Well, the event gigs and big shows just don't stop coming lately.
This Friday at Yuyintang sees the return of Banana Monkey and their event brand Five Dollar Shakes. This one is Frankenstein and I'm always banging on about Wolfman at the old YYT to anyone who will listen. It was a truly great underground show and Banana Monkey rocked. So, first of all, why not check out the band's music directly:
BM at Neocha
BM at Myspace
So what's the big deal here? Here's my take. BM are a tight professional act and the Shanghai scene is so small that adding just one tight band makes proportionally big waves. And here's the downside. Sonnet, who also recently reformed and play on Friday, were slack at their comeback. For want of a better expression, they lacked match fitness. I hope that BM have matched the hype with a truck load of practice.
Morgan of Boys Climbing Ropes wrote about this over at SmartShanghai. Couldn't locate the direct page but here's a lengthy quote:
Local garage rock supastahs Banana Monkey are back together after an uncertain future, an album on hold, a photo shoot with Vogue, a drummer change, and a management change, taking the stage at Yuyintang December 19 for their first show in several long months.
If you're new to the city, for the last few years Banana Monkey have been Shanghai's success story in waiting, and were the only band in town able to bring it all -- they had the look, attitude, snappy dressing, sound, songs, technical ability, and could easily blow any band off the stage with their live performances. Detractors would complain that their influences were all too apparent (*cough* The Strokes *cough* *cough*), but no one could argue that for what Banana Monkey were doing, nobody could do it better.And on a final
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