So we woke up on Monday morning to a brave new world. A world without an Expo. Where were the hordes of people at Madang Lu metro station who have made my commute to work a pain in the arse for the last six months? Where was that American guy shouting 'And now the daily update from the Expo site' at the metro station? And where were the students dressed in Expo garb sleeping at the Expo volunteer stall? Gone, who knows where, but definitely gone. I don't about you, but I spent most of the day standing on the wrong side of the escalator, barging my way onto the metro and spitting everywhere amongst the pollution - it's great to be back to normal.Someone else is planning an in-depth piece on post-Expo-ness and its impact upon the live music scene here, so I'm not going to get into it much, but what I do want to get into is what's coming up this month gig-wise. After the Olympics, the music scene here came back with a bang and we had a run of incredible gigs. The impact of the Expo has been much harsher and more far-reaching than that, but there are some good gigs coming up this month. I'm not saying it's the same as post-Olympics - not by a long shot - but I am saying that these should all be dates for your diaries. Feast your eyes on this lot (which I've pulled from the listings of a certain local magazine, ahem):
Friday 5 - Queen Sea Big Shark release their new dancey, poppy album at MAO Livehouse
Saturday 6 - White Eyes go nuts at Yuyintang
Sunday 7 - Beijingers Buyi hit up MAO Livehouse
Thursday 11 - The Wang Wen boys bring their post rock to MAO Livehouse
Saturday 13 - Bit of a face-off here: in the red corner, Omnipotent Youth Hotel with support from Ho-Tom the Conqueror at YYT; in the blue corner, The Gar playing for the first time in yonks, at LUNE
Sunday 14 - Raveonettes at MAO Livehouse
Friday 19 - Goggle A with Fever Machine and Beat Bandits at YYT
Saturday 20 - Dead Elvis at YYT
Sunday 21 - IDH with Boys Climbing Ropes at YYT
Wednesday 24 - Xiao He and Zhou Yunpeng at MAO Livehouse
Thursday 25 - Boys Climbing Ropes, Duck Fight Goose, Rainbow Danger Club and Friend or Foe at LUNE for charidee
Not bad for starters. Interestingly though, except for that last one, these are all non-Shanghai acts coming in. Where are the locals in all this? Maybe that's a discussion for another day...
You forgot Air Supply this Friday:
http://www.culture.sh.cn/english/product.asp?id=8234
Sounds like a local listings mag better STOP PRESS ASAP.
Sounds like a good month. Looking forward to Queen Sea Big Shark this Friday as it's been many moons since I successfully made it to a gig.
Shame to miss Xiao He again especially at Mao LH, but I'll be in Singapore that week.
J.
Also, Sydney band Dead Farmers at YYT on the 12th.
http://www.douban.com/event/12753746/
The lack of local headliners is addressed in my Expo piece, out now.
White Eyes and the IDH shows are the ones to watch this month. As for Queen Sea Big Shark. Ughh. Have you heard the new stuff? I guess there's a fine line between playing a retroactively applied synth/hip/whatever style and just needing to move your shows to DKD.
I read yesterday that Joy Division are post-punk. Even though they were active during the peak years of original punk and while the term punkitself was gaining traction and meaning in a wider sense.
What's wrong with people?
Friend or Foe is now opening for White Eyes!
@andy, dude what? joy division are like the textbook definition of post punk. john peel called them something like "the first seminal post punk band, influencing a generation of".. blah blah... and they must have not totally disagreed with the guy... they did two peel sessions.
plus the first wave of punk is (generally) seen as 74-78 or so, with a huge (but i guess debatable) consensus having it that the shit had hit the fan by 79, which is the year JD started... even the term itself "punk", if you agree with the guy who coined it (legs mcneil) had become a bit of a bullshit thing as it travelled across the pond by that point in the late 70s anyways.
of course you can argue anything but joy division characterized as "post punk" is a pretty universal thing.
whups. should have wikipedia'd first. JD's first album was 79, with the band forming a bit earlier. still... more at the end of the punk rock, imo.
over 12 hours later and no reply from the best. has he been outsmarted?
well played, morgan. well played.
Mr Best has bigger fish to fry over at his Expo post on his Kungfuology page. He's got no time to concern himself with these trifling matters.
I forgot to check back here and didn't have the mail alert thing going.
Morgan, yeah, if I can have complaints/confusions about the term post-punk ... then the complaints/ambiguity of the term 'punk' are much wider.
And John Peel is as respectable as source as you can pull out.
Before I go on to the next digression, it should be clear that I accept your point. And you are pretty much the Peel of Shanghai as it is, when it comes to this kind of knowledge.
So if Punk was over by 78, what were the 80's bands of the hardcore scene? Are they kind of post-punk too? I guess post-punk doesn't mean a kind of evolution from Punk as so much as it's just a term that describes a certain sound. It's hard for me to accept because, back when I was first into music around 85, if you talked to punk or rock fans and asked them about Joy Division, in relation to punk or rock, you'd get a bemused look or a beating.
I didn't start listening to 'punk' until I came across 89's Operation Ivy via skateboarding vids. NOFX were 'punk' to me, sad eh?
If Joy Div were around today though, which bands would they be similar too/lumped in with?
yeah, it all gets convoluted, especially when you try to define "punk" head on, and who cares anyways...one always feels like kind of a dick when you put too much thought into it.
and of course the years are all messed up as well because a lot of the bands that get labeled (rightly or wrongly) "post punk" were making music around the exact same time as punk was happening in the mid 70s -- suicide, gang of four, the fall, siouxie, wire, and a bunch of those factory recs bands -- section 25 or whoever... anyone that was making "introspective" music in the mid- late 70s is post punk. Television, early-mid 70s, is a band that gets credited with starting both punk and post-punk at the same time.... or they're called "proto post punk" or whatever. and velevet underground apparently started everything all at once as well.
first wave hardcore in america in the early 80s is a lot more cut and dry because in many ways it was "taking punk back from the man" after the english had sold it out in the late 70s.. haha.. sex pistols... sid vicious... etc. crass, chumbawumba and the anarcho punk thing was a reaction in the same way in england, but a very "english" thing. it went in a different direction.
american punk that originated in new york in the early-mid 70s was dead at that point and the early american hardcore bands -- i.e black flag -- were all americans from the suburbs making american punk rock again. growing up in the suburbs kind of engendered a different thing, and they were all trying to be "more punk than punk"... louder, faster, more violent... and a lot of those bands would shit on the punk they inherited the same way the pistols would shit on the rolling stones.
i think ian mckay of teen idles/minor threat described it like, "punk was sid vicious and mo hawks and doing drugs... that says nothing to us... we weren't punk... we were harcore."
im paraphrasing but something like that.
and now your talking about op iv in '89 which is like 900 more "waves" and "posts" after that and a different thing entirely... there they are, an american band sounding like the clash again. wtf.
anyways... sorry for the long thing here. sorry everyone... clearly i like to listen to myself talk. but yeah.. wasnt taking the piss earlier... just internet chattin'
plus im no john peel -- just retain other peoples ideas and pass em off as my own :P