I missed this band at Yuyintang last night so I decided to catch them at Bar 288 (AKA The Melting Pot) on Taikang Road. No. 1 Korean are a ska band from ... Korea, and they are pretty good.
Check out this Youtube clip of them performing live.
So, I rolled up to Bar 288 with Evans at around 10.00 thinking we'd be right on time only to be told the band went on at 10.30 ... not too bad. But, we were about to experience the curse of the Shanghai local stylee club/pub. Let's be clear, there's nothing inherently wrong with the Shanghai local stylee clubs, as long as they don't mix with my rock gigs.
The first sign is when you enter and the whole area in front of the stage is filled with tables and young cool looking people are all playing parlour games such as dice. In fact, as someone was setting up the stage, the air was filled with the sound of dice shakers, not unlike crickets chriping away in the tropical evening. Then we found out there was a warm up act.
The warm act was in fact a crooning KTV guy singing pop hits to a backing track. Why? Whhyyyyy!!?? Because it was someone's birthday party. Yes, they let someone have their birthday do at the bar on a gig night and put they show back to 11.45 to accomodate a round of KTV crooning and some announcements etc. This is totally normal in the local stylee bar environment and dice shakers continued unabated.
When the band finally did come on they kicked ass. High energy ska, professional and a wicked horn section. But still the tables remained. We kicked ourselves for not seeing them at Yuyintang and being able to have a good dance or whatever. They are doing Live Bar tomorrow night, so who knows.
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