BeijingDazeTales of Live Music From Beijing's Mostly Underground Rock Scene..

Jul
14thThe month Live Music died? not so quick! Ember Swift, Jess Meider, JSB, Dancers, Jets Overhead and more

Since before i took off for South Africa to catch some world cup fever, there’s been talk about how the period of “June 11 to July 11″ is and will be the month where the music died… Football and the world cup took over Beijing and put shows on the back burner. It was mostly right as in the early weeks there were hard choices to be made between games and concerts all taking place around 10:00 pm. Still, the month saw quite a slew of events like the ChunQiu 10 years anniversary show, Wu & Side effects album release, etc…

This past week and weekend was the first opportunity I had a chance to go full on out and see what happened while i was away. A show on Tuesday at Yugong Yishan turned out to be perfect crap with an audience of about 20 people and a headliner i wouldn’t hire to clean my floors. That said, evening news put on one hell of a performance that night and they’re definitely worth checking out. The guys are actually veterans of the scene and it shows in the way they play.

The Dancers: These guys are bound to make some good noise on the Chinese Scene

Friday was the busy one! despite the nasty rain, after checking out Abigail at The One, Ruby and I jetted for 2 Kolegas to try and catchup Jean-Sebastian’s Bday performance. We were a bit late for that but got treated to one hell of a show by The Dancers ( Beijing’s first supergroup). If you remember, I mentioned those guys after seeing them play at the Maggie Who record launch. Let me tell you folks, they’re getting better! These guys are stars in their own right and i expect them to keep improving. The night ended with a daze of a jam that included The Amazing Insurance Salesmen along with yours truly and even Dofu…. the things we do with Rum

After Hours at 2 Kolegas... the fun fun fun

Happy Birthday smiles: JSB, Mao Mao and Ubul

Saturday took an interesting turn with diametrically opposite performances: It started off with a nice chilled out session at the Bookworm hosted by Jess Meider and Ember Swift. Funny thing is I’ve know Jess for a while and I’ve know of Jess for even longer but somehow, the cosmic alignment was never right and I never caught one of her shows…. until now! She’s a great songwriter with interesting introspective lyrics from the little I’ve heard and gifted with lovely voice and hypnotizing smile. I’ll be catching her again!

Songwriter session with Jess and Ember

Ember Swift has been popping up on the daze-radar for the last few weeks and let me tell you folks, I think you’re gonna be reading her name on this blog quite often from now on… I just got a feeling about this one! To misquote Judas Priest: “I got another crush coming“… powerful voice, rocks a cool guitar and she got style….I’m sad i didn’t stay for the whole performance but 2Kolegas was calling my name.

Jets Overhead giving Indie a good name

I like how this one came out

I figured Jets Overhead was just another member of the Canadian invasion that hit Beijing recently and pretty much ignored the fact that they were coming until a good friend set the records straight. I trusted them and made it for the 2 Kolegas show and it was definitely worth it. It started off with me saying: “Better than expected, I can listen to them live but probably not a home” and it ended with me saying” I stand corrected, there’s 2 songs on the set that will probably make it into my itunes rotation”. The band was tight, humble, and the two vocalist obviously had loads of chemistry between them. It was a joy to see them perform their brand of pop rock… There was a bit of Tom Petty being Channeled there with a hint of Pink Floyd…
loved it! so did the 80+ people that showed up!

Not a bad return to business y’all…. and this is all on the final weekend of the worldcup… The music didn’t really die, no way… it’s out there and people are coming out when they can!