Music
Monday, 04 January 2010 04:01
Written by Nicky Almasy, Photo by Nicky Almasy

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Three music scene insiders tell us what to expect in local music in 2010...

First up is Andy Best, a musician turned writer who covers the local indie scene on his mega-popular-with-those-in-the-know-and-if-you’re-not-reading-it-then-you-don’t-know-shit kungfuology blog. He’s more reliable than Keith Richard’s dealer, more accurate than Kurt Cobain’s aim and he’s as important a part of the local underground music scene as any band or promoter.

2010 will be big for which local bands?
Making predictions is an invitation to be wrong, but next year the biggest band on the Shanghai scene is undoubtedly going to be The Mushrooms. There’s a little bit of a story to it. They’ve been around since 2006 and from the beginning they did a lot of scene building, they had strong ambitions, The Mushrooms have a singer whose Chinese nickname is Pupu. He’s a big organizer online, a famous but friendly person within the scene. In 2009 he started to go back to the grassroots and organize the band's own shows. So they did three themed costume parties at Yuyintang, that was the gimmick, but it turned out the attraction was the band itself. So across these three summer shows they sold out the venue every time, they brought 400-500 people to gigs, it was full of jumping and moshing. And at the end of that run they put some demos on their douban page and suddenly they are the most popular band in Shanghai. So at the end of 2009 they are by far the most popular and best-attended Shanghai rock band.

Just recently they got the attention of a Taiwan record company with which they are under negotiations. If this deal goes through it means they finally record a quality CD which will be available in the real market in Hong Kong and Taiwan. And then it will come back to the mainland in pirate and copy disc form. But what it means is, in this way if they make a video it will even be on the Chinese MTV. So if this deal goes through they will explode on the mainland. And if the deal doesn’t go through they're still attracting the most people to their shows now. If any band is going to break through just by themselves and become a big hit, there’s no one else. No one else is at the same level.

The second tip is Candy Shop who are very poppy, but when they play live they are very guitar-driven, there are some thrashy rock riffs in it. They call themselves ’mixture rock,’ but they are also a band who stuck around more than a year and they can play 45 minutes of good material and if you go to their shows they attract people. So they are my second pick to become a big band. This is away from my own music taste, this is just looking at which bands are attracting local fans, whose douban pages are exploding. So it’s The Mushrooms, Candy Shop and then everybody else.

How do you think expat bands fit into this?
It’s very interesting because there are actually more expat bands than you’d think. Sometimes it’s completely non-Chinese members, but some people, take for example people like Dan Shapiro from The Rogue Transmission or Fabian from the same band. Some foreigners are very much part of the scene. They have friends in the scene and like to go to all the shows, they know everybody. And some bands also have Chinese members, like Boys Climbing Ropes. They are an example of a band formed by expats, but who are very much part of the scene. They have a Chinese member, they rehearse in the same rehearsing studio. And they feel like they are part of the scene.

On the other hand, I think most of the expat bands are also part of a separate scene. Kind of like the jazz or the blues or the cover bands scene. People kind of like a working band, you play any bar to get some money. Chinese indie bands on the other hand are trying to be a rock band and do it because they want to write songs and have the lifestyle; they play YYT, Livebar, 021, Mao and it’s very much about being in a band with fans and the songs that you write are out there. Whereas I find a lot of foreigner bands tend to operate in different circles and have this kind of dismissive attitude about the young Chinese bands. So I think they are both mentally and physically in a separate scene. Some foreigners seem to mix in, influence the scene and being influenced by it. I think if you are part of the scene or not as a foreigner it doesn’t depend on just being a foreigner or not. The local scene can accept you if you are honest or you love music you will be accepted as an equal and your band can be part of the scene. If you have some snobbish musical attitude or preconceived ideas about this, then maybe you are not part of it. But I think the influence from abroad comes mainly from specific faded bands as well. For example Top Floor Circus are a famous provocative punk band and if you buy their CD you’ll see that a couple of songs and quotes are referencing G.G Allen or New York provocative punk bands. You can easily find influences. Emo and screamo are big influences on young Chinese bands right now.

What are your predictions for 2010 albums?
In Shanghai there are no traditional record labels, so there’s no menu or calendar telling us who is going to record a CD or the ones that going to come out. But we always hope and we have bands tell us ’Oh we’re recording this year, we have a CD coming out.' But they can never give a date and they always be delayed and delayed. At the moment the Shanghai scene is producing some quality CDs. In my opinion, Lava/Ox/Sea’s Lord.Smart vs Dr. Jin was the best album of 2009.

For 2010, we hope The Mushrooms will finally put out a full CD of their music. This should mean a mainstream CD within six months. Separate from yours or my music taste, or what we think is a good band or not, this will be the CD which will have the biggest impact. They already have a few thousand people desperate to get this CD already just on the Shanghai indie scene, which is tiny. Also, the experimental band Boojii, they play a mixture of early Pink Floyd with a little bit of that organ and carnival music. They recorded their CD this year but it’s not out yet so that’s another one to look out for.

How will the Expo affect the local scene?
This year more than ever it’s going to be very unpredictable and bad for large events and the reason is the Expo. Without a doubt the Expo is going to be like the Olympics for Beijing. It’s going to bring in an era where the local culture, the art, the music, the standard of journalism will go backwards. For people who love music and culture, the Expo is like poison. It will be accompanied by crackdowns. During the Olympics the entire music scene nationally was dug up by the police and was told to close for a month. Everyone had to close their doors, end of story. We bounced back very well from it, but this will be directly in this city and for six months. So what we’re looking at is potentially a massive disaster for the music and the art scene. Anyone who genuinely cares about local art, music or culture knows that the Expo is going to make this a tough year. So what we’re going to see is no big festivals and no outdoor event during the national event.

Actually, Top Floor Circus have an Expo song, it’s a joke song. It says like: ’Shanghai doesn’t welcome you/ we don’t have culture/We only have RMB.’ Also, Shanghai’s most important rehearsing studio 0093 is moving at the end of year thanks to the Expo, which Top Floor Circus also mention in one of their songs. So bands are already angrily and bitterly singing about the fact that it’s already starting and it’s not even 2010. So this is the single biggest prediction. If they go the traditional route and just close down all the art and music scene during the event, we could be looking at 3-6 months of nothing. It’s the elephant in the room that nobody can see.

Why are The Killers playing Beijing this month, but not Shanghai?
After the Björk incident, you have to pay a deposit of RMB50,000 which you could lose for any reason with no warning. This has made it impossible for middle scale touring. So that's why Split Works moved to smaller shows. The bottom line is that you’re never gonna find out the real reason behind it.

What’s missing in the local music scene?
I believe if a band has a community based around it and a distinct genre and style that the fans can latch onto that in their lives... it doesn’t matter if you can download their music for free, if they love that band they will want to collect the things like CDs or shirts (and I don’t want to use the word merchandise here). If they strongly identify with the band at a community level then they will collect everything about it. If I’m a young student and go to a show, I want to get that CD, even if it’s a nasty bootleg CD, I want to pick it up. It connects me to the band. So the first step to that is that the music and other stuff have to be available. It’s still not too much of a stretch for some people to come in and spend a little bit of money and make an underground scene. What’s missing here is a label, to have someone with money to come in and invest in the scene. But not as an investment to get money back, but somebody who loves music.

Like Tony Wilson with the Manchester scene back in the 90s?
Yeah, it’s not just for a poor underground scene, it’s with George Martin and The Beatles working together to use the studio, people who have expertise in other areas who also love culture and music.

Let’s talk about Yuyintang, the center of the scene
YYT is open community who does not discriminate, that’s why it works. They are professionals, they have a public profile, they will let anyone play. On one night they can have a fully professional band from Beijing, you can go the next Friday and you can see a seven band night of amateur student bands. They are important to the scene because they encourage new music and they let anyone play if they have the space and they do it only for the love of music. Even if they worked four days without a day off, they’re falling asleep and have no money, they’ll still go there and open the venue to let a brand new student band play because they are committed to expanding the scene. If you open a bar and say you’re gonna make some money and let a lot of bands play, it’s not the same thing. Then you’re competing in the bar market, it’s a different world. If YYT would close next week, it would be like ripping the heart out of the band scene.

Tell us about your own band The Expendables
The name comes from the now very active political writer in New York called Mickey Zezima. He wrote several books in New York and he’s a famous political radical. I always go to his blog, we have a group of people who post there. We’re humanist and anti-war and we like to talk about these issues. And we always thought we don’t have a name for ourselves so Mickey started calling this community, The Expendables. You know the little guy who doesn’t matter. We could be killed or put aside by the government, it’s kind of like a joke name. So when I decided to form my own musical project, a political rock band, it was only going to be called one thing: The Expendables. The singer is my wife, Evans Zhang, who's a long-term scene person. We have about nine or 10 songs, which I wrote with English lyrics about things I care about. We have one Chinese song,  ’Failure Test,’ which is about the education system, but it’s mainly in English. Then we have a song called 'You Worship the Bomb,' which is more known. Most of the songs are more punk, ’YWTB’ has a melody as opposed to shouting.

By the beginning of January we’ll have our online released single out called ’Paris ’68.’ So if people who read the blog and say, c’mon he can’t really like all these bands and be so nice, if people want to know what my real personality is like, I guess the best way is to check out my band.

Like this? Then read interviews with Alec Haavik and Super Sophia here.

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