Halloween Shindig at 2 Kolegas: Rusty Birds & Rustic, Amazing DH, interesting 24h and welcome The K

Alex over at Beijing Gig Guide labelled it his gig of the week and I agree on principle. A lineup of this quality is worth checking out for surprises are bound to happen… and they did!

Free the Birds came on first for a quick set so that Helen could get on a plane to Europe for the upcoming Pet conspiracy tour there. This might have been the worst performance of theirs that I’ve seen to date ( and you know how much it pains me to say that). The performance was uninspired at best with 3 out of 4 songs sounding bad, almost as if the band was too rusty and hadn’t played together in years. I’ll leave it to that!

24 Hours, which i had been hearing about for a while turned out to be one hell of a good surprise. The trio was rocking with a mix of 70s flavored punk & rock. The band sounded tight and looked extremely comfortable on stage and the audience bought it! It’s actually really hard to describe what they sounded like other than 70s flavored with a modern take..some flashes of Iggy n the Stooges, if they had gotten started today.

The K was up next and they actually dressed up for the party! I never heard their name before it appeared on that night’s bill but seems like they been around for a while and they even have a CD to their name. They were a bit all over the spectrum but somewhere in between rockabilly and ska if i had to pick a category. Good inoffensive tunes and fantastic makeup is what i remember from the show!

DH & The Hellcats came on after that to do what they do best: Rock the house in style! I love these guys and their performances.. easily one of the best bangs for your buck value propositions in Beijing. They’re not trying to save the word, they just play good old rockabilly inspired tunes and they do it fantastically. DH has a fantastic voice and the rest of the band never fails to deliver.. they get an A+ for matching costumes and great makeup.

Rustic closed the show that night and I’ve got conflicted feeling about their performance. It wasn’t their best showing by a long shot and Rikki seemed to agree with my comments when i spoke to him afterwards. They’ve grown a lot as a unit and are still extremely tight on stage, gotta give them that much. Musically though, they’re still somewhat shaky and that showed on sunday! They were basically going through the motions. Those that didn’t see them perform before hand were quite pleased… I thought they dropped the ball!

That said, it was a fantastic little evening at 2 Kolegas yours truly was in a slightly advanced state of refreshment by the end of the night so that might have had something to do with my slightly over-critical stand on this one!
It was also a decent turnout considering it was a sunday and it’s 2 Kolegas.. I would say about 250 to 300 strong made it for the show!