Beijing Keeps On Rocking

Local rock has never sounded so good! While the Deep Purple tour grabbed all the international music press headlines last month, the fact remains that in a growing number of venues, Beijing's own rock groups are playing music that's right up there with the best the world can offer. You don't make a statement like that without something to back it up, and it just so happens that this month many of Beijing's rock acts will showcase their licks, riffs and cover versions at the Chaoyang International Pop Festival, held in various city bars and clubs from May 1st to 7th. Strap in as we take you on a rollercoaster preview of what's coming.

Cut back to a recent balmy night. Deep in the expansive innards of the Get Lucky Two bar, a band is huddled around the backstage table writing the setlist for the night's show. There's a small pile of gig bags by the stage, the lighting and sound technicians are tweaking buttons while the barman serves German beer to a restive crowd. The stage is spacious and loaded with expensive equipment. Many of the Chaoyang Pop Festival gigs will be played through these amplifiers. By 8.30 the large wicker chairs start to fill up.  These seem far too suburban for a rock club boasting a regular line up of punk rock and speed metal acts, but the fans don't seem to mind. Predominantly locals who wear black Marilyn Manson and Metallica t-shirts and read Chinese rock magazines like Not Only Music and So Rock, the crowd also includes a few foreigners; a mix of music fans, curious tourists and students brought along by their Chinese university colleagues. The 30-yuan tickets have sold well tonight, the crowd anticipating a good show featuring the acidic folk rock of Second Hand Roses, one of Beijing's best-known groups. Cross-dressing front Liang Long combines traditional singing with top quality rock instrumentation.

A pioneer of the live and local rock music scene, the original Get Lucky Bar charges rock fans 30-40 yuan on a weekend night to see local rock favourites like Thin Man and spiky-haired punk quartet Brainfailure. Billed as "one of the loudest, wildest, raunchiest bands in town," the latter have a large student following and do manage to live up to their promotional material's promises, by virtue of amplitude and a surplus of Johnny Rotten leers.

Run by the same crew as the two Get Lucky venues, Nameless Highland on the northern outskirts of Chaoyang district is a large rock venue regularly jammed with locals and foreigners at its Saturday night gigs. "An Ear To the Ground" is a series of monthly shows in the Yan Club, a multi-media arts venue. Sponsored by carmaker Volkswagen and promoted by Sino-German events organiser Logistix, the shows are intended to give a larger stage and better publicity to Beijing's folk musicians, punks, rockers and rappers. China's godfather of rock, Cui Jian, played a three-song set at the Yan Club last December as part of a retrospective of Chinese rock, and pioneering metal group Tang Dynasty closed out the show.

There's plenty of creativity and a good deal of talent on Beijing's rock scene. But audiences are still nascent and performance space, up to now, has been limited. What of the band after the stage lights go out? How does a new band break into "the scene"? Drummer for trash metal group Death Way, Li Yaguang lives in a ramshackle factory roughly converted into artist studios and leftfield performance spaces. He survives on a cheap diet of radishes and cabbage and has been drinking strong rice whiskey to ward off the cold in recent months. "Rock and roll is my only vice," says band mate Wang Xin who wears a gaudy Pantera t-shirt as the band rehearses in a poster-covered college dorm. "Rock and roll is our dream. We meet some things on the street, some problems in life, and we speak them out with our own music. Music makes us feel alive." Not able to make money from his music, Wang spent a year working in a Beijing textiles plant. Playing pop staples in bars and restaurants had "no soul."

Death Way does their own lights and sound, borrowing the entirety of their stage from local shops and scrapyards. They usually put on their own shows, free, in parks, sheds and any bar that'll have them. Death Way's peers, punk-ska outfit Hang On the Box, do slightly better, having released two albums on China's only national indie label, Modern Sky. Hang On the Box's three girls and male guitarist are planning to tour Europe later this year.

Deep Purple have pulled out of town, having played their biggest hit "Smoke On the Water" at the Worker's. But still in Beijing, whether they're working the ever-increasing crowds at old venues, or getting ready to play their first live show on a new stage, Beijing's own rock bands are getting it done.

Get to the Chaoyang International Pop Festival, and hear history happen.

---

The Venues

Get Lucky Two: Nuren Jie (Oriental Qicai World), Chaoyang
Get Lucky Bar: Just east of the University of International Business and Commerce, Chaoyang
Nameless Highland: Building 14, Anhuili Area 1 Yayuncun, near Yayuncun Hospital