Residence A lift the roof on a cold night at Hot Cat

There were so many shows on Friday night, I was struggling to pick from four I wanted to see! Hanggai & La Pegatina, Re-TROS and Chunqiu are all great bands, but the one I ended up at was Residence A at Hot Cat. I first saw these guys over a year ago at the GBOB Beijing finals and have seen them many times since. I’m really happy to see they’ve finally started getting some credit for all the hard work they’ve been putting with interviews in Global Times and write-ups on expat websites in the last few months, an album ready to release and a national tour in the new year. I’ve recently converted my gig buddy Alex into an fan, so this time we took along two friends who’d never seen them before.

Miss Freak

Miss Freak were first up. I’ve never seen or heard of them, but when I saw the keyboardists Perdel look-a-like haircut I wasn’t overly optimistic I was going to enjoy this! I’m not a big fan of indie pop rock, so they didn’t do much for me, but my buddies were convinced they have potential. I was just sad to see the keyboardist, who only played on maybe 2 songs and spent the rest of the set head down staring at his feet looking like he didn’t want to be on stage.

Christmas

My Mama taught me if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. So all I’ll say about Christmas is that the local crowd seemed to love them! I took that opportunity to sit outside and listen to ReTROS and Health playing in the warehouse next door.

Residence A

Finally it was time for Residence A. First thing I noticed is they had a new (or possibly old?) bass player. Definitely not the same guy I’ve seen them play with before. But he knew all the songs, some of which have intricate bass solos and he seemed to fit seamlessly into the band like he’d been playing with them for a long time. I’m not sure if this is a permanent change, but it seemed to work well for them. As usual they delivered a loud powerful set that converted my two friends into fans and drew in a lot of people from next door after the Re-TROS show ended.

Residence A

I was really looking forward to seeing these guys up close & personal at Hot Cat, but I think the venue was possibly just a little small for them, the sound was just too big for such a small room and the lead singer really didn’t have the room to dance around as much as he usually does without tripping over the rest of his band. I think they suit venues the size of Mao or D22 much better. Like I said these guys are hardworking and play a lot, you can see them at Mao on the 9th, D22 on the 11th and they’re opening for 2 Gallants at YGYS on the 16th.

ruby

a kiwi, a music lover, a traveller & an IT geek hanging around in the 'jing planning her next adventure.

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7 Responses

  1. Beijing Daze says:

    interesting gig…. so you mean to say you DIDN’T like christmas?

    that new bass player is also in Me Too.. either from shandong or ningxia, i forget!

  2. Ruby says:

    Donkeys, that’s all I’ll say.

    Ah, I thought I recognised the bass player from somewhere!

  3. Alex says:

    I just felt I should register my almost complete agreement with this entire article. And shamelessly cross-linke to my own. We need to stop going to shows together, lol (only not really).

  4. 沙发 says:

    I’m Shafa, the lead singer of Christmas. Knowing how much press Residence A has been getting on Beijing Daze, I set up the show at Hot Cat with them just hoping that one of you guys would come check it out. Glad it worked. Not glad it backfired. “Donkeys”…Ouch! Anyway, thanks for the review:)

  5. Ruby says:

    Hey Shafa, thanks for setting up the show! We’ve been following Residence A’s progress since seeing them in the GBOB finals in Sept 2010 and are just really happy they’re finally getting the payoff for all their hard work. Sorry I’m not a Christmas fan, but I think your target audience is the local crowd, not me! And don’t worry about ‘Donkeys’ label, BD says that about Xiao He and I’ve used it for New Pants, so you’re in good company 🙂

  6. 沙发 says:

    Thanks Ruby! All press is good press. We take it any way we can get it:)

  1. November 6, 2011

    […] finally, there was Res­i­dence A. I agree with Ruby, the stage at Hot Cat seemed almost too small for them, but I was def­i­nitely more than thrilled […]