vrijdag 10 oktober 2008

Final gig in Shanghai








Off to Shanghai the next day. We're booked into the Live Bar, a small underground club that reminds Jasper of New York's Knitting Factory, with a crazy waitress called Tiny. Not much bigger than an average living room in Belgium, but the PA is okay and you feel this club is breathing out Music!

It's hot again in Shanghai and we play our 2 longest and sweatiest sets on the tour and have our friend Irina as a guest once more. Awesome final concert! Statistically, there is an overrepresentation of Belgian and beer drinking customers and Chinese harmonica players that night.

One more day left to visit the SWFC-observatory the next day, currently the highest building in the world, 492 meters. We stay on the highest floor during the twilight zone to see the lights of Shanghai being switched on and turn the city into an amazing postcard. Shanghai is such an impressive place. Last drinks in the Cotton Club, watching Sugarmama do her thing, do we really have to leave? Belgium is waiting, one long flight away...

Fuyang



After a shaky 12 hour trip on the night train with hardly no sleep, we arrive back in Hangzhou. You have to do this at least once in your life. The train is about 400 meters long and blows his hooter on every crossing. There are about 10 times 6 beds on every wagon. We met some cool people on the train, but in the morning we all felt like worn-out T-shirts in the bottom of a backpack. Pieter forgot his wallet on the train, but a few phonecalls later it has been found and will be delivered back to us in Shanghai without any losses.

In a van and a cab we take off to Fuyang. Only a small hour away from Hangzhou, we get the chance to see once more the nice mountains in the area. The club in Fuyang seems to be another trendy dance bar. The waiters are getting their instructions in pure army style. Only problem, they have only one karaoke microphone. We explain to them we cannot play without a PA, but they seem to have a different opinion. Finally we pull out an ultimatum for them and leave to visit the nice old town in a bike-cab. At 5PM we get the news that the mikes have arrived. Off to the soundcheck, but all mikes seem to be Yamaha karaoke mikes. We can't believe our eyes and ears. Our sound-engineer Pieter makes a confronting comparison between his own mike -made in Europe- and the club's mikes -made in China.

Because we are eager to play and don't want to cancel another gig, we decide to pull it off on this set. After a pumping techno dj-set, we start to play and the people seem to love it. There are moments we almost can't hear ourselves in the sheering of the young crowd. This might be how the Beatles must have felt themselves back in Hamburg. However, somehow it also feels a bit like a freakshow. Some of the people here obviously have never seen Westerners in real live before. Tomorrow is another day. 

woensdag 1 oktober 2008

Changsha concert 2 & 3








Our second concert in Changsha felt a little bit like a fairytale. The Chinese can be very inventive with special effects. Apart from noisy smoke machines, there were guns with soap bells, floating flowers and off course, fireworks around Tony's drums. We got the crowd to stand up, sing along and dance around us while we were playing. The Chinese band that played before us, asked us how we did it? Don't know how, Steven just asked it with his four words of Chinese and they went for it all the way.

After we heard the sad news that Marc Moulin has left us, we played a little tribute to him last night at our last concert in Changsha. His work with Placebo and Telex has been inspiring us as a band. We've even once asked him to produce our record but unfortunately agenda's didn't fit. After he heard our version of Moskow Diskow, he sent us an Email saying he was delighted by the arrangement. Hope he is jamming along with his heroes right now!

Once more, we were offered a three month tour in China, they keep on saying we're their number one band;-) They don't mean next year, they talk about right now. We'll see what happens...

See new pictures on picassa!

dinsdag 30 september 2008

September 27-29 - Changsha

Sunday morning, everybody was getting ready to play in Max Club in Hangzhou. With or without a baritone saxophone or double bass. According to our schedule we had to be there at 2 PM. Meeting in the hotel lobby at 1:30 PM. All packed and ready we called our agent to say we were about to leave. "It's too early, make it 4 PM". Okay, no problem. We can wait a little longer. Around 3:30 PM we got a text message saying we couldn't do a thing in Max Club before 5:30 PM. They would call us before that time with more information. Then the final phonecall... The owner of Max Club didn't have the permission to have a foreign band playing in his club during the national week of China. We could hardly believe this was the real reason, but fact is we didn't play that night. Another day off... The best way to forget this day was a good meal and a delighting massage.

The morning after a bus was waiting for us at the hotel to bring us to the airport. A domestic flight took us to Changsha, about 1000 kilometers from Hangzhou. No time for check-in at the hotel we were immediately dropped off at the festival. This 'festival' seemed to be the official opening of a drive-in cinema. The organiser proudly showed us the baritone saxophone. Once again, it seemed to be an alto saxophone... Grrr. And a double bass wasn't even mentioned anymore. Whatever, we came all this way to play. And so we did. It wasn't as comfortable as any other gig we ever had before, but we did what we could and the crowd seemed to like it. Before us a Chinese rockband from Beijing was playing. And yet another surprise... A Ukrainian jazz singer had to play as well. She was told that The Rhythm Junks could accompany her so she didn't have to bring her band. Only we didn't know about that... But we were so kind not to argue about it. So we played three songs with her before we started our own set. It was a day full of surprises, but the most important is that we performed once again.

zondag 28 september 2008

Pictures online

We collected some pictures here:


We update them on regular base.

Enjoy them!

zaterdag 27 september 2008

September 22-26 - Hangzhou

After a whole week off in Hangzhou everyone is getting very eager to play. But still, it's great to visit Hangzhou, eat all day long, have footmassages every day, etc...

Tomorrow we're playing in the Max Club, a very fancy bar where all the cool cats of Hangzhou meet up. Hopefully we will be cool enough for them... I guess we will blow them away with something they never heard before. Right now we are still looking for the right backline for tomorrow. Our booking agency took us to a local music store some days ago, but they only seemed to have traditional Chinese instruments. A baritone saxophone? "Doesn't exist in China." A double bass with a pickup? "Never seen it before." After some arguing, the manager of the music store invited Steven, Pieter and Jasper for lunch. We thought we would try to find a solution, but he just ignored the problem. His way of solving this was quite funny. He wanted to get us drunk by making us drink loads of beer bottoms up. As most Chinese beer only has 2% alcohol, we were quite confident he would collapse first. And so he did... But still no backline. Right now Pieter aka 'The Fixer' is looking for a solution.



maandag 22 september 2008

September 21 - Hangzhou

Early wake-up call from the lobby. "There is a tourbus waiting outside of the hotel and there is no space to park it". Getting packed up in a hurry, our tour really starts from here! Three hours of bumpy roads and incredible sights (the slums of Shanghai, the country side with rice fields, inventive architecture, ...) took us to Hangzhou. This is considered to be a small city, only 2 million citizens.

Taking a cab is a real adventure here. It somehow feels like a computer game where the driver wants to hit as many pedestrians as possible. In China the survival of the fittest still counts. We still have to find our first cab where none of the warning lights is flashing.

September 20 - Shanghai - first concert

After a good rest we were ready to play our first gig. At first it was very stressy, because the soundcheck was a complete disaster. Normally it was planned around noon, but it kept being postponed. In the meantime clouds packed up above our heads. After a while rain started pouring down, even on stage and in the mixing desk. Wind blew away the back of the stage. The rain was so intense we had to find shelter in a local bar. Suddenly we weren't sure anymore if we would actually be able to perform... Still, the audience didn't care at all. They just kept waiting for the first band to begin, covered up in plastic coats.

After a long delay we got the message that the festival had begun. Finally we went on stage and from the first notes and Steven's attempt to introduce the band in Chinese the crowd went wild. Goosebumps all over... We expected a rather reserved audience, but instead we got thousands of enthousiastic hands in the air making us feel like real popstars. Even though the people never heard our music before, they tried to sing along 'Panamajumbo' and 'Join The Bus'.

We spotted some Belgian faces in the crowd. "Buzze geve!" sounded a bit unexpected in Shanghai. After the show we met some of them. Tom Vandeweghe (VRT) explained us that this kind of response was not typical for a Chinese crowd. We kept on selling and signing CD's until they were sold out...

After the show Jan Vandenbergh, who sponsored part of our trip, took us to a very nice traditional restaurant. He wrote about us on his blog: http://tijdblogs.typepad.com/expatscorner/2008/09/the-belgische-r.html

During the afterparty in the JZ Club some of us joined a jam session with the musicians of Incognito. Many Tsing Tao's (local beer) later we went back to the hotel.

September 19 - Shanghai

All still in a haze because of a lack of sleep and a jetlag we arrived in the exit hall of Shanghai Pudong Airport. A friendly English-speaking young man was waiting for us with a mini-van. Just enough space for seven musicians and gear. Our first impression? Hot and sweaty! The air seems to weigh on our skin. A different heat than what we are used to.

We drove about an hour to get into the center of Shanghai. What a sight! Never seen such an impressive skyline... And you can't even see half of it because of the smog. It's true what they say about China. It's hot, but you won't see the sun. It's always hidden behind a veil of fog.

We were dropped off at Bailemen Hotel. Just about time to get lunch. In a fancy Balinese restaurant located in the park where we would be playing the day after, we were introduced to a number of dishes, most of them unknown to us.

In the park we met Mark, our contact from the festival. He gave us a warm welcome and a great tip for a superb local restaurant close to the JZ Club, called Charmant. Jellyfish, starfish, packshoy with red peppers, salted shrimps and Peter's gigantic milk ice dessert with peanuts...

Before going to sleep we checked out the atmosphere of the festival. We had a short meeting with Gilles Peterson and gave him our CD's. Due to Steven's looks he asked if we were a rockabilly band... Hopefully he listens to it and figures out himself that we're not.

zondag 21 september 2008

September 18 - take off

Thursday around noon we all met at Brussels Airport. All packed and ready to go. None of the problems we had foreseen for checking in occured. We were allowed to take all our instruments as handluggage and the few kilos that exceeded the limits were for free.

After a short flight to Frankfurt we had a connection to Shanghai. Ten hours on the plane were enough to practice our Chinese. Around 3 AM Brussels time we arrived at Shanghai Pudong Airport. The day already started, since we skipped forward 6 hours. We got there without any problems, didn't we? Just one little problem we had to solve. Chinese customs wanted Steven to declare all his harmonica's and pay import taxes for them. It took him over half an hour to explain that he needed them all to play. After a long discussion Steven's boyish charm and a Rhythm Junks album did the trick.

woensdag 17 september 2008

Chinese for dummies

Today Steven and Jasper followed a speed course Chinese (Mandarin) in Ghent. It was more like a singing course with all these different intonations... It all sounds quite similar, but raising your voice or lowering it can result in a totally different meaning. I guess we'll have to practice on the plane. Steven learned some basic words and sentences to adress the audience during our gigs. That might be useful to break the ice.

Tomorrow we're off... We'd better eat some good ol' Belgian food like stoemp or Brussels sprouts for the last time in three weeks. After tomorrow it will be all dogmeat and fried scorpions and snake-sate. Yummie!

dinsdag 16 september 2008

The final countdown

5, 4, 3, 2,... In two days we'll be heading for Shanghai! Despite all our communication struggle with the Chinese people we managed to arrange everything. You can't imagine what a relief it is.

Passports? Check! Visa? Check! Approvals from the Chinese government? Check! Clean underwear? Euhm... We still have to pack our luggage. And we can always buy some 'made in China'. Chique et pas cher...

Anyway, every now and then we will try to post our adventures on this blog. If we can find computers that speak other languages than Mandarin...