Tag Archives: Carsick Cars

SF Music Matters Asia

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This just in – Music Matters Asia expands to San Francisco this year with performances by leading indie rock outfits from around East Asia. A preview weekend event for CAAMFest (formerly the San Francisco International Asian-American Film Festival), the event teams up Music Matters with leading promoters Maybe Mars (China), DFSB Kollective (Korea) and The Wall (Taiwan) along with Singapore’s Viki.com to bring familiar acts such as Carsick Cars, The Gar and WHITE+ to play in San Francisco March 7-8.

Check out the poster for a full lineup and find out more about the event here. After a tour by Re-TROS and New Pants at the Creators Project San Francisco, the West Coast of the US is getting more and more popular with touring Chinese indie bands. Though your Radar correspondent is an unrepentant East Coaster, it’s great to see areas of North America outside of New York and Austin, TX (SXSW) on more tour itineraries.

Punk Eek in Wuhan

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As Beijing bans toy airplanes and pigeons from its skies, knives from the store shelves and removes all the handles to roll down rear windows in taxicabs, things are a bit more relaxed elsewhere in China. Over the weekend, we saw photos of Kikuyu playing in the courtyard of a wine shop in Shanghai while intrigued punters looked on.

And tomorrow in Wuhan, an even bigger performance will happen in one of the city’s outdoor squares. Called Punk Eek in English and 蹦移 in Chinese, the free outdoor concert features sets from Maybe Mars stalwarts Mr. Graceless, Carsick Cars, and hometown heroes AV Okubo. We’re still squinting at the poster and looking for those pesky sponsor logos but it seems like the entire operation was put together by a Microneme, multi-purpose cultural space in Wuhan in collaboration with Chutian College at Huazhong Agricultural University.

So if you happen to be in Wuhan tomorrow night, this kind of looks like the place to be. Trust us, at Radar HQ in Beijing, we’re jealous.

5 Years of Maybe Mars: Independent China In Stereo

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Words + Photos: Ami Li

There isn’t much that hasn’t already been written about Maybe Mars. China’s first record label focusing exclusively on young Chinese bands, the 1-2 punch with D-22, pillar of the still-young industry here. With offshoots Maybe Noise and Maybe Folk, the label has expanded beyond its original expertise of indie rock to acclaimed artists including Xiao He, Low Wormwood and WHITE+. This summer, Maybe Mars has been touring it’s artists all over China in celebration of their 5th anniversary. On September 1st, they had their triumphant homecoming bash at Beijing’s Yugong Yishan. The Radar was there to congratulate Maybe Mars and pour a little out for the next 5 years.

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Same Time, Same Place: Strawberry Festival 2012 in review

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Words + Photos: Ami Li

Hilarious: note the huangniu ticket seller in the foreground

Your faithful Radar correspondents repeated a May holiday weekend ritual once again in 2012 by going to Modern Sky’s Strawberry Festival in Beijing. The overarching feeling of the whole weekend was repetition: same routes, same festivals, same artists. Same sponsors, even.

Located at Tongzhou Canal Park (despite our claims to the contrary – sorry again) eight stages vied for sound supremacy over the park grounds. New this year was the A Cappella stage, where co-ed voices blended mellifluously over new classics including “Dancing Queen” and “I’ll Be There For You” while the mysterious Chǎ stage played host to only 4 acts per day, including the ever-popular MC Stone (石头). Headliners for the main Strawberry Stage included Blonde Redhead, Queen Sea Big Shark and Xie Tianxiao, whereas other foreign acts invited included Laura Jansen, Jeans Team, Pitchtuner, The On Fires and Tahiti 80. Other festival favorites such as New Pants, Hanggai, Convenience Store, Carsick Cars and Hedgehog rounded out the lineup. Metal stalwarts Voodoo Kungfu, Army of Jade Kirin, Twisted Machine and Liquid Oxygen Can kept the Overdrive Stage rocking all weekend long and young blood in the form of Wanderlust, CAssette, Steely Heart held it down in the early afternoon slots.

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Duck Fight Goose at SxSW

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So, there were lots of Chinese bands at SxSW last week. Most seemed to think it somewhat of a pain

PANGBIANR:

In general the festival was a shitshow, such a grind, more work than passion. The more successful American bands sit smug on their rotting thrones while we just keep our noses to the grindstone and do what we do.

BRAD FERGUSON (harder to pick up, but self deprecating in the extreme)

[DAY2] Reactions were good from the few people who showed up for our set — mostly other bands who would play later in the day… [DAY4] The stage was set up in the parking lot, and there were only a couple of people there, but the band played well and we had a nice mid-afternoon lunch…

Still, Josh from Pangbianr has subsequently said that there were some good potential opportunities that might come out of it for the Chinese bands, but it definitely rings true with most of the things we’ve read about this year’s Sx. Overbranded, overdone and overpriced.

If you have access to Youtube, here is a video of one of DFG’s showcases. Enjoy:

China’s SxSW takeover

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After a couple of reasonably low key incursions in 2010 and 2011, China is going balls to the wall for SxSW 2012. Re-TROS, Carsick Cars, Snapline, Rustic, Duck Fight Goose, Deadly Cradle Death and Soviet Pop are repping from a musical perspective, while newly launched Chinese Music Video platform Caoker are hosting a party. Finally, some of the great and good of China’s music scene are paneling it up: they will cover the fantastical topic of “Why the Global Music Industry Needs China”

Pangbianr has a great synopsis of everything. Find it HERE.

BE BOLD: Carsick Cars x Nescafe (活出敢性)

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November 15th saw the launch of another collaboration between Chinese record label Maybe Mars’ indie rock darlings Carsick Cars and provider of instant coffee to the masses, Nescafe.

Using the slogan “Be Bold,” Nescafe enlisted 5 celebrity spokespersons from across China to unveil their latest China campaign: “Be Bold.” At the press conference, held at Shanghai’s 1933, a former abbatoir-turned-cultural space in the historic Hongkou district, Nestlé China tapped Beijing band Carsick Cars to perform for the assembled crowds. Part of the new campaign, the band performed two songs before ceding the stage to the other stars of the campaign, including Chinese racecar driver, author, and heartthrob Han Han. Star of the TV campaign, Han Han was also the star of the afternoon, with the majority of media attendees flocking to him for interviews once the press conference was over.

 

Carsick Cars’ last prominent venture into the mainstream was at a Coca-Cola sponsored event nearly two years ago. This time, they seemed like an afterthought to the main event. Maybe they were part of the package deal with Michael Pettis, founder of their record label Maybe Mars, owner of iconic Beijing venue D-22 and another one of Nestle’s spokespersons. Although their music fits into the brand’s charge to “Be Bold,” the band’s performance seemed tacked-on to both the press conference and the campaign itself. Their music is not part of the commercial starring Han Han and the band itself is not among the celebrity spokespeople tapped by Nestlé.

One of the biggest bands to come out of China’s indie music scene, Carsick Cars has toured extensively in the US, Europe, and Australia. They have a massive following amongst those “within the scene” but have yet to see that critical and niche respect translate into sizable mainstream success. The band’s lukewarm showing at the Nestlé presser tells us that the perfect collaboration between this band and appropriate brand has yet to materialize.

On another note, is anyone else bored of Han Han? What is it with agencies inability to look beyond what everyone else is doing? HanHan is the Wang LeeHom of bloggers and Carsick Cars might be becoming the Wang LeeHom of indie bands…..

China Music coming of age

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It’s our 4th birthday.  4 years ago today, we wrote a somewhat snippy review of the first stadium show by a Western rock band in China. You can read again here Linkin Park at Hongkou Stadium in 2007. With age and maturity (!!) we understand better the difficulty of such a feat and also the significance of the show. It is only when such milestones are passed that they become standards from which we can move forward.

Uprooted Sunshine Shanghai, 6th Birthday

And while November marks four years of the Radar observing the huge growth and progress that has been made in China’s still nascent music scene, there are some other much more significant birthday celebrations this month and next that highlight the fact that China is beginning to see some experience added to the enthusiasm that has got us this far.

On Friday, we were down in Shanghai venerable old bomb Shelter celebrating 6 years of Uprooted Sunshine. China’s premiere roots and reggae outfit have been refuting the somewhat crazy notion that reggae belongs in China: the crowd at Vibronics, while still nominally expat had a more than healthy section of roots-loving Chinese fans. ChaCha, the main MC for Uprooted was performing a farewell show before heading off to Europe having been selected for this year’s Red Bull Academy. She will play at selected European festivals after the RBMA. This is all at Shelter, which of course is celebrating it’s 4th year in business at the end of the month. Lots of wonderful achievements wrapped into a tight little ball.

All the while, we’ve been following Carsick Cars as they seem to be raging through Australia on tour, and Hedgehog added to their US fanbase on their 3rd tour of the country in October. At the same time, we are over the moon to see Hanggai high up the bill on a mainstream Australian festival that we are planning to go to at Christmas.

Hedgehog Beijing band in New York with Xiu Xiu

Carsick Cars, Australian tour

Back to the birthdays for a second: our sister company Split Works is celebrating 5 years in the promotions business in China. a few hundred shows all over China and SE Asia, the JUE Festival, the Black Rabbit Festival, Wooozy and lots more. There will be 5 shows in 5 days for 5 years, featuring artists old and new: Trippple Nippples, the Iron Mic 2011 MC competition, Chad Valley, X is Y, Jay.Soul, Hamacide and Eat Alien Brain, a trancecore outfit from Chengdu….

Split Works 5 Years Old

Shameless self promotion aside, it is for definite exciting times for China’s underground music scene. Lots of festivals, lots of live houses, a few new labels: welcome to a brave new world of Chinese Music!

 

Josh Feola of Pangbianr talks to Wooozy

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Last month, our sister site Wooozy (purveyor of all that is interesting and indie in music in Chinese) conducted and subsequently published this interview with Josh Feola of Beijing based blog Pangbianr (which is also a purveyor of all that is interesting and indie in music in both Chinese and English). They kindly allowed us to reprint – here is part 1.

Pangbianr talks to Wooozy Wooozy Speaks to Pangbianr

SXSW last month, you were on the SXSW tour with Carsick Cars as tour manager. Have you been to such big festivals before?

Just to clarify, I wasn’t exactly Carsick Cars’s tour manager. Their trip was sponsored by Converse and they were also supported by their label, Maybe Mars. Since I’m from Texas and I “grew up” in the independent music scene in San Antonio and Austin, I know a lot of people who organize more underground, independent shows during South by Southwest. I also knew Carsick Cars from living in Beijing and running pangbianr. So it was a good opportunity to help out the band by booking some more local shows for them during their trip to Austin. In general I don’t really like big music festivals, but South by Southwest is different. It’s like a music festival spread out across dozens of venues every day for almost a full week. I went to SXSW a few times while in high school but mostly just to see my friends’ bands and more off-the-radar shows at houses and small bars that the majority of fest-goers wouldn’t ever hear of.

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