Recently in Shanghai Music Scene Category

An electronic tip of the hat in the direction of friend of the blog Stevo, who pointed us in the direction of Nathaniel Davis' playlist on weliveinbeijing.com. Nathaniel is one of the guys behind Splitworks who, as you probably know, are putting on JUE Festival right about now.

Aaaanyway, one of the tracks he chose was by Kurt The Ripper, an electro artist who has a series of songs related to the various live music venues in Shanghai. You can listen to the YYT, MAO and Live Bar tracks by clicking right here.

The tracks form an album, Livehouse Serial Killer (anyone know how you can get your hands on it?), which is accompanied by the following blurb:

"It is said to be inspired by an unconfirmed news that a serial killer has been haunting about the livehouses in Shanghai, stalking and killing young girls after the gigs, especially those who prefer staying overnight in the McDonalds till dawn. At least 13 girls are missing now according to Seaborn Zhang, the archenemy of ShRock. Who will be the next victim？"

This is the original text from the Douban page for the album (here) and I'm guessing that "Seaborn Zhang" is what Google Translate does to Zhang Haisheng (founder of YYT).

Kind of weird, but I kind of like it. Go give it a listen. And yeah, if anyone knows how to get hold of the mp3s or whatever, please let us know in the comments. Ta.

So, technical cock up this week, the pod is intermittently buzzy. Believe me, it will annoy you. Don't let that stop you listening though because here's what we've got: reviews of a couple of last week's gigs, a chat about a certain festival going on in the next few weeks and of course a guide to where to get your rocks off this weekend.

The other day a good friend of mine celebrated his birthday. One of the presents he received was a copy of National Geographic. He was pretty excited about it. This wasn't just any old National Geographic, it was one with a big old article about this here city in it. Imagine that.

So anyway, I was flicking through, skim reading and looking at the pictures as is my want, when my eyes rested on a familiar name in the opening paragraphs: Sheng Jiahui. I decided to read a bit closer and there, opening National Geographic's article on Shanghai, is a piece all about, well, Sheng Jiahui (who you probably know as Sammy from Candy Shop) entering the 0093 rehearsal space. Ok, so the article is about how she's in a band which she's no longer in (Black Luna) and about them rehearsing in 0093 (which has now been shut down) and the whole article plays into the cheesy cliched East meets West thing, but still I thought it worthy of a mention and a link (right here).

I say I thought it worthy, I actually completely forgot about it again until SmartShanghai posted up a thing on it in The Wire, right here. Thanks SmartShanghai.

UPDATE: Pete from weliveinbeijing.com has linked to his excellent preview in the comments. I recommend giving that one a read too. Check it out here. 

UPDATE: They've just announced a date in Nanjing as well - seems like they're deciding to play everywhere else following the ban in Shanghai. Time to hop on a train...

When you play in Hangzhou of course. Or at least that seems to be the case with Top Floor Circus. If you haven't been paying attention, here's a quick catch up:

Top Floor Circus play Shanghai Welcomes You at 0093's CD release, with new, direct lyrics

Top Floor Circus get called in for a cup of tea with the authorities

Top Floor Circus' Christmas show gets cancelled

Shanghai Welcomes You and all traces of it are wiped from the interwebs

Top Floor Circus get handed a six month performance ban

But now the band have announced a gig in Hangzhou. They'll play Traveller's Bar on the 27th of this month, more details here. Of course, this doesn't take away from the travesty that is their performance ban in Shanghai for voicing dissent against the Expo, but at least they're allowed to play somewhere. I wonder if they'll play Shanghai Welcomes You...

You've probably noticed that posts on this blog have dropped off a bit lately. There's a couple of reasons - one is that I've been insanely busy with other stuff, the other is that it was Chinese New Year recently and therefore the live music scene shut down for a couple of weeks. For the former, I'm afraid that's just going to happen and when it does, you need to go here. For the latter, it's well and truly over now as this weekend shows.

This was the second Maybe Mars showcase in as many months and, according to Dan Shapiro's article here, they could become a regular thing in Shanghai, with the label looking to bring bands from their stable down here as often as once a month. Whether that will happen next month, given that a load of their bands are heading off to SXSW remains to be seen, but this showcase was a strong outing for them. At least in terms of the quality of the line up, it was.  

So we mentioned it a couple of times on the blog previously, but last night the show finally came around - Candy Shop and FAF playing a free gig to help promote 81fur.com.

That's 81fur.com

I say finally, it actually all came together remarkably quickly. I guess that's what happens when you have a good cause and are part of a strong music community. Oh, and when it's something that Andy has put his mind to. He probably won't like me giving him so much attention, but he deserves a pat on the back next time you see him. Seriously, it's been a few short weeks since he had the idea and last night it came to fruition. He called in favours from people on the scene and put on a fantastic show that really helped promote an important issue. Sure he's a mate and this is his site, but whatever - he deserves a lot of praise.

Because the night really was a big success. It was free admittedly, but it was also a wet Thursday night and yet YYT pulled in a really good crowd. People were reading the flyers and signing up for the mailing lists etc and it's hopefully put these issues into the minds of young people here who hadn't considered such things before.

Musically, it was a cracking night too. Candy Shop were great, they're always good fun, and gave a typically energetic performance. Brad was on the sound so it was all coming across nice and clearly and people were really into it from the off. And FAF... fucking a. Those boys are so good. They just need more songs now but, considering they're still a relatively fresh band, they're really impressive. Definitely a band to keep an eye on.

Thanks and congratulations to Andy and Xiao K, the bands, Tim Franco who took the photos, Splitworks who stumped up for the studio, Brad for the quality sound, all the volunteers who helped out on the door and basically anyone who was involved and came out to support it.

If this was The Mushrooms' last show in Shanghai before heading up to Beijing as part of Splitworks' JUE Festival, then they certainly left on a high note. But then, they don't really know any other way. If you're reading this up in the capital, then go and see this band when they come to your neck of the woods. They might not be as hyped or as artsy as the bands you've got up there, but they sure know how to put on a live show. Even though the regular Mushrooms mosh-set had been decimated by Chinese New Year and even though they were playing with a new guitarist, The Mushrooms didn't miss a beat and tore Yuyintang up just as they always do.

Yuyintang had capped the entrance at 400 (or at least said they would), clearly fearing a repeat of the crush at their five year anniversary, but the New Year meant that the fears were misplaced. It was nicely busy, but not so packed you couldn't move. Momo kicked things off and, given that The Mushrooms and Little Nature were both on the bill as well, it felt a little like an old Jiao Ban night for a while. Live, and without the Soma guys in sight, Momo's sound was stripped of all the computerised voices and over-production and was much more guitar-driven. Thank fuck. They weren't exactly the Momo of old (or rather, Happy Strings), but they were much better than the Soma-fied version you get on their Douban.

Next up came Double Control Where, which seemed like a mistake to be honest. They certainly should have been above Little Nature on the bill, but never mind. They had their female keyboardist with them, who added some nice backing vocals and an extra layer to their sound (I'm sure the last couple of times I've seen them she hasn't been there, but I might just be remembering that wrong). They played a solid set, but things didn't really kick off like they could have done. Everyone seemed to be waiting for The Mushrooms.

We still had to make it through Little Nature before we could get to them though. Another band hit by the Soma curse, they seemed a little lacklustre - although in fairness the new sound guy at YYT wasn't helping matters by having the guitar turned right down. By the time they got the sound right, they only had a couple of songs left, but they still didn't really do it for me even then. Luckily, The Mushrooms came on to finish things up and, as always, they didn't disappoint.

Happy New Year! 虎年吉祥！

Candy Shop have put up a new demo. It's for their track Love Song, which you'll recognise if you've seen them live. Listen to it here. If this is your first time listening to Candy Shop, it's possibly not the best introduction to the band, particularly their more guitar-driven live shows, but then this is a band that mix so many genres, they're kind of hard to keep track of at times. Here's how Shanghai's best website described them recently:

"saccharine pop, hip hop, nu metal, pop ska punk, a little thrash -- it's all in there"

Which brings us to the second point about Candy Shop. You might have seen that picture on the right there already by now. It's in this month's Time Out as part of the main Music feature written by someone or other about the band and a locally-organised, community-based event to promote 81fur.com. Shanghaiist also used the photo recently, although they failed to actually mention the event and instead set about attacking PETA and, by association, the gig, but never mind. A bunch of other places have used it too (see below for the links) and have supported an event that has its roots in the local music community here.

It's been set up by Andy (he's the one on the left of that photo in case you're wondering) in conjunction with Xiao K at Yuyintang and the band themselves (all locals). The photos were taken by Shanghai-based photographer Tim Franco, who has been documenting the scene here for a long time and was recently taken to the States by Maybe Mars to cover their tour there. Splitworks, the music promoters who have been involved in the scene for years and have always ensured their international acts are supported by local bands, provided the studio. So basically a lot of people who care a lot about local music are involved and, though we said weren't really going to write about it much on the blogs, the coverage it's been getting warrants a post I reckon. Here's a few of the highlights (other than that Time Out piece obviously, ahem):

SmartShanghai made it the feature event for their MP3 Monday, here.
Layabozi, who recently launched a podcast by the way, have given it their support, here.
It's even gone international, making it on to the Discovery Channel's Planet Green website, here.
 
Not bad, not bad at all. February 25th is the date, it's at Yuyintang, is completely free, is supporting a great cause and will feature both Candy Shop and one of my favourite new bands, FAF, as well as DJ Sacco. Yes, the DJ Sacco. What more could you want?