years been the staple shoe of sports practice in the area.

It is important to point out that while they look dated to us, they are not retro. They have just stuck with the same design from the start increasing price only with inflation. There has never been a break in production or a conscious choice to keep or exploit a dated design. Retro implies that a new product is made with an intentionally dated design because it gives it a unique look. Anyone who tells you they are retro is just lying.

I came to Fei Yue shoes through kung fu clubs, starting with when I trained at the Jing Wu centre in Hong Kou from 2001. However, I don't want to add on yet another misleading association. We should think of it more like this: I came to Fei Yue shoes through playing sports at local clubs with people on working class wages. Back then a pair was less than twenty CNY and now they fall somewhere between twenty-five and twenty-eight. That's fairly restrained when you look at other indicators for the same period. 

I don't like to think of Fei Yue's as cheap exactly. I think of them more as sane. They are locally made and don't feature by products of the meat/factory farming industries. This accounts for low prices and gives them the bonus of being the greenest shoes you can buy here. All this in a world where large shoe companies continually find nasty ways to keep their costs at all time lows while charging more and more to the customer. 

Now for the next chapter. For a while and from many different sources, Fei Yue have been the target of unscrupulous entrepreneurs whose eyes lit up with dollar signs when they saw the cheap prices. Some connections were fairly obvious, like the kung fu connection. People who trained kung fu here and found them to be cheap and practical started importing them to their club after returning home. In the early days though, this was considered no more than a sideline to the Fei Yue factory. A lot of that, you may be surprised to know, was with Japan. Next up though were those who wanted to resell them as a kind of designer retro brand and make big money from it. 

As soon as this happened the first time, a few years ago now and still kung fu themed with custom versions called shaolin and mantis, I could see the future. These guys were selling them overseas for upwards of 200 Euros. That's right, more than sixty times the Shanghai price. For a start. It's simply a microcosm of gentrification or any kind of yuppie plague. Come in on some cheap land or product and exploit it, eventually driving prices up and cutting out the original users who can't afford the new prices. Those working class wage people, you know, the majority. 

As a relevant aside here, my high street real estate agent was firebombed by Welsh activists for the same thing. That time involving holiday homes in North Wales. 

The problem, or tipping point, was obviously going to come when these re-brands started to catch on or be available in Shanghai itself. Even that was going to be tolerable as long as you could still dismiss the whole ridiculous situation by just buying them from local shops for true prices.

So. Here's the news. And this comes from three sources. My friends in the kung fu clubs who order direct, my local branch of East Sports (Dongfang tiyu) and Culture Matters on Dongping Road. The original design pictured above with the green triangle in the bottom are now no longer being made. Once they run out, they are out. The staple shoe of Fei Yue is now being replaced with the red circle in the sole model. It looks basically the same but has a thicker sole and supposedly better quality laces. This is taken directly from their export model.

The result - an immediate doubling of the starting retail price to over 50 CNY.

Who knows where it will go from here. That's Shanghai just ran a huge cover feature on Chinese retro brands, predictably free from any kind of analysis or wider context. I personally think it's a sign that the last vestiges of sane cheaper living in downtown Shanghai are going. Not that there's much left.

I just want to mark this occasion with a message to all of those who participated in the gentrification of my shoes. From the people who took Fei Yue's and re marketed them as a retro brand at sky high new prices to the writers and blogs who big upped these new brands ... ...

f*ck you all, there are people here who need those shoes to be cheap, you selfish w*nkers