Trash a Go-Go in Suzhou

Pairs, The Instigation and The Beat Bandits were the bands and Wave the venue. The bands have been written about a fair bit on this blog and they all gave well-received performances so I don't feel like I need to get into that much - click the links above if you really don't know who I'm talking about.

I was interested to see what the venue would be like in Suzhou and it turned out to be a pretty cool little place. Although Suzhou has a population that is slightly larger than Scotland's, it's still considered a small place in China, especially when Shanghai is so close by. Nevertheless, there's been some stirrings of a live music community there for a while now and this venue seems well-equipped to help push that forward.

It's part of an "arts complex" kind of place that also includes a bar and a youth hostel. The venue itself was a decent size, with a good stage and space in front of it. It seems to operate as a bar the rest of the time, but it wasn't like one of those bars with a stage added as an afterthought. At times the bar seemed like it would rival MAO Livehouse's for knowledge of drinks, but they were sweet about it and it was cheap so people got over it and all in all it wasn't a bad little venue. 

It was hard to gauge the size of the Suzhou contingent in the crowd, but there were certainly more than the 30 or so people who came on the bus. I don't know if anyone reads this blog in Suzhou, but if you do I'd be interested to know how regular gigs are there and how well-attended they are. 

Finally, credit should go to the Trash a Go-Go guys and to Xiao Zhong of Pairs for both arranging a show outside of the city and then organising transport to it for everyone as well. It was a great idea and seemed like a big success. And if you're interested, Trash a Go-Go is on tour again in a couple of weeks in Nanjing. More details on that one here.