Punks, 16min, Dialects, Releases and other tidbits

It’s nice to have time to ramble on again… been way too busy around here for the last few weeks.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that tomorrow, Saturday August 11th, is the mother of Punk Reunion/Charity shows at 2 kolegas. Everyone has been pitching in and helping out, online and offilne, to make this particular gig a success. Check out this interview of Dave O’Dell over at Shanghai 24/7, this little feature on The World of Chinese by Liz Tung on some of the original Punks of Beijing and let’s not forget Pangbianr sitting down with Jerry Chan. I’m hoping the event rocks and rain doesn’t fuck things up.

Our favorite boot boys are heading overseas!! Misandao is booked to play Germany plenty of European dates folks so if you’re a Germany based blog reader, please try and catch them. This is really the year of China in Germany as their dates pretty much comes on the heels of Chinese bands at Wacken. check full schedule here: http://misandao.blogspot.com

Sticking with Punks, there’s a lot of chatter about some interesting lineup changes coming up for one of our favorite bands here over at ‘daze. Keep your eyes peeled on this space or make it to the Beijinger’s music showcase next week for a taste of SUBS v.2012 Things might get interesting. I’d love to say more but I’d rather tease, it’s just more fun that way.

I managed to catch 16 min yesterday at Temple and came out positively impressed. These cats are young but talented and they confirmed my the first impression i had months ago when i heard them for the first time. Robyn is a pretty talented guitarist, Sindy has one hell of a voice and the bass player got skill. I’d love to see how they grow up as a band with their mix of trip-hop meets blues and folk. If they develop just a tad bit more stage presence and change tempos up in their sets, we’ll have another winner on our hands. They pulled off a beautful version of Leonard Cohen’s Allelujah not to mention that they did justice to their own song “Original Desire”… Check their douban and listen to a song called Circle– tell me Sindy doesn’t sound like Helen Feng?

On the random side of things, I came accross this lovely piece on China Digital Times about Zhou Yunpeng and Singing in Dialects.
http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2012/01/zhou-yunpeng-we-want-to-sing-in-dialect/
Old Zhou is undoubtedly one of the more profilic social voices around here dishing out tons of slaps in his lyrics but this one took me by surprise. I spend a lot of time hanging out with musicians that speak and sing in dialects; I’ve actually not noticed any problem to that end. I wonder if someone has?

Finally, mark down september 1st on your calendar: Bad Mamasan album release at Temple. It’s gonna be insane!