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

Jul
17th[Book Review] Dave O’Dell’s Inseparable: the Birth of Punk Anarchy in the old P.R.C

I generally consider myself pretty lucky to be here in Beijing at this moment in time, being witness, chronicler and sometime participant to the ever growing underground Rock n Roll scene. These are amazing times and I’d never thought in a million years that i’d somehow be part of it. And While I’m pretty knowledgeable about the current scene, I love getting more information about its past and compare it to what we have now. Good friend Jon Campbell wrote his Red Rock with was nothing short of amazing: a beautifully constructed dissection of Yao Gun and its roots! It’s probably my favorite history book so far. Now, we get another gem in the form of Dave O’dell’s Inseparable: The Memoirs Of An American And The Story Of Chinese Punk Rock . David O’Dell was one of the earliest supporters of the Chinese punk rock scene that started taking shape in 1995 in Beijing both as a friend of the scene and as a musician. He is now a Physics teacher over in Texas. The book is a rich and uniquely personal collection of stories, over one hundred previously unreleased photos and translated song lyrics from the earliest Chinese punk bands and the dizzying development of the scene I got my paws on this baby quite a while back and i kept forgetting to write about it when i really should have… and for many reasons: The book is a beautiful, honest and slightly biased history of a specific era [...]