Despite posting previously about what a good weekend it was going to be for live music, I managed to miss all of the shows I listed in said post. Largely it was because I was busy organising and then recovering from this show. It's not often this blog strays into reggae/trip-hop territory, but I have to admit to being blown away by ChaCha's set. She is an incredible singer and is about to go on tour backed by DJ Drunk Monk. If they're in your neck of the woods go check them out, you won't regret it. You can hear more of her stuff here and also see the tour dates to see if she's coming your way.

Anyway, this weekend is big 'un as well. Yep, it's that time of year again - the JUE Festival is back. This time round Splitworks have gone even bigger taking in a whole bunch more acts and shows and venues and what not. It's kind of started already, but musically you're looking at Hanggai's show on Friday at Yuyintang as the real b-of-the-bang. And that's not a show to miss. Why? Because this is what happened last time.

The festival has gotten plenty of coverage in the local media and, while a lot of that coverage has been of the international acts coming in, this being Splitworks-organised means that we can expect plenty of local acts to be involved as well. In fact, they're taking blog favourites The Mushrooms up to Beijing for their first ever show in the capital as part of the festival.

The full schedule is here and one of the better write ups so far is here. It's on CNN-"mediocre bands"-Go, but it's by Ric Stockfis and features interviews with some other friends of the blog so go give it a butcher's. It also has a sneaky mention of a possible return for Yue Festival - the JUE precursor that rocked Zhongshan Park a few years back. That, hot on the heels of rumours that Shanghai might be getting it's own May holiday festival this year in the vein of Beijing's Strawberry and Midi or Chengdu's Zebra. Fingers crossed they don't get scuppered by that weird little blue thing.

The linkness:

Things start on Thursday with Break for Borneo at YYT. That's got Gooda Boys, Mis.Whale! and Stegosaurus? too. Speaking of Stegosaurus?, Andy mentions that they're close to finishing a CD, so keep an eye out for that and go check out the demos that have been popping up on their Douban recently. If you like what you hear, things kick off at 9pm on Thursday and it's free entry so get on down there.

MAO Livehouse have got Taiwanese pop-rockers 1976 both Friday and Saturday nights, but if that's not your thing, Yuyintang have Big Qiang Dao on the Friday. That's Sonnet, Pinkberry, Manbanpai (Hama's new band) and Yinle. That one starts at 9pm and is 40RMB.

Birdstriking, not officially a Maybe Mars band but one working with the label, kicked things off. Their set started well, but tapered off a bit and they could do with thinking about the order of their set a bit more. They are essentially a mini version of Carsick Cars, playing very similar music and with a lead singer who even looks a bit like Shouwang. 

Guai Li were on second and played a solid set. Wen Jun was on typical female Iggy Pop-like form, swaggering around the stage and drinking constantly. It was a bit of a change of pace from the openers and their greater experience showed. Their use of a VJ to provide graphics in time with the music helped the whole thing as well.

Third were Carsick Cars, despite being the headliners on the flyers etc. They were on pretty good form, especially with the classics He Sheng, Mogu and Zhongnanhai and were joined on stage by mini-Shouwang for the chorus of You Can Listen, You Can Talk.

Finally, AV Okubo closed out the night with an upbeat set. I'm not sure they were quite at their best, but I like this band a lot and I'm pretty sure they will have won some new fans with their performance. Hopefully the album does well.

So that was the bands. But now a few moans. 

Anyway, something to tell you about in the meantime is that Hama, the driving force behind Second and an excellent solo artist in her own right, has made a bunch of demos available for download on her Douban page. There's nothing new there, they've been available for streaming for a while, but the downloadability of them is new and is something to click that link for. Hurry up though, they're only available until midday tomorrow. Go, go, go!

And so it was on Sunday for the eleventh installment in the irregular series - they're usually once a month, but Chinese New Year has seen Yuyintang scrabbling for gigs a little bit and this was a last minute addition just a few weeks after the last one. The crowd consisted of the performers, a bored looking sound guy, a few people who looked like they'd wandered in by accident and a handful of people who were actually there to watch. Stood at the back of the room, I saw eople with their fingers in their ears on more than one occasion. It's not for everyone.

Unfortunately, those who were there to watch weren't exactly treated with much of a visual spectacle either. Although RESO nights are often as interesting to look at as they are to listen to, this was a "laptop special". Sonically interesting maybe, but visually stimulating it wasn't. 

Da Xiao, Mai Mai, Xu Cheng (him out of Torturing Nurse) and Olaf Hochherz did some interesting things with their mouse (mice?) and keyboards, both as soloists and when they paired up later on in the night (Mai Mai performing with Hochherz and Xu with Da Xiao), but it was crying out for a VJ or some sort of animation while they were playing. Oh well, maybe next time...