This was a good moment. That's all I have to say. This band are worth the hype. I was there up front, as should you have been.
Results tagged “tudou” from Andy Best
Beijing based pop-punk band Reflector are coming back to Yuyintang on April 3rd. Here's the event page at Douban. Talking of Yuyintang you can see their complete March line up in poster form right here - you'll need to read Chinese to get most bands though.
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.
I recently posted about the rise of indie-folk artists on the pages of Douban. You can read that here. I featured an artist called Zhang Qianqian.
She has been on the TV in a documentary that features two intercut stories. One person comes to Shanghai from the west of China, the other goes back to Qinghai. That second person is Zhang Qianqian, who popped back to her home area to shoot a music video.
It's all subtitled in English and her MV is shown in full right upfront from just before the three minute mark.
Finally got my Friday footage uploaded. This is from the Playful Warrior show at Yuyintang.
So. Fans of proper heavy music rejoice. OK, the quality is not so good. But, stick with it as it goes through to a second song. I was taken with their new grind sections with slow but punishing beats and a guitar that sounds like it's tuned right down ... right down to hell.
Sorry. When I get into metal, all writing bets are off and out comes the cheese and cliche. By the way, death to false metal, satan's minions await you.
So Joyside are done and they've had their last ever show. But, they seem to be as productive as ever since the split. They've posted a bunch of songs up at their Douban page, as well as some videos. And there's even a trailer there, via Tudou, of a documentary film of the last show to be released next year.
For now, here's an animated video for their anthem "Sunday Morning". You may also recognise it from here.
A little while back I reported on the Rock Shanghai anniversary party at the newly opened Mao Livehouse Shanghai. This show was organised by 0093 rehearsal studios and was basically a re-run of their regular showcase nights at Yuyintang.
Now, before you watch this video we need to add some context. Well, firstly the quality is not good and it seems to have been done on a phone. But ...
Imagine you are back in your home town. Imagine that a local bar or hall is letting completely amateur unsigned bands play that night. The band is made up of mainly younger students and they've barely been playing together six months and part-time. They are playing their first original material. What would that be like? Well, on the Shanghai scene it's like this. This is Second (重结晶乐队) with their song 《如果可以 》 If I Could.
Hint: They were good and the venue is great.
It's the holidays. You have time, you're relaxing with your own computer, with sound. You're on this blog, so you like Chinese indie bands. So watch this.
This is Pinkberry headlining a big show at the Dream Factory that was so disastrously organised that they didn't get on until almost one a.m. and most people had gone home. However, this vid shows Pinkberry ripping away with one of their more simple, rawer tunes. A glimpse into the amazing potential than has been on and off lately due to all kinds of controversies and line up changes.
When this Pinkberry show up, it's worth it.
Warning: yes, this is a look in Mao Shanghai. However, it is a hastily shot vid done on a point and shoot variety digital camera's video mode.
I give a brief intro. But after the "40 seconds" are up and we can clearly see the stage, I change my mind and stay on it for two Momo tracks. So maybe this should be called Momo live @ Mao Shanghai.
Here's the other video I took at the Dream Factory show on Friday. I'd like to say it's some kind of a look at the new lights and sound there since Soma took over the venue. But I don't really think my little Sony DSC stills camera is a good judge of that. Saying that ... here it is.
Soma managed girl group Momo have come a long way. From underground garage rock stylists to slick indie-pop performers. It doesn't seem like yesterday that I first saw them at one of Banana Monkey's five dollar shake parties at the old YYT in Long Hua. They are still around should have a debut album out any day now.
This one is for the cutesy fans.
Hanging Gardens are great guys and they love music. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, they always seem plagued by either sound problems/tech problems or indifferent turn outs for the bands they are supporting.
However, at the 0093 return to your dream's start party they were the highlight, playing to a packed house. It was so surprising that guitarist Ryan drops a note in shock at the beginning of an otherwise flawless version of Lullaby. This is a band who fully deserve to do well.
Creature headlined the first night of Splitworks' Straight Oota Canada festival at Yuyintang but alas they were post-pop, indie-pop-disco something or other. Just imagine a lot of falsetto vocals, cowbells, whoop-whoops and 'we rock the house's to a disco beat ...in costumes.
So, I give you The Mushrooms, appearing for the third time on the blog but the first with the new line up changes. It's one of their older songs though 为什么你爱他 (Why?)
Cor Blimey Mate! I just popped off to their Douban page to check on the song name and saw a demo of that song has appeared there. The two tracks marked Demo are new recordings and they both fade out a little way in but are worth hearing.
And now the vid ...
The weekend kicked off with Happy Avenue on Friday. I wrote a review and talked about how singer Wu Hongfei is a big deal and a lot of fans came to see her. Check it out. They are folk-rock but this track is more up-tempo than you'd expect and is a good example of the main body of their songs.
Youtube is still unavailable here in China for censorship reasons. Let me know in the comments if people outside of China have any trouble with Tudou's player. Cheers.
Having been signed by Soma's Indietop label, had a line up change and shortened their name from Crazy Mushroom Brigade to just The Mushrooms (Mogu Tuan) ... takes breath ... The Mushrooms have lately updated their online homes to reflect their new selves.
They now have an official Douban artist page with promo shots and a track from the upcoming CD:
Singer Pupu has also made a new Tudou channel for preview clips and updates:
From here on out I'm going to use the English tag The Mushrooms for articles on the band so keep that in mind when searching for older posts. So yeah, older posts. Let's do a retrospective:
Crazy Mushroom brigade live @ YYT
Video: CMB live @ YYT
Crazy Mushroom brigade enter ex-pat thought
YYT's Lin Lin picks CMB in interview
Jiaoban One @ YYT
Video: Jiaoban One
Indietop release compilation CD
The Mushrooms debut new line up at the Indietop Showcase
A couple of weeks ago or so I wrote about an amazing show at YYT. It was none other than the 0093 Rock party 'rocking in the free world'. Read the original post here.
I was just trolling around Chinese language web pages and vid streaming sites and came across some footage from that show on Tudou Wang. The video seem to be shot by people from the site Rock Shanghai. The huge logo gave it away. So here are two songs from Little Nature. It's rough but fun and captures the Yuyintang atmosphere perfectly.
