No, this isn’t a complaint about living in Shanghai or China, but rather – CONCERT! Yes, New York indie-pop-shoegaze band The Pains of Being Pure of Heart came through Shanghai as a preview of this year’s Jue! Festival and played in Shanghai at Mao Livehouse

The opening band was one of my favorite Shanghai bands – Boys Climbing Ropes, whom I’ve written about many times on here. They played a lot of new tunes which hopefully means a new album sometime soon. I didn’t recognize any of their songs except for “Socially Awkward” – so completely new material – at least to me.

Xiao Punk and Jordan

Then it was time for Pains of Being Pure of Heart. Reading a lot of the online chatter, a lot of people were mentioning “My Bloody Valentine” or shoegaze/noise-pop. But me, I hear a lot of Velocity Girl in their music.

Set-list

It reads:
This Love is Fucking Right
Belong
Higher Than the Stars
The Tenure Itch
//////////////////////////
Heart in Your Heartbreak
Say No to Love
Falling Over
//////////////////////////
Come Saturday
Young Adult Fiction
A Teenager in Love
//////////////////////////
Heaven’s Gonna Happen Now
The Pains of Being Pure At Heart
================================
Contender
My Terrible Friend
Everything With You
Strange

Not really too much to say about the show – Pains were really great to see live. And up close. and for relatively cheap (120 RMB for pre-sale tickets – that’s like $18). One funny note was that Chinese American Peggy Wang, the keyboardist, got on the mic to greet the crowd in Chinese. She said “I’m happy to come to Shanghai. This is my first time. My Mandarin is really bad, I’ve been in the US too long” – her accent wasn’t great, but it was perfectly understandable.

Pains Rocking Shanghai

Great crowd

Next up will be Death Cab for Cutie, also here for the Jue Festival, on Friday!

So the venue was Mao Livehouse – which was nice and convenient.

More after the jump

Nouvelle Vague was excellent. They had two dueling lead singers (apparently they have a rotation) – and they covered excellent tunes, including songs from The Clash (Guns of Brixton), Dead Kennedys (Too Drunk to), The Violent Femmes (Blister in the Sun), The Sex Pistols (God Save the Queen), New Order (Blue Monday), Blondie (Rapture) and some other French and Spanish new wave stuff. They didn’t just cover the tunes, they put their own spin on each – a breathy, bossa nova or downbeat spin – and the lead singers with so much stage presence. I would gladly gladly have paid just to see them – or to see them headline a show.

Someone has already put up a number of Nouvelle Vague tracks from the show on tudou.

Here’s them performing Depeche Mode’s ‘Master and Servant’

New Order ‘Blue Monday’

However – American rock band Eels were the headliner and who a lot of people came to see (I say this because apparently a lot of Europeans – especially French) came to see Nouvelle Vague.

And then about 3 minutes after Nouvelle Vague left the stage – they flashed THIS message up on the screen. Yep – Eels wouldn’t be on until MIDNIGHT.

This being a school night, I went to bed. When I woke up I saw this text:

Waited until 12:30 then they cancelled the show. But got money back

Yeah, good call on going home at 11am. This morning, in my email, I got this:

Firstly, please accept our sincere apologies for the cancellation of the Eels concert at Mao Livehouse.
The official line is that the equipment didn’t arrive in time and the band was unable to play… although we suppose you already know that.

Ticket refunds were being offered at the venue on the night of the show, but if you didn’t manage to get your refund, we’d like to rectify that and offer you your money back along with the aforementioned apologies.

So thanks Smart Shanghai! And thanks Nouvelle Vague – you guys were awesome.

Almost immediately after getting there I run into Jenn and we make our way into the new space. I do like it a lot more than the old Mao, especially since it’s a 15 RMB cab ride, instead of 40, but it also seems a lot more cozy but the sound system and A/V technology is all carried over from the old place.

I know that opinions on the China English blogosphere are fairly mixed about QSBS, but the great rhythm section, the electronic backing and Fu Han’s amazing stage presence made for an especially rocking show. The crowd was REALLY into it – lots of jumping and dancing, stage diving and a lot more energetic than I’ve seen at most Chinese rock shows. A lot of people were really excited to see Queen Sea Big Shark and it showed.

Here’s some photos from that night – I am really thinking about that Micro 4/3rds since with my wide angle Ricoh, I couldn’t get close enough to catch some Fu Han action (she’s amazing on stage).

Here’s video from the Wuhan Stop of this tour (for their new album ‘Waves’)

On Saturday March 12, Usher Raymond IV performed at Shanghai’s Mercedes Benz Arena. Best known for his R&B hits such as You Make Me Wanna, Caught Up, Confessions Part II, DJ Got Us Falling Love and the title of his world tour, OMG. I’m not a huge Usher fan, but I know the big hits and I had actually seen him at the Toyota Center in Houston, Texas about 6 years ago and he put on a great show (helped by openers John Legend and Kanye West).

This time was no different as he interacted with the crowd, danced up a storm, performed his hits as well as his less-well-known songs. The man puts on a fantastic show – and had most of the women in the arena ready to rush the stage.

@ Mercedes Benz Arena by [Terence], on Flickr”>@ Mercedes Benz Arena” />

Usher has this thing, that I assume he does every show, where he picks a woman out of the audience to serenade her. This show’s woman was pretty game, wiping him down with his towel and going in for a couple of kisses (on the cheek).

As for the arena – it was great. Maybe that’s only in comparison to other Chinese arenas, but they had plentiful food choices, the sightlines were good, the seats were good – the only thing I would say that could be improved would be transport in and out – maybe a subway entrance closer to the arena itself. Pro tip: when coming over from Puxi in a cab, don’t take the Xizang Lu tunnel – because the traffic coming south on Pudong Nan Lu will kill you (especially when around Hongshan Lu where it starts to mix with all of the tourist traffic at the China Pavilion); if you take the Lupu Bridge and come UP Pudong Nan Lu, direct to Exposition Boulevard (Shibo da dao) that will lead you right up to the arena with no problems.

A couple of weeks ago, the greatest current living cellist Yo Yo Ma was here in Shanghai. Tickets were pretty expensive but I figured how many opportunities do you really have to see someone who is the best in the world at their particular craft?

I don’t know much about classical music, despite having played the piano for 4 years as a youth – but . . .oh heck. here’s some photos.

The Shanghai Grand Theater where the performance took place:

The ushers had a great way of shooting lasers at cameras to get people to stop taking photos – I took this during warm-ups.

But then, there’s other bands that are somewhat embarrassing to enjoy. Me, I like Panic at the Disco. A Las Vegas based emo band, whose fans tend to be teenage girls and guys who wear black eye-liner. Even with their overly pretentious song titles (a sampling: I write sins, not tragedies; The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide Is Press Coverage) they write decent, pop-punk stuff. Dancable in the way that Franz Ferdinand is dancable.

Anyways, they came through Shanghai and I went to see them play. They were quite good, except for the annoy crowd members (they were given a huge glass of Jaeger and this really annoying guy kept yelling at them to chug it). I wouldn’t really go out of my way to see Panic – but since they were down at Mao Livehouse and it was a Friday night, they put on a pretty good concert. As much as I like watching local DIY Chinese bands, it is fun to see a professional band who has played in front of huge crowds put on a tight concert.

The rest of the set is here.

so when i heard that the usa pavilion was inviting them to play a concert at the shanghai world expo, i jumped at the chance to go. heading down there with my college friend abbie, we got to expo gate #2 at 8:15pm intending to purchase an evening ticket. well, the ticket office was closed and the people there said there was no way to buy a ticket for the evening. “sold out” they said – the only way might be to buy through conveinence stores.

“so where are the cloest convienence stores?”

this was answered with a shrug. well, i had a wild-card and was able finagle two emergency tickets (thanks mla!) but there were at least 20-30 other visitors there specifically for the concert. expo organizers need to plan for this eventuality – and also, if you’re only going for an event, be sure to buy your ticket early! ticket offices close at 8pm!

well, after 20 minutes of arguing at the gate, we finally show up to see ozo. even with the rain, and the crappy sound (in the back it was fine, but when we made our way up front, the vocals were turned way down) – they were amazing. i’ve never seen a band connect with a crowd of non-fan chinese people so well. they played with so much energy, that guys in bad suits and aunties and young people were all up and dancing around. it was so fun. sure i’ve seen great crowd reactions from chinese crowds at shows like linkin park or any of the punk shows i’ve been to, but ozo completely won over an audience that i’m going to presume 95% had never heard them or of them before.

this from a show ozo did the following night (looks like mao shanghai to me) but you can feel the energy in the band.

because of the largesse of some friends working at the usa pavilion at the shanghai world expo, we were treated to 4th rows seats to see jazz legends dee dee bridgewater and HERBIE HANCOCK play at the expo performing arts stage last friday, not only that, but it was free. FREE!

suffice to say, sharing a small, intimate concert venue with such esteemed -jazz- musical legends is beyond my ability to translate onto a blog post, but it was truly a special evening.

See the rest of my photos here

the second band, though, well, it was boys climbing ropes. what can i say? i just really really like watching them in concert. they’re really just on point now. i brought a friend of mine from work to see them play last time and he mentioned just how good the drumming was – and its like they have all cylinders clicking now. i cannot recommend going to see them live in concert enough.

UNiXX was billed as an “angrier smashing pumpkins,” “the cure, but louder” or “hong kong’s darkest band” – all of which i am down with. and they seemed like really nice guys (they lent jordan a guitar when he broke a string in the middle of his set), very good musicians, but the end result was just stuff i wasn’t really into. sorry.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

friday night reviewed here my thoughts: xiao yoi (lead singer of pinkberry) was ill, and the crowd was clearly there for sonnet so they had trouble getting the crowd into it. candy shop had to do this terrible promotion for jaeger which killed any momentum they had. sonnet had some great danceable franz ferdinand-esque tracks which i really dug . . . a lot of experimentation with loops and dubs and electronic sounds from a sampler, which i did not dig. boys climbing ropes continue to rock and continue put on a great show. i am a huge fan.

saturday night photographed here by jenn wong and here by me. boys climbing ropes continue to rock and continue to put on a great show. i am a huge fan. st. vincent was fantastic – lots of experimental insturmentalation sounds combined with a beautiful voice.