An excellent article by Shanghai scene stalwart Lisa Movius on the 0093 space, a cluster of rehearsal rooms that allow Shanghai’s young bands to get together and practice. All hail Lao Jiang for his ceaseless dedication.
Read more here.
[Sorry for nicking your images, Andy!]
That’s quite alright, mate
I was going to write up that article at my blog tonight too. But, well, I have been covering and plugging them for a year now and have been to every showcase too.
That’s are coming to it a bit late but Lisa writes the feature well and brings the material to a new audience. It’s all good.
Maybe I should tell the juicier parts, like when Jiang lost it at the YYT sound guys perceived bad attitude towards the young bands and when Tiantian confronted him about it (sound guy) they ended up throwing glass bottles at each other – with the glass from one almost reaching me.
It’s been a good year ..and you know ..”it’s been, emotional.”
I’ve been to a couple of the showcases. Would love to go down to 0093 sometime soon. Let me know when you are next going!
I’ll be popping by the latest YYT gig tomorrow (Friday night) from 9.30 ish and also heading to the studios soonish in search of Casino Demon’s new CD on Modern Sky.
Wang Tiantian answers all 0093 Douban group questions/posts same day, if not same minute.
We love you Lisa, you’re the kickass diva we all wish we are, yes, even the boys
Thanks, Louis. 不好意思! Andy, I agree and realize it’s rather late to the game, but we had to wait until the magazine had space for a bigger feature, not be on the heels of the SH article, and until there was something “newsy” to peg it to. That would be the compilation, which originally was supposed to come out Wednesday – not originally intended as a joke, but given rocker levels of organizations it rather turned into one. Now the underground-released album is due out in June (which probably means August).
We had to cut some interesting background material for space; and I’ll post the full draft online soon. One is that the space was originally opened by Wu Jun, who is rather a Shanghai rock legend by now. He and “Shanghai rock Godfather” Sun Mengjin in 1997 founded Godot, the city’s first punk band. Running until 2005, its rapidly revolving membership made it Shanghai’s “School of Rock” – so many of our top musicians had stints in Geduo. Wu, after handing 0093 over to Lao Jiang, opened a practice and recording studio on Wuxing Lu, which is smaller but a lot more professional than 0093, and the chart-hitting latest Honeys album, among others, was recorded there. Wu also was the organizer of the 1234 Beach Rock and RockIt! music festivals in ’06 and ’07, and for about 18 months organized the Sunday rock nights at Bonbon.
The 0093 compilation is intended as a tribute to the 2000 “Shanghai Underground” compilation album organized by Sun Mengjing and featuring trailblazing early Shanghai punk and metal bands like Prague Spring and Nutcracker (where Dingma’s Lu Chen first cut his teeth, and/or cracked his nuts). Back then ShRock was a bit dichotomized between the Punk and Pop Pies 派, but even entrenched as I was in the latter I recall what a splash the album made. Not many people remember those bands, or know how much they contributed to creating our current lushness, but I’m working on that.
> Pies 派
love it.
Hello there,
Just wondering if someone can e-mail me a list of cool venues (dive bar style) where the underground Shanghai music scene thrives. I will be out there from April 29th-May 10th working the Asian X-games and would love to see some good bands.
regards.
Jon, my quick answer (I also e-mailed you):
Yuyintang (Google it, “yuyintang shanghai”)
The Shelter (likewise)
Live Bar (ditto)
contact Andy Best at http://www.kungfuology.com/andybest/
contact Lisa Movius on Twitter, or Google her e-mail