Christmas Wolves

A review of Jiang Rong's novel Wolf Totem in the NCJ. (I misindentified Gao Xingjian as Gao Xindan. Sorry!)

Bonus: check out the new SYNTHAR Christmas song, "Pawn Shop Christmas" on the compilation album Peace on Earth II, availble for $7.50 from the music blog Hard to Find a Friend. The comp features American Analog Set, Karl Blau, and a bunch of other hip bands, and all proceeds benefit the Children of Uganda Fund.

Yan Jun: Experimental Music in China

Left: Yan Jun in France, from his myspace page

You barely have to scratch the surface of independent music in China to find what I consider extremely avant-garde and frankly bizzare* music, and maybe this is why.

"To speak of 'experimentation' in China means to discuss it literally: Every single person in the entire country experiments daily and tries out new things. This is particularly true of the last decade. In pre-Olympic Beijing any street, building, restaurant, store, company or regulation could be transformed or even disappear at any given moment." - Yan Jun, RE-INVENT



(*As Sarah said when I put on the Noise Is Free compilation: "my arteries!")

Acid Tongue and D-22

The band 23 plays a Smiths cover at D-22 in Beijing.

It is easy to complain that things are not "authentic" in the Chinese indie rock scene -- D-22 is run by a middle-aged white guy, tapping his fingers on the bar along to the beat, shaking hands with other middle-aged white guys while the crowd (about 70% foreign) nods approvingly at the bands on stage. But these Chinese rock and roll bands, they are here, anyway. They are bands. They are playing music and somebody is listening, which means everything. 23 was not great, by the way, and I don't want to say something like "oh, but they'll get better, just wait, Chinese rock is developing, they're not there yet." Just this: 23 was not great. They played "There is A Light That Never Goes Out" with creativity and grace, but their songs were not great. The band that played after them, The Bigger Bang, was pretty great. We didn't stay for the last two bands, because, everywhere on earth, rock shows always, always start and end too late.

I've got some more on music in China coming in before the end of the year, both in a dead-tree publication and an internet thing that is made up to look like a dead-tree publication, so stay tuned. For now, here's a review of Jenny Lewis' album Acid Tongue.

PS: A book called Remembering the Future, which collects essays from The Other Journal, an online publication I've been contributing to since 2004, has just been published. It includes a revised (and better, I think) version of an essay now titled "There is Only One Thing" which is about the Stars album Set Yourself on Fire. You can buy the book here.

I Want My Please Please Please

Re Starflyer 59's new album, Dial M...when did Jason Martin start actually singing? He sounds great! "Minor Keys" (listen at myspace) is my pick for song of the year, no question. Perhaps not ironically, however, Martin sings "Like Johnny Marr I want my Please Please Please." "Morrissey" would have fit the number of syllables needed for that lyric, but I expect Martin sees himself as more of a guitarist than a singer.

Two Stand-Up Music Dudes I Met in Beijing

I. Al Di is a record executive for one of the world's biggest record labels. He works promoting Universal Records' artists in China. (Top seller? Rihannon.) He also hosts a web TV show out of Canada called ALDTV. He was not nearly as weird as the show makes him out to be, at least when I met him. He does have killer fashion sense. Watch him interview Hot Hot Heat (with a clip from a Stars interview -- "She said she wanted to meet you guys, so I told her if you want to meet Stars, you have to sleep with me")

II. Liu Kai works at the hippest record store in all of China's 3,705,405 square miles, Sugar Jar, which is in the inestimably cool 798 Art Zone. He introduced me to about 5 new Chinese post-rock bands and sold me 4 CDs of Chinese ambient, post-rock, sound collage, and traditional folk music. He is also a musician -- check out his guitar compositions here.


Coming soon: a trip to D-22.

Guaranteed to Play to a Packed House at Humboldt State