Hello Beijing Cream readers. My name is Morgan and I work at this other website called Smart Beijing, wherein we specialize in dirty deeds. Done. Dirt. Cheap. The Tao is outsourcing these Friday Musical Outros to me so he can concentrate on his true journalistic passion, which is fisting the Internet for human interests stories. Like this one! Delightful!
Anyways, time to celebrate, Beijing Creamsicles. St. Patrick’s Day is on Sunday, and there’s no better way to get prepped for it than cranking up the above viddy. What you’re watching up there is Wuhan heavyweights SMZB, bar room heroes every last one of them, kicking out one of their most famous jams, “Scream for Life,” to a hometown crowd at something called the Southlake Music Festival back in 2007. China punk watchers should need no introduction to this seminal street / celtic punk act, a hugely influential Chinese band that formed way back in 1996, and then went on to pretty much represent and exemplify the dominant strain of Racid-tinged Chinese punk throughout the ’00s and beyond.
This concert was done probably at the height of the band’s momentum — drummer Zhu Ning is there (she later left to join AV Okubo), they’ve just added bagpipes player Tang Leicheng to the lineup, and they’ve either just come back from or are about to embark on their second tour of Scandinavia. Spirits are high and it’s a big crowd.
You can tell they’re at the height of their powers because they’ve got pyro!
Pyro! That shit is dazzling!
SMZB has always been the meeting point for Chinese and Western watchers of Chinese underground music, as well as Chinese punks nationwide — they stand before it all and are almost single-handedly responsible for turning Wuhan into the second biggest rock city in China. (Singer Wu Wei is [was?] the owner of a dive bar / den of Zoe’s fuckery called Wuhan Prison… which is now called Folkhand, apparently? What?)
But to see them do “Scream for Life” in Wuhan at VOX – “Voice of Youth, Voice of Freedom,” you see — is a special thing indeed. A couple more shittier quality videos of SMZB doing this song to the hometown crowd are here and here. Good times.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day, everyone! Stay rad!
Morgan is the editor of Smart Beijing and fake DJs around town under the name “Compact Dicks.” Suggestions for Friday Music Send Outs and feedback to editor@smartbeijing.com.
