Another update on the New Pants thing: I decided to follow up this story by contacting Kenneth Tan of Shanghaiist for a comment. He declined to answer at all so it's snubs all round. Hooray.
End update
I'm all excited. My cold is clearing and the worst is behind me. This weekend - shows! Great. So, before normal service is resumed let's clean up some odds and ends.
I recently spotted a small-ish column in Enjoy Classifieds talking about the scene. Check it here. So, Barfly continued to have a look at the music scene this week too.
I'm glad he did. I don't like to be negative and Barfly had a very similar experience to me in a certain area, so I can quote him instead of posting it as my own.
What the f*ck am I on about? Check this out first: adventures in cabaret
So, Bar 288 (Melting Pot) has recently opened a new location right on Hengshan Lu in the main bar area. I have been avoiding this for the same reasons I laid out in the linked post. At the bottom of this post you can see how it turned out. Barfly went there last week and here's what he had to say about it.
Barfly was going to be about the Melting Pot's new Hengshan Lu location and it's live music potential. I had it completed, and then decided it could be summed up in one sentence - the new Melting Pot has little potential aside from the funny sensation you get when walking into a Chinese club laced with purple velvet walls and disco lights, with Irish fiddles playing in the background.
That about sums up what everyone is saying except for the odd stage placement in there. The column is joking about Chinese mainstream clubs. This is not a cultural thing. YYT and Live Bar don't seem to have any problems. I personally just think the owners are just more club than venue, that's all. Also, Bar 288 on Taikang Lu is a pretty cool place to hang out, they just don't have any idea how to put on a rock show beyond letting a band play inside the building.
So, talking of YYT. Gemnil, a performance manager there, is starting to dip into some band promotion and photo shoots. YYT owner Zhang Haisheng only officially manages one band, Yu Guo. But now, together with 0093 studios, they will start to get more into developing talent. With 0093 releasing their first EP for the band Joker and Indie Top recording for 13 acts at the moment we may be able to double the amount of true albums from Shanghai based new generation bands by New Year. So above and below are some shots of Hanging Garden (Kongzhong Huayuan). See a video of these mellow indie balladeers at Yuyintang here.
Update: A sample of Gemnil's Pinkberry shoot added below
yeah,i was surprised to see a melting pot on hengshan lu on my way home yesterday.different bars for different people.diversity exists for a reason.but when a bar which has set its target to certain kind of customers still arrange a show for a different category,it is nothing but funny and odd.same as the the situation at ATP yesterday,where they had an almost all-white band playing country and jazz outside the stadium nonestop,which made me confused and annoyed.
btw,glad to hear that u r all well now.keep warm.