Last Friday night, the Radar found ourselves at the most significant event in what is turning out to be a renaissance period for a city that has long been ridiculed as Beijing’s ugly musical sister. We’re not going to review the night, per se, rather discuss some talking points and the relevance of what transpired that night. If you’d like to read an actual review of the bands, along with bits and pieces of the inside track, read Andy Best’s post here.
The last 12 months have seen significant traction in live music in Shanghai. Live venues are finally getting some decent numbers to shows and as a result, everyone involved is making a little bit more money. The incentives to be in a band, to run a venue and, as Friday night showed, to run a label, are all so much more than they were just a year ago. Indie Top is an album released by Soma Records (the biggest and most significant independent label in Shanghai) and features many of the artists that played the showcase. Recently, Soma has been recruiting all of Shanghai’s top talent, and this showcase was designed as a shop window. It was a slick, professional operation with good branding, CD sellers, posters adorning the venue and even punchy, customised i-dents between bands, making sure everyone knew they were at the Indie Top showcase.
Suspicions set in for this lowly blogger, however in the lift to the fourth floor of the New Factories, where Shanghai’s biggest live music venue, the Dream Factory, resides. On my right was a poster of ex-punkers Little Nature (小自然 ), all with tops off, the drummer with drumsticks provocatively protruding from his tight, tight leathers trousers. So as not to gawk, I turned around to have my vision filled by Crazy Mushroom, Shanghai’s only real nu-metal band. But wait, were we actually seeing a new Asian Spandau Ballet, all suit jackets over naked torso and dyed, coiffed bouffant…
18 months ago, the Radar was asked to judge a local band competition. Over 30 bands played 1-3 songs each in the now sadly defunkt 4Live venue. As with most of these things, the majority of the bands were out of their depth in front of 400+ people on a large (ish) stage. Towards the end of this music marathon, just when the Radar was close to despair, a band took the stage that finally looked like a band. With the stage presence of a band 20x bigger, the then monikered Crazy Mushroom Brigade tore a gaping hole in the consciousness of the thinned out ranks. Sounding a bit like Limp Bizkit when their sound was credible and their singer un-Britneyed. And so it was that Crazy Mushroom gained a presence and reputation unheard of in a city that has never been famous for indie bands.
So what happened? All of the bands at Indie Top had been neutered, popified, sanitised. The rough edges had been smoothed, extra musicians added for a fuller, more “satisfactory” sound. Happy Strings had been told to change their name to Moma, and told to sing like the Pipettes. And the result?
To be completely honest, we don’t know if this is a good or a bad thing for the bands, vis-a-vis Shanghai’s (and vicariously China’s) music market. It’s certainly a bad thing for us, as bands with genuine identity and character, their own styles and fan bases have been morphed into homogenous, upbeat, super-saccharine blobs. Of course, this sits better with the stream of identikit music that resonates from every car radio, every supermarket speaker, every TV set, and should prove easier to sell CDs, to tour and ultimately to make money. But what about the future? There is a time coming in the not-too-distant future where there will be variety in Chinese music, where kids brought up by the internet will demand originality and expression in bands. The sad thing is that the “Indie-Topping” of Shanghai’s best bands has put this time back by a year or two and has perhaps consigned these particular bands to a burning pyre of mediocrity.