These musicians filmed at Beijing's Temple of Heaven are quite good, but are they the best? If you know of any amateur orchestras or park singers that can give these guys a run for their money, please let us know.
We've seen roadside buskers -- even drummers -- aplenty, but few are as impressive as this young man, identity unknown, who uses pots, pans and buckets to create music. This was posted on the Sina Weibo of @Ghost190 on Monday.
Presumptive Chinese president Xi Jinping has gone missing. He cancelled high-level meetings with Hillary Clinton and Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong last week, and HOLY CRAP FREAK OFF PANTS OFF. Normally rational media organizations such as the Associated bleepin’ Press have published sentences such as, “More dramatically, the U.S.-based website Boxun.com cited an unidentified source inside Zhongnanhai as saying... Read more »
The Beijinger's New Festival Showcase at 2 Kolegas on Saturday mostly proved to be your standard gathering of drunken expats, except it produced one hell of a musical highlight: Residence A, a Beijing staple we featured in an Outro earlier this month, giving what I thought was the performance of the night around 8:30 pm. Reasonable music fans will disagree, and I admit I didn't catch every act, but the energy was noticeably different with these guys on stage, to say nothing of musical phrasing and general ability.
The website Godvine got itself a viral video recently, called "4 Year Old Boy Plays Piano Better Than Any Master - Wow," but left no information about it. Can you blame anyone for being a bit a skeptical? But this looks real to our eyes. Maybe the boy is actually older than four, but we'd just be nitpicking there. If he's playing even half those keys, I daresay he has a promising career in music in front of him. Alicia, who found this on Facebook, tells us that the father says at the very beginning in Cantonese, "Play it again..."
It was inevitable Psy’s ‘Gangnam Style’ would be parodied as “Pyongyang Style’: is.gd/6ElmKC #Korea — Steve Herman (@W7VOA) August 16, 2012 The original Gangnan Style by (South) Korean rapper PSY is here. The remix is by YouTube user lalartu, and it’s quite good. Youku video for those in China after the jump.
Remember when Korean rapper PSY made the video for “Gangnam Style” and was thusly described in a Time headline as having the “best invisible horse-riding rap video” of the week? If you haven’t seen it yet, go here and watch (YouTube and Youku versions available). This post really was an excuse for you to go watch... Read more »
Eason Chan was never cut in the same mold as other Canto- and Mandopop stars who churn out anodyne, over-produced songs with mass appeal. He wasn't exactly a rebel, but part of his popularity lie in the fact that he was unique, with songs that at least hinted at deeper meaning. Time called his album U87, released in 2005, "a bridge between past and future, showing off a rawness rarely found in Chinese pop."
Allow me to categorize, in an admittedly clumsy manner, the options expats have for international music in Beijing:
* Foreign bands, usually rather amateurish, that live in China.
* Past-their-prime bands or solo acts that have little more than nostalgia on their side (think Ian Brown or any individual Ramone).
* Super big-pop acts that no one really likes (Lil' John, Akon).
* Up-and-coming bands that may eventually make it big, or may suck rather hard (Common, Owl City).
For music lovers, that's not much to look forward to, so it's incumbent upon us to take chances.
I hit the jackpot last night at Yugong Yishan.
BJC contributor Alicia found this just now, and it's one of those stunning works of art that makes you want to hug the Internet. It's a man atop a cow singing Justin Bieber's "Baby."
The original video, titled "I am legendary, art dream," is the only work that appears under Youku user w451119777’s page. Apparently it was published two months ago and viewed 1,830 times, a relatively small amount for such a heroic effort.
