This is first-class: on a plane stuck on the Beijing airport tarmac for three hours yesterday, a quartet of musicians from the Philadelphia Orchestras took out their instruments, gathered in the aisle, and serenaded passengers. The music starts at the 1:11 mark in the above. ...

You may have already heard, but after several false starts -- years of teasing -- Metallica is finally, actually coming to China. As the band announced yesterday on its website: It is so rare for us to be able to say that we are visiting a country for the very first time, so this is an extra special announcement for us. After over 31 years of traveling to almost all corners of the world for so many amazing, ...

We know laowai song-and-dance videos are passe -- thanks, Jesse Appel, et al. -- but the effort in this latest one is simply too rich to ignore. Matt Sheehan -- who you recognize around these parts as the China Eastern airport rumble writer -- teamed up with his friend Matt Allen to write, direct, shoot, and produce "We Livin in Xi'an," and the result is a perfectly outlandlish little paean to the capital o ...

By now, you’re probably familiar with Ai Weiwei’s “Dumbass," the Beijing-born artist-cum-activist’s widely-publicized collaborative heavy metal music video with Zuoxiao Zuzhou that was unveiled last week to promote the pair’s upcoming full-length effort, The Divine Comedy. Directed by well-known Australian cinematographer Christopher Doyle -- you may recognize his work with Zhang Yimou and Wong Kar-Wai -- t ...

Ai Weiwei's 81 days in detention in 2011 is the inspiration for his latest work, "Dumbass," a song he wrote with music by rocker/artist Zuoxiao Zuzhou. The accompanying video was released minutes ago, in which he recreates scenes from his imprisonment. "He also portrays fantasies he imagines flitting through the guards’ minds," reports the NY Times. The cinematography is by Christopher Doyle, who has worked ...

Jonathan Alpart, who legitimately cares about Chinese music for Chinese music's sake, is the one-man driving force behind The Sound Stage, a bilingual show that spotlights local bands you might also care about. This week, he profiles Second Hand Rose, a musical favorite that's been around for 13 years and counting. "No other group blends Chinese elements and sounds with rock and roll music so seamlessly," A ...

Last week I got an invite to roll with some musician buddies up at Midi Festival and decided it’d be a great opportunity to grab a camera and capture the people and fashions that only “the biggest rock festival” in China can provide. Undeterred by the lack of a fucking functional website, the promise of awe-inspiring traffic, and the threat of hours of shitty metal, I took a whiskey-soaked ride up to the Be ...

BJC contributor Chris Clayman attended the Dali Erhai World Music Festival in Yunnan province from April 29 - May 1. His dispatch follows. A Cop with a Weird Haircut We're standing near the fortune teller when Lin Dan shows us something. “I’m a cop,” he says. He pulls out his wallet and holds it close to his waist, his left hand shading a badge. Then he looks around to make sure one of the five hundred poli ...

Many fans of Chinese rock music have heard of the band Rustic, the members of which became stars on the scene only a few years ago when they unexpectedly won the Global Battle of the Bands competition in London. They play a catchy blend of cock rock and old-school punk, and their show antics make them one of the must-see acts in Beijing, even if it's just to see them act like wankers. Surely a lot has been ...

Ah, music festival season in China. With the balmy climes and fluffy white cottonwood pollen comes the annual rumor mill about which bold-faced recording artists are slated to perform at the summertime’s numerous annual kickoff events, which have been denied performance permits, and general conspiratorial grumblings about why this is and who's to blame. The controversy has already begun. Kraftwerk, an influ ...

Peng Liyuan, who's warming up to her role as China's "First Lady" -- a term that, lest you forget, has basically never been applied to the wives of Chinese leaders -- is currently traveling with her husband in Africa as part of Xi Jinping's first overseas trip as Chinese head of state, and it'd be an understatement to say she's kind of stealing the show. The New York Times called her "glamorous, fashionable ...

Normal expat whining is grating and graceless, but let’s face it: it has its roots in something that we can all identify with. China takes a lot out of you, demands a lot of you at times. Sure, there are those skating by with an absurd income-to-work ratio, people to whom China is a paid vacation punctuated by occasional encounters with the indigenous people who for some reason haven’t learned to speak Engl ...

Shanghai Restoration Project is an electronic group whose latest 12-track album, Pictures in Motion, features tributes to classic Hollywood films set in Shanghai. The "mostly original compositions" were "each inspired by a different movie from the era," according to the description on the above video. ...

Recently I received an email and link from a Chinese friend who wanted to share her love of what she called "traditional Chinese whistling music." This is indeed melodic whistling music. But if you're old and foreign enough, you may recall "Are You Going to Scarborough Fair?," popularized in the late '60s by the US folk duo Simon and Garfunkel, used as one of the songs for Dustin Hoffman's breakout in The G ...

We're fans of music here, so when Jonathan Alpart's latest episode of The Sound Stage on CRI found a band that describes itself as "Radiohead if they played the blues," we had to check it out. What do you think? 16 Minutes is the outfit. They ain't Radiohead, but the moral here is: aim high. Maybe you'll find yourself compared to Coldplay. ...

While CCTV insists on appealing to the largest demographic and sucking, we'd like to remind everyone that Hunan Satellite TV has decided to take a chance on mainland rock's alpha and omega, Cui Jian, to perform on its New Year's "Mango" Gala on February 4 (7:30 pm). Rumors have been flying in the press that Cui would "likely not be playing his famous song 'Nothing to My Name,' not playing guitar or wearing ...

Actually, there's not much that's humorous about these images of atmospheric carnage, but over the course of eons a uniquely human response to the ghastly and macabre has been to expectorate fleshy, puny, anthropoid sounds that in our language can be classified as "laughter." Laugh away at this. ...

China Central Television got itself a pretty good musical lineup for its New Year's show on Monday night, headlined by the Wonder Girls and Leona Lewis. The entire show can be seen here. ...

China Digital Times brings us this rap video by Gao Yuan, featuring cosplay, martial arts, and English subtitles... and the line "Go censor your own motherfucker ass." Via CDT: Artist Gao Yuan has produced a video based on the song “Nunchaku” by Taiwanese singer Zhou Jielun (Jay Chou), rewriting the lyrics to curse government censorship. ...

Still a legend, but Sir Elton John was looking slightly less fabulous than usual Sunday night despite his electric blue glittery jacket and matching glasses. This was my first major concert in China, so I was prepared for the unexpected. After all these years, I wondered if he'd still have it. I wondered how Chinese crowds would respond to such a legend, and I really wondered if he was going to play his Lio ...