Carsick Cars Split.. it’ll be fine!

Much like Beijing gig guide, I received this little message from Carsick Cars last night, not too long after they finished opening for The Raveonettes at Yugong Yishan:

我们做出了一个重要的决定：由于音乐兴趣的差异和成员各自的发展计划，贝斯手李维思和鼓手李青选择退出乐队；张守望将和新的成员一起，继续Carsick Cars的创作。11月16日的演出也会是carsick cars原始成员的最后一次演出。
从2005年最初的排练与演出，五年多来，我们三人一同完成了两张专辑，经历了上百场演出，以及国内和欧美的巡演，这是我们人生最重要的经历和美好的回忆。
在未来，李青与李维思会将音乐重心更多的放在Snapline与Soviet Pop上；而在Carsick Cars之外，守望同时也在进行着White+等音乐实验。而在将来我们三个也很有可能再合作一个更自由的音乐项目。

In a nutshell, the band as we know it is done! Li Qing and Li Weisi will focus on snapline and Soviet Pop while Shou Wang himself focuses on White+ and looks for new members to continue the Carsick Cars brand later.

I’ve gone on the record as not being a fan of the music but supportive of their endeavors. Their overseas tours and their participation in various music festivals were great PR for Beijing and the Chinese music scene in general and they’re a fairly high profile band at this point.
That said, it’s not a new phenomenon and splits are very common in this scene: one quick look at the Rock in China wiki will show that most bands, even after “making it” went through multiple member changes and that’s just the norm here. New Guitar players, new drummers and new bassists come around more often than not and it’s not really a big deal: Look at Hang on the Box, Brain Failure, PK 14 etc… they’ve all lost plenty of members and are still enjoying similar success.
Still, for their fans, I hope that they can keep it up in some way or another… a Carsick Cars gig is usually an almost guaranteed 300 ticket draw in Beijing. The cynic in me says the brand will live on.

I still stick to my guns and maintain that the band was overrated and that pressure to keep up with expectations might have caused them to run out of gas.
I do wonder about the ramifications for Maybe Mars as a record company and D-22... I’m have absolutely no rights to slag them but there have been too many grumblings coming out of that side of town with a lot of resident bands switching allegiances to the Gulou area.

to be continued..