Songjiang gets itself a livehouse

It's called Corner Bar, opens tonight (with a show from Triple Smash no less) and is at number 131, Lane 1292 on Xin Songjiang Lu. I'm not going to lie to you, that's pretty much all the information I have on it. What do you want? I haven't been down there.

They've got a gig on next Tuesday night as well with Momo and Little Nature. This comes on the back of Lezi's recent university tour with the Zhu Lu He Feng collective, which (as noted before) went down pretty well. Given this and the bands for that Tuesday gig, I sensed the hand of Soma/MAO Livehouse, but apparently it's nowt to do with them. Which might mean it has a good chance of success. Ho, ho, only teasing.

Seriously though, this isn't a bad idea. A lot of kids moan that it's too far into town for venues like YYT and MAO Livehouse from Songjiang. The opening bands have hardly finished before it's time to think about heading back. So why not bring the bands to them? Of course, this depends on the size of the venue and their ambitions, but why not add a gig in there on the band's schedule on a midweek night before they play down town? I suppose you could argue that it might draw people away from the downtown venues, but really, how many people from Songjiang are regular gig goers in the city centre? And when they do come in from the wilderness, maybe they'll have a taste for gigs and alternative music and want to keep doing it when they're downtown. Interesting to see how it goes anyway...