With little prior warning, and a carefully constructed back-story to
regurgitate if I get questioned by the police about being a journalist,
I've been packed off to China to join a group of Chinese bands on the
road. Starting with post-punk foursome P.K.14 and the female-fronted dance-punk group Queen Sea Big Shark
in Beijing, we're touring Nanjing, Hangzhou, Changsha, Wuhan and Xi'an
by bus, with a local band from each city supporting the two headline
acts on each night.
Converse are funding the whole thing,
and though a corporate-sponsored music tour might not sound that
radical, it's easy to forget that rock music in China has only existed
since the mid-'80s, and there are just two proper indie labels in its
supposed "capital of rock", Beijing. Tours here generally mean broken
equipment and untrained sound men, and P.K.14 tell me they would never
be able to sound as good outside of Beijing if it weren't for Converse
providing the gear and technicians, so all of the bands seem genuinely
grateful to be a part of it.
We flew into Beijing from London, and one night of drinking there
tired us all out enough for our 18-hour overnight bus trip, part of
which we spent reversing back past two turnings on the hard shoulder in
the pitch black. In Nanjing, Dazed photographer Ellis and I spent the
daytime accompanying Queen Sea Big Shark to Xuanwu Park. We clutched
onto our bags of seed as we entered a bird "sanctuary" that more
closely resembled a torture chamber, with beady-eyed storks and shabby
emus on the loose, viciously grabbing whole bags of food from our
hands. One member of staff calmed us down by informing us that a stork
can drill a hole in your hand with one stab of its beak.
The first gig in Nanjing last night was a strange experience,
enjoyed after a relaxed dinner served in a restaurant where several of
the waiters wore white masks. Without wanting to sound completely
politically incorrect at this point, I just remembered a conversation
with Raph Cooper in Beijing – he's the half-Chinese, half-American
founder of Society Skateboards – who sincerely believed that SARS was
something made up by the American government to distract people from
the war. I'm all for conspiracy theories.
At around 8pm the
locals crowded into the Nanjing venue, forming a respectful empty
semi-circle in front of the stage. Despite arriving 45 minutes earlier
than the first band, they faced the stage with such eager expressions
that I felt like I should be paying more attention to the mic stand.
When local psychobilly-punk gods Angry Jerks
came on, the semi-circle was soon trampled on by several hundred feet,
as a rock fist army packed in to form a moshpit. I've been told that at
a Ministry of Sound event in China in the '90s, guards stood at the
side of the dance floor and used batons to hit anyone who dared to
dance. In 2008, we saw not only stage-diving but a tattooed skinhead
bruising anyone who crossed his path.
The venue was packed out
for this and the next band, Queen Sea Big Shark, whose frontwoman just
declared "No" when I told her that she reminded Ellis and me of Karen
O. When it came to the amazing P.K.14, an altogether darker and more
serious band who don't attempt to incorporate English lyrics into their
songs, the crowd had thinned out slightly. Perhaps their local DIY band
was the real draw for the ones that dropped off. Fair enough - the
Angry Jerks did have a double bassist who teaches opera singing in her
spare time and who once graffiti'd a government building, but why would
you leave a gig before the headliners had finished? It was a Thursday,
I suppose.
Click
here for more about the Converse LoveNoise China
Tour.
