This was the third night of a three night show marathon of which I cried off the middle date. So, yeah, no write up for V-day and Hard Queen, sorry. I did hear that Yuyintang got well over 200 people in for that show despite going head-to-head with New Pants. Nice.
Also the title of this post is a bit misleading as this was a Moses Hazy show. Moses are touring from Finland and I only blog local bands. Needless to say that Moses were good and thanks for coming to Shanghai and all that. They are based in Finland and not China so fall outside of the blog.
And so, the main contender: Arrows Made Of Desire (Beijing)
Three shows in a weekend and the last one on a Sunday following two big shows. History tells us that the turn out was not going to be spectacular. But. Times they are a changing. It seems that Yuyintang is now known enough to pull in a hundred or so people on any given event without marketing. By the end of the night it was a half decent turn out and a full room. Not bad. Also, a few musician types were lurking around as they normally are when bands come down from the Beijing scene. Dan Shapiro was down again as he's often in Beijing scoping out the best bands and rightly championed the whole weekend. Yuyintang's Sun Lu was also hanging with his pal from Crystal Butterfly at the bar all night and plying all comers with rocket fuel bai jiu among other things.
Just as Arrows Made of Desire took to the stage there was a single bizarre moment. Two or three high tables with bar stools had been left in the main room, over by the sound desk, from the previous night and a bunch of people had sat at them. The staff were too nice to evict them and remove the offending objects. Tables stuck in the middle of a live house floor just seem to attract table people. After Arrows frontman Joewi (originally Dutch) welcomed the crowd in Mandarin, one middle aged sweater wearing type blurted out that he needn't speak Chinese just use English - accompanied by a smug guffaw. He seemed totally unaware that the rest of the crowd were fine with the intro and there was a deserved beat down an embarrassed silence for a moment there. So let's not leave the a*shole magnets floor tables out next time.
The band played a tight set. The songs were punchy indie rock, not unlike the Friday night acts, but with more complex arrangements. It was a treat for muso fans as Joewi covered the whole range of guitar technique during the set without compromising the appeal of the songs. I picked up their CD and also put a video on the youtube channel. I have to say that I'm impressed over all with the Beijing post-Strokes group of bands, represented this weekend by three acts. But I'm still focused on the prize - the Indie Top showcase at Dream Factory where we get to see what Shanghai can really pull together. Not to forget Pinkberry playing with the Subs at what will be the mosh-fest of the year.
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