Beijing and musicians

[mical]

Hi all

I’m hoping some one can provide me with some information on the live music scene in Beijing. I’m moving there in May 2006 to teach English – actually I’m just using that as an excuse to go. I’m really looking forward to joining what seems to be a vibrant live music community!

Is the live music scene as vibrant as the Beijing expats here in Canada say it is???

CAN I FIT IN??

[xiaoxiajenny]

Try www.thatsbj.com or http://gangstalean.typepad.com/gangstalean/

[mical]

Thanks xiaoxiajenny, but I already knew of this site. It’s a very good site but I'm looking for more of a underground musician network for all types of musicians, including DJs/guitar/players/drummers/bass players. However Gangstalean's site had some pretty good links.

The more I try to find information about playing live music, the more walls i come across. A city of 16 million people - there must be some information out there.!!!!

Maybe I'll wait till I’m there to do hands on research.

Much appreciated though

mic

[xiaoxiajenny]

Then try www.yaogun.com

[mical]

xiaoxiajenny

www.yaogun.com is great, and is giving me great knowledge of the Beijing music scene.

But I think I should have made myself clearer. I am a musician and I want to play music in the clubs. I want perform with muscians in Beijing.

Sorry xiaoxiajenny. I know I am annoying you now but your help has been great so far.

[gato]

See this site for some more info on the Beijing rock scene:

http://www.letsrnr.com/Article_Show.asp?ArticleID=1414

Lucky Bar is a performance venue in Beijing owned by the famous Chinese rock pioneer, Cui Jian.

Their email contact listed on the website are: yangshuai.bar@263.net and luckybar@263.net

Phone: 84483339 (Beijing), 81221584(Beijing), and 13051495864 (cell, I think)

They probably have someone on hand who knows a little English. Email might work, but with so much spam floating around nowadays, I don't know how responsive they would be to email.

What style of music do you play?

[mical]

Thanks Gato.

Although I can’t read Chinese characters…yet, I have some friends who are already reading the site for me.

As for me, I play all styles. Classical, classic rock, prog rock, indie rock, jazz. I even played in reggae band for a while, backed a hip-hop group. I’ve played in a trip-hop band. I DJ’ed for a couple years, still do it on and off. But for 8 years and 70 to a 100 gigs a year I played in neo-prog rock band – think Nirvana meets king Crimson meets Drive like Jehu!

Write now I’m scoring for independent films here in Toronto. I also produce backing tracks for a few underground DJs, and hip-hop acts. And still play live in guitar/bass classical duo a few times a month. Plus I own a project studio used to record voiceovers for TV/Film ( but in reality I use it to record indie bands of any style )

BTW that’s a lot of info you gave me. Are you a musician who has lived in BJ??

AND love your website. The Pinyin annotated article – Fantastic. I can see myself going there over and over!!! A great learning tool!!

Thanks

Looking forward to gigging in Beijing!!!

[Azchael]

Hi there,

Well... if you're into metal music than you can also visit:

http://www.painkillermag.com/china/index.html

http://forum.painkillermag.com

http://www.lvzhou.net (got to BBS, even though there is a lot of Shanxi stuff in here)

ROCK ON!!!

Azchael

[gato]

You know Drive like Jehu? They're (were?) a San Diego band. I didn't know their fame extended to Canada. I used to listen to some punk rock in college. Your music style sounds right down my alley. Do you have mp3s online?

I'm actually just a fan and learning the guitar (like everyone else). I'm going to Beijing later this summer to start teaching in the fall and plan to bring my electric with me just to have something to fool around with ;-)

I've been listening to a lot of M. Ward lately. He's a neo-folk acoustic blues guitarist-singer from Portland. I used to be into heavier stuff some years ago but have mellowed out considerably since (I like Belle & Sebastian now; haha!).

AND love your website. The Pinyin annotated article – Fantastic. I can see myself going there over and over!!! A great learning tool!!

Hey, that's great! I'm glad someone's reading it. I'll be adding to the site as I do more translations. It's just for fun.

I'd highly recommend the software, Wenlin, for learning to read Chinese. http://wenlin.com/ You'll find it immensely useful once you start learning more characters. The online pinyin software is very good, too, but with Wenlin you won't need an internet connection and it has great features like giving you the history of a character and showing all characters with a certain component.

[mical]

Gato - Everything in the USA extends to Canada…well the few big cities anyway… the rest of Canada is just snow… hehe…just kidding.

Ya - Drive wasn’t well known here. But man, if you ever found anyone else who listened to them you were definitely surprised!!!! And actually that was most “punk” thing I listened to. Never really cared for punk, although I respected them as musicians. I remember one time seeing NOFX and Lagawagon play a gig here and saying to myself “I wonder if theses kids know that the guitarist is playing in 5/4 time and the drummer is playing in 15/8 time??”

Belle and Sebastian are great!! Never heard of M.Ward though. I’ll check ‘em out. Your right, as you get older your tastes definitely mellow out. Hehe I can listen to Billie holiday and think – slow down lady, it’s not race!!

And Sorry Azchael not really a fan of metal but my in my old band, my drummer use to force us to play some Sepultura every few months…Yep - he was a really good drummer!!

Gato – All the stuff I have online is for film scoring purposes, mostly demo and working copies for clients to access. So the content here is pretty broad in scope in terms of genre.

http://www.acidplanet.com/artist.asp?AID=354234&T=406974

… On the left hand side, under Artist Media click >Songs (26). This will open up my song page. To the right of each song is a >play button > it will open up a media player. I encoded the songs at a fairly high rate so if don’t have fast connection - be patient – if it skips, just stop it, wait a half a minute to let it buffer and it should play no problem. All the stuff here was written in that past month. Some of it was done really quickly when a client needed a quick reference or something so they may not all be top-notch productions. You might find the some of the “Rock” songs to your liking (the genre is listed in the second column). Infact try the one called “Rock V2”

And about Wenlin, a friend just mentioned it a few days. I’ll definitely give it try!!!

If your still around Beijing next May 2006 we’ll hook up for drink.

Thanks

[gato]

Here's M. Ward doing a live show at a southern California radio station, plus a couple of acts I like. M. Ward's voice is kind of weak live, but it's much better, brighter, on his recordings. He plays a wicked guitar, though. John Fahey is a big influence on him. I plan on being in Beijing for a while, so let's keep in touch. I'll let you know about its music scene.

M. Ward (folk blues rock)

http://www.kcrw.com/cgi-bin/db/kcrw.pl?show_code=mb&air_date=3/29/05&tmplt_type=show

Devendra Banhard (American folk reinvented)

http://www.kcrw.com/cgi-bin/db/kcrw.pl?show_code=mb&air_date=5/5/04&tmplt_type=show

Julieta Venegas (Mexican girl pop; born in San Diego and grew up Tijuana, she's awesome)

http://www.kcrw.com/cgi-bin/db/kcrw.pl?show_code=mb&air_date=4/15/04&tmplt_type=show

[Spirochete]

What you guys are doing is very similar to what a bunch of us did back in the pre tian an men days. You need to contact Kaiser Kuo, an Arizona native, educated at Berkeley and has been in Beijing for ten years or so now. Here's a link to his blog. He's really a cool guy and interesting things always seem to happen around him.

http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=kaizor

Good luck!

Sean Andrews

Leominster, Mass.