A few weeks back, we bemoaned the loss of two major contributors to Beijing’s live music scene. One of the two, Matt Kagler, wrote an extended comment that was all at once controversial and heartfelt. As our Friday discussion topic, we thought we would drag it up and present it as a post on its own. Does Matt have a point, or are these comments sour grapes?
As much as I hate to say it, I completely lost interest in the Chinese scene and therefore bowed out. It wasn’t as much a monetary decision as much as it was as informed thing. I mean, Tag Team most certainly couldn’t keep up with the pocket books of Michael Pettis and Shen over at Modern, but we WERE trying to do things as “indie” as possible and that doesn’t fly in the land of Zippo Nights and Converse whatnots. We were uninterested in those kind of things per say and therefore threw the towel in. D-22/ Maybe Mars have done an excellent job in creating “community” and I have endless respect for people like Charles and Nevin, but every Chinese kid on the up-n-up now somehow associates … as that’s what Lou Reed did in the late 60′s. Frankly, none of that, coupled with the overt desire to “brand” with corporations, made any sense to me whatsoever, even though …, for that matter. Plus, heads getting big for absolutely no reason/bullshit hype generated on the parts of ALL OF US running indies who have connections abroad was and remain really, really ridiculous. No one actually writes about the MUSIC and there’s a reason for that! There are currently ZERO Chinese bands doing anything non-derivative other than Lonely China Day, Xiao Hu, the folks at Shanshui and a few others. Comment as you like, but it’s true. I LOVE CHINA and I love living here, but…let’s get real for a couple of minutes. Seriously people!
Anyway, am planning to post something, somewhere, in length about this but that’s enough “truth” for now.
We have unfortunately decided to censor this article due to some recent random testing of rock bands in Beijing and not wanting to draw excess attention to something that could have serious repercussions to the bands, venues and scene in general.