Editor’s Picks, December 17-20

December 17th, 2009 | Posted in Editor's Picks by zack

I’m not going to lie to you, folks: It’s slim pickings this weekend. Maybe you are lucky and you are leaving on a jet plane, winging to an exotic locale. Well, this week in Editor’s Picks we are going to take a trip, also. Let’s take a trip back in time and revisit some of my favorite shows of the year, laugh at my under-informed reviews, pine for the highs of 2009, and hope that the Expo doesn’t fuck everything up for 2010 live music in Shanghai. And don’t worry; we will still be ticking off the places to be this weekend, such as they are. However, each entry will have a companion piece, explaining where we wish we were again.

Makes sense? OK, let’s get to the picks.

Thursday, December 17th

Did you go see Friction 7 vs. Guzheng like I told you to last week? Have you been to Anar for one of their jam sessions? How about a little swing music at Melting Pot Hengshan Lu? Do what you feel. Get in where you fit in.

JZ Club
46 Fuxing Xi Lu,
Huaihai Zhong Lu
near Yongfu Lu, Metro Line 1 Changshu Lu Station
复兴西路46号
近永福路，地铁1号线常熟路站

Anar
129 Xingfu Lu,
Changning
near Fahuazhen Lu
幸福路129号
近法华镇路

288 The Melting Pot
Heng Shan Lu No.10, Near Yong Jia Lu
ground floor of Orden Bowling Center
Subway #1, exit 4 of Heng Shan Lu Station

Where I would rather be:

Lots of people have spoken about seeing a fantastic Mushrooms show this year, especially recently, as writers begin to take stock of the year that was. Well, way back in August I caught the Mushrooms for the first time at YuYinTang. Here is my review at the time. As I read it back, I feel sheepish comparing them with Linkin Park. Bad job by me. I’ve seen them a couple times since then and I would like to dissociate myself from those statements (although I said I like the Mushrooms and didn’t like LP). Unfortunately, it’s out there for everyone to see. But that’s just something I have to live with. Let me just say again: 2010, Year of the Mushroom.

Friday, December 18th

We All Have a Sorry Yesterday feat. 21 Grams, Pinkberry, Sonnet, and Jiao Ke at YuYinTang

Who me? Actually, my yesterday was pretty good. The sun was shining, I got some work done, it was cool. What happened to you?

You may remember 21 Grams from an MP3 Monday entry put together by the dashing Morgan Short. You may remember the movie from whence they take their name, or you may have heard that humans lose a small amount of weight when they die, which leads to speculation that 21 grams (actually, the numbers vary) is the weight of the soul. Or if you have heard none of those things, just know you are in for some pretty good music. However, Pinkberry is not my favorite band from Shanghai. We’ll just leave it at that. Jiao Ke I have no experience with, and Sonnet I have only seen briefly at the show I am about to reminisce about. Despite these tenuous bits of information, this event is going to garner the Editor’s Pick of the Week Seal of Approval. Like I said, slim pickings.

YuYinTang, 9 PM
1731 Yan’an Xi Lu,
Changning
Entrance at Kaixuan Lu
延安西路1731号
入口在凯旋路

30 kuai for ladies, 40 kuai for the dirtier sex

Where I would rather be:

Sonnet was the opening band for one of my favorite shows of the year, Bigger Bang at YuYinTang. This show was packed and I showed up a bit late, only hearing one song from Sonnet. Also, I could not go anywhere but to the side of the stage in the vestibule, and squeeze my way in, little by little. When I finally made it to the main area I saw, right in the middle, this thrashing, albino, alopecia-stricken gorilla. After I wrote the review, Andy Best commented on my post and then I found out the thrashing gorilla was Jake Newby. The show was great. I still remember Pupi’s polka dotted bathing costume with pink tights and the thin sheen of sweat frosting her back. I have recently purchased their EP. Two of the songs are great, two others are good, and one is pretty boring. There’s your instant CD review and here is my review of the show for you to peruse.

The Future feat. Ben Thriller and Mau Mau at Dada

I think a drunken me saw these guys at C’s last Thursday and maybe my drunken self liked it. I can’t confirm any of this, though. Just kidding. Actually I have seen Mau Mau a lot in the past few weeks and he always does something that doesn’t make me want to fall asleep, which is more than I can say for many DJs. So step into the future. Maybe it will cure your sorry yesterday.

Dada, 9 PM
115 Xingfu Lu,
near Fahuazhen Lu

No cover

Where I would rather be:

Many people will point to Dam-Funk as one of the top gigs at Shelter this year. I was pretty hyped for it, but primed myself a little too hard with a big dinner at a Sichuan restaurant and then beers with an old friend at everybody’s favorite dive bar, Time Passage. Anyways, I got into the Shelter and Dam-Funk didn’t go on. And didn’t go on. And didn’t go on. I think it was like 1 or 2 before he started and by this time I was falling out on my feet, drinking random drinks off the bar, and calling co-workers I happened to meet there unflattering names. Luckily, my poor wife dragged me home. I would definitely like a re-do on this one, but we’ll have to see about that one. Check out the preview for the show I did here.

Saturday, December 19th

Plastic Tree (JP) at MAO Livehouse

MAO Livehouse continues to stretch the limits of what people will pay to see middling bands. Did someone in management get whacked in the head by a crystal butterfly and take leave of their senses? Wait until the bottom for pricing information and see if you agree. I can’t decide if it’s the bands that are demanding exorbitant prices or what. They are brought to you by something called Icon Productions for Painkiller Magazine. Um, OK. Truthfully, I can’t tell you very much about this band because there is little about them on the web. No Myspace, nothing on Google Music, and I couldn’t even find them on emusic.com, which is usually one of my go-to sources. So you will have to decide if you want to take a chance on this decadent show.

MAO Livehouse, 8 PM
570 Huaihai Xi Lu
near Hongqiao Lu
淮海西路570号
近红桥路

280 kuai advance, 340 kuai (!) at the door

Where I would rather be:

I’ll tell you one Japanese band at MAO Livehouse that I would have shelled out 340 kuai for, although I didn’t have to (thanks, Reggie): That’s MONO. It was really a big event (I think pretty much everyone from Shanghai that you can read in English on the Internet was there) that lived up to the hype, although some thought it might have been a bit long (not me). As Dan said (paraphrasing), they are not really rock, or post-rock, they’re more like classical. It’s true. They just love to make perfectly-executed, atmospheric soundpieces. Their music was moving and, I think, one of the biggest moments of 2009 for Shanghai, although you could argue Ratatat because it was the biggest indie show up to that point. Anyway, here you can read my review of the MONO show.

Sunday, December 20th

Thrash the Night feat. Gum Bleed at YuYinTang

What the world needs now are punks, street punks. It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of. This will be a fun show, I guarantee, as long as enough people go. The music on their Myspace page is really fun and acerbic. You should go to this, I tell you. However, if I had my druthers…

YuYinTang, 9 PM
1731 Yan’an Xi Lu,
Changning
Entrance at Kaixuan Lu
延安西路1731号
入口在凯旋路

40 kuai

Where I would rather be:

The only thing better than street punks are dance punks. OK, some might disagree, but I’m going to make Pet Conspiracy at MAO Livehouse my best show of the year anyway. As you may or may not have read, I was blown away by the band’s stage presence and the music was really fun and danceable. Their opening shtick with the struggling red cloth mummy set the tone for the whole set. I think I fell in love with Helen a little bit, which I’m not ashamed to admit. This show was preceded by the band nuding up for some pictures and then it set off the whole photographer debate. If nudity is how you “win the internet” then controversy is how you win my heart.

However, I will be at neither of these places this Sunday. I will be on a plane headed for a little holiday relaxation (I wonder if they will make me wear pants? You know how I feel about pants on Sunday.) So I will be taking a backseat role for a while. Mike and Mache will be handling the Editor’s Picks and other good stuff. 2009 has been great for me, especially since I started writing for Layabozi, and I look forward to bringing more hard-hitting stories to your brains in the New Year.

Have a great holiday season, wherever you are, whatever you celebrate, and make sure to check out and vote in the Duel of the Decade!

Year-End, nay! Decade’s End time-wasters:

Good job, world leaders in Copenhagen. Way to go. Anyone else think rich people will just destroy the earth for the sheer fun of it?

Along those lines, a pretty interesting story from the New Yorker’s Man in China, Evan Osnos.

Did you know world-famous DJ Heatwolves! (formerly of Baijiu Robots) has a blog? Now you do. It’s pretty cool. Magic cats, indeed.

Just another cool (B for) blog.

If you’re into this sort of thing, go for it.

And, finally, the ultimate time-waster of 2009.

tags: 21 Grams - Anar - Andy Best - Ben Thriller - Bigger Bang - Crazy Mushroom - Dada - Dam Funk - DJ Mau Mau - Duel of the Decade - Friction 7 - Gum Bleed - Icon Productions - Jake Newby - Jiao Ke - Mao Livehouse - MONO - Morgan Short - Pet Conspiracy - Pinkberry - Plastic Tree - Sonnet - The Melting Pot - The Shelter - YuYinTang

Summer is over, but Music is not!

October 3rd, 2008 | Posted in Live Music Reviews by mache

Last weekend (and month) we were in a roller coaster of music, so intense I even forgot to complain about the ‘cold’ air coming back to Shanghai last Friday. OK, not cold, but not hot anymore and I’ve never forgot before to complain about summer ending.
This week hass been also full of things to do, and we have been having troubles (again) with our server so we’ll be moving to other one tonight, hopefully this will make layabozi load faster and you guys will not have to waste time waiting to read our super interesting and cool articles (ha!).
But before we move to a new virtual location I will publish my review of last weekend and also I will tell you some news here in layabozi house: the classifieds are ready to be use, we are being shy on the categories inside, because we prefer to see how this music trading grows up to adjust it to our needs on the way. So if you feel you want a new category inside the classifieds send us a mail to layabozi@layabozi.com.
We also were doing some organization here, you can see now up on our menu bar, the tab “Regulars”, under there you will find the link to “Playlists”, “Reviews”, “Gallery” a new regular one to watch photos and videos, and “MusicStyles” were we’ll be publishing the styles of music we run into, the fun thing there is they can be rated, we want to have this popularity contest of music styles, just with the only objective of smiling at categorizations of music and of anything actually. If you want to add some music style, please send us the title of the style and a small paragraph describing it, add your name or nickname to give you the credit on that one.
So lets go to last weekend music events.
Saturday at LOgO was fun and interesting. S.T.D. Event with The Rogue Transmission an AV Okubo was loaded of energy and rock stars. We all know the sound is not the strength of LOgO, neither of Shanghai, I might be insisting on this a lot from now on, but what the heck! Don’t you think that is the right of music to have a good supporting sound? Anyway, this is not something to put only on LOgO’s shoulders, I think we all agree, it is on most of the stages of Shanghai with some few exceptions occasionally. We desperately need to be invaded by sound engineers. And by the way I think I saw an UFO that day before going to Logo, did anyone else there too?
Ok, lets go back to LOgO and The Rogue Transmission, these guys have been together for one year and this week they were releasing their first EP in Beijing and then they’ll bring it here (to layabozi’s main operations base… or at least we’d like to have it deliver here). Last Saturday, with sound issues and all, Dan, the singer, guitar player, writer and leader of the band showed his power; his vision of rock projected on himself through the music with hi-res. Clement, John Lynch and Fab B; guitar, bass and drums, were solid musicians behind Dan giving him the base to jump, kick and sing, all at the same time. The sound was not as good as I would have like to hear better the back vocals and even Dan’s voice, which I lost at times. But well, resignation and patience seem to be part of the recipe to enjoy life, although I believe resignation is good in small amounts only.
The next band AV Okubo was cool, funny and fun. I have to find out more about them, I talked with the singer but I honestly can’t remember any of the names I hear that night (!). These guys were badass rockers, their look is fun, the bass player has put a lot of work in himself and part of layabozi staff noticed it more than the rest of us. The guitar player surprised me all the time, and the audience had so much fun I had to go out to survive. You can see it by yourself in this next video.

[youtube width="425" height="355"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yb44AnShI0E[/youtube]

From Logo, we ran to The Shelter to meet DJ Wash. I was planing to interview him, but he was just going to begin his set, the interview could wait, but the music couldn’t. We wait to hear his set, and this was one of THE entrances I will remember when I’ll be old in my beach house watching the young boys playing around; The Shelter was tired, people was drunk and sticky, many had left already and many were on the back caves relaxing, then DJ Wash took the controls and this bass sound coming from the very lowest labels of the planet began to move there deep in the ground, vibrating so deep that it first came in through the sole of our feet resounding up, vibrating through our stomachs, to hammer us through our chests and heads into the sky. Wow! People multiplied and all this crowd was jumping at the rhythm of an amazing low sound. I remember I was opened mouth looking around what was going on, it was very impressive, I turned around and I saw behind me all the DJs that were playing right before Wash, they were all as opened mouth as me. It was breathtaking. Of course I ended up dancing and jumping like everybody else, so at the end I was so done that all my professional concentration to do an interview was gone. Good thing, I got all the coordinates of DJ Wash and his even coolest partner in their project Kongkretebass; Electronic Mistress. Soon we’ll be publishing an interview to this HK powerful kongkrete digger team from the lowest layers of the earth.
After surviving Saturday I had problems to get out of my pyjama on Sunday evening (!) but I made it on time to the Melting Pot for the so long waited Battle of the Bands. I have to say I was very surprised to hear the host saying so relax that this battle was showing the best bands of Shanghai, what can I say, there’s nothing wrong about self promotion but there is a limit near by … taste (should I delete this?… oh well… ).
The battle had six bands running for the price and the chance to go to HK to the national Battle of the Band, the winners there will go to London to the… war, should we say. So as much as I would have like a lot to see the bands battling with their guitars and bass and flutes against each other in some kind of comic style sequence, the competition was about the bands playing for 8 minutes two of their original songs.
The bands were Little Nature; nice looking guys inaugurating the sound problems the battle had all along the night, the drummer seemed very good and the singer had a cool voice, although the music was kind of plain. The second band was Crazy Mushroom, very crazy for sure, I liked the attitude of the singer, but he just needs to practice the singing better, the yelling is awesome and so it is the jumping and smashing, but the singing can be better. The music is alright and they rock, but again, the singing has to be better. Then The Dovetail Joints, we have had already talked about these guys, if we do a pass over all the bands of this night we could say it was a little unfair to have them there, or it was a little unfair to them to battle against bands not in their same level. These guys are professionals, they don’t make silly mistakes, they have their style already built and they do nice music, they were the only band there that had it all, that’s why they won actually. The fourth band was MoMo, a cute girly band, almost coming out of a manga film, my friends didn’t like them very much, I did, they need a lot to work still, including the singing, but the essence there was cool and deserves to be work out. The fifth band was Lan Cao, three string guys, an acoustic guitar, a banjo and an electric mandolin (I think!), they seemed a very interesting trio to check but the sound was not with them (as with anyone else), neither the attention of the audience. The last band was Guitou Hunter, other curious group, they were coming with traverse flute, didjeridu and African drums, very native style, but also the audience was easily distracted from them, the sound was not there again, later they said they are not really professionals but well, I thought it was an interesting group of guys; not every day you run into people doing ‘native’ music around this square of the world.
Back to the battle, the judges: Jack Newby from SH Magazine, Cao Jim from Shanghai TV, Zhang Pong from ICS and Chris B from “The Underground” Record Label from HK, and the audience votes and cheers, gave the wining price to The Dovetail Joints.
From the Melting Pot, we flied to Logo to finish the weekend with the chaos and craziness of the already well known Jam Session directed by John. Being there was kind of strange for me this time, I think I had one of those lightnings about the effect layabozi is having around, besides I had a super deep talk with a friend about him and his recent trip in life and all the noisy music around, I guess I finally got drunk, so did the rest of layabozi team and now that I’m getting ready to publish her photos I’ll see how did she end.
Remember to see more photos, go to our new Regular: Gallery… anyway for the lazy (because they deserve our respect) please go here

tags: AV Okubo - Crazy Mushroom - DJ Wash - Guitou Hunter - LOgO - Rock - S.T.D. - Shanghai - The Dovetail Joints - The Melting Pot - The Rogue Transmission - The Shelter