Mao Live 2010 Awards: For those about underground rock, we salute you

So, earlier this year ( or late last year) we had the MIDI awards that follow the standard award formula to a T… Interesting winners but mostly established bands with a few surprises.

Not so hot on their heels come the Mao Live Awards fort 2010. Interesting thing about the Mao Live awards is that they’re closely related to bands that played at Mao over the past year so if you were not there, you are square. I remember the 2009 edition being a bit confusing because there was no clear winners and it took me a while to understand that. Mao picks about 7 bands for each category and they’re all recipients of the award. This year was not exception!

It was quite a cool atmosphere with good performances from me guan me, SUBS and The Ghost Spardac, a good turnout and some funny hosting. Spardac absolutely played their guts out sunday night, more so than i’ve ever ever seen them play. It wasn’t that long ago that i saw them for the first time and thought they suffered from “multiple musical personality disorder“.. not anymore folks!! their performance rivaled that of SUBS for intensity and quality. I look forward to their upcoming record!
Me Guan Me surprised me for the second night in row (saw them saturday opening for re-TROS) and I’m gonna go out of my way to catch them from now on! A comparison between them and Lazy Camel a good example of how a band can improve over time while another one stagnates…

In between performances, the winners for each category were announced and this is what it looked like:

Best Band Award | 最佳乐队奖：
扭曲的机器 (Twisted Machine)、反光镜 (reflector)、新裤子 (New Pants)、万能青年旅店 (Omnipotent Youth Society)
　　
Best Performance Award |　最佳舞台表现奖：
SUBS、逃跑计划 (Perdel)、爽子与义和团 (Huang Shuang)，南无 (nanwu)、肆伍 (5-4)、Marduk
　　
Loving Rock Award　爱摇滚乐奖：
SUBS、逃跑计划 (Perdel)、密三刀 (Misandao)、Shonen Knife
　　
Power of Rock Award | 摇滚最给力奖：
迷笛校长张帆 (MIDI principal)
　　
Most Interesting Band Award |　最受关注奖：
梁晓雪 (Liang XiaoXue)、Me灌Me ( Me Guan Me)、Lazy Camels、The Ghost Spardac、玉麟军 (Army of Jade Kirin)、Hell City、OOC、CNdY
　　
Best Organization Award |　优秀主办奖：
摩登天空 , 重型音乐 ,荔芙唱片 , 飞行者唱片 , 火锅音乐 , BIGMIC唱片
　　
Award for most tickets sold | 年度最佳票房奖：
万能青年旅店 Omnipotent Youth Society

One can’t argue much about what Mao is doing with this list really. It’s all about bands that play there and their shows! I also like the whole “multiple winners” concept. What was surprising to me was seeing Perdel’s name pop up so often.. it does seem like they have a nice following judging from their performance on sunday night… granted, neither Ruby nor I liked it much and used the opportunity to get a bit of fresh air. Other winners made sense, especially Omnipotent Youth Society for best box office… I remember the madness outside Mao the day they played there.

I like how Mao gave a big thank you to MIDI for helping them out and letting them setup a tent during the unfortunate closure last year… they got a lot of goodwill from this one. Once again, at an award show, no mention of any Maybe Mars artist… that might be worth investigating.

Another interesting fact is how much the mainstream media ignored the awards or had extremely selective coverage. A search for “MAO Livehouse 2010年度颁奖典礼” on Baidu barely turned out any results other than the award given to pop-folkster 梁晓雪 (Liang XiaoXue). Other bands barely got a mention… forget about MTV or even CCTV coverage at this point. so unless it’s pretty and soft, we’re still a very long way from seeing any of these bands make it mainstream…

Anyways, great evening with amazing performances by SUBS and The Ghost Spardac… yours truly went there right after a root canal and I did not regret braving the pain!!
Congrats to the winners and keep it up!!!