Chen Guangbiao, fresh off handing out $100 bills “to suspicious New Yorkers,” as the New York Post put it, has done a much greater, more charitable thing for all of us. Please watch the above video, in which he attempts to sing “We Are the World.”

Have a nice weekend, everyone.

Tis the season for expat exoduses, departure of friends. New ones will arrive, but it’ll never be the same, will it?

Video by Sean Collins.

(H/T Hannah)

For those of you who have been watching, The Sound Stage has been working in a “series within a series” every other episode or so since last November, featuring bands from our trip to Wuhan. AV Okubo is the last of those bands.

We rode the rails for this one, the pristine carriage of the new high-speed trains, with power-plant exhaust as our backdrop. Hear how AV Okubo visited a “drug street” in Austin during SXSW, but more importantly, listen to “Red Tank” off their latest album, Dynasty.

I went to Wuhan earlier this winter and interviewed five bands. This is the second of the five.

These guys play something that they define as “emo,” but more because of the “emotion” as it relates to music rather than the genre. “Chinese Football” is apparently an homage to the US band American Football, but is also an in-joke here, since the Chinese football team is a national disgrace.

Be sure to check out the lead singer’s vintage guitar collection in the video.

Go have a magical night. We’ll be back in a bit.

Via the freshest kids in china:

Lil’ Chao and Neal Rock are two of China’s most influential underground b-boys, representing Shanghai’s classic Dust Breakerz Crew. The two spent a few months hitchhiking around Western China’s Yunnan province, leaving us with a glimpse into their travels.

The song is “Paper Moon” via Metome.

Ford the river of hell, cross over into the afterlife.

Recently The Sound Stage traveled to Wuhan to interview and film some of the top bands there. I’ve been hearing for a while about Wuhan’s music scene and wanted to see for myself what the fuss was about. This is hopefully just one of several future trips out of Beijing to check out musical developments in the rest of the country.

One of Wuhan’s oldest metal bands, Disappearing River, plays death metal, which is appropriate because its lead singer, Du Wei, works in a funeral home. With dead bodies. Let’s just say he’s got street cred. He’s also known as the “Godfather of Wuhan Metal.”

Disappearing River’s music makes for the perfect introduction to the modern music scene in Wuhan, which might be second in China only to Beijing. There will be four more episodes featuring Wuhan bands in the coming months, each showcasing a different style in this central Chinese industrial and transport hub.

The song featured tonight is The Uncrowned King, and starts after the interview.

Happy whatever-you-celebrate on the eve of this Western holiday.

The above, sent by Chris Hawke, features the Hutong Yellow Weasels, probably Beijing’s only square-dance band, playing “Angelina Baker.” Footage is from 4corners and the Hutong during this year’s Beijing SantaCon.

A high-tech research lab is probably the last place you think you’d find a rock ‘n’ roll genius, but Fuzzy Mood is all the proof you need. Distilling mathematical theories into musical layman’s terms, this band will definitely put you into a better mood – with science!

Hello Beijing Cream readers. My name is Josh and I work at this other website called Smart Beijing, where I conduct tl;dr interviews with bassists. The Tao is outsourcing these Friday Musical Outros to my colleague Morgan, but he’s schmoozing at some conference now. So here I am.

School Bar has been killing it this year. In my book it’s Beijing’s #1 live rock ‘n’ roll venue at the moment. Pretty much the only place you can walk up on a random day of the week and be statistically likely to find a decent local band and at least a dozen drunken teenagers in leather jackets just living the dream. You should go there on Saturday because all the bands playing are worth your time & money & some potential liver damage.

Lowbow — featured above in a great black-and-white live video shot by Beijing-based photographer Jeff Yiu — is leading the charge, joined by Yan Tiao, Xin Ma You Jiang, and Streets Kill Strange Animals. The latter just shot a music video on a public bus; keeping that one in the back pocket for the next time I have to do one of these here Friday Outro joints.

The Saturday gig kicks off at 9 pm and will run you 40 rmb at the door. That’s 10 kuai a band, pretty solid deal.

If you want to talk for an hour about musical miscellany you can email me here:music@smartbeijing.com.

Some Old Time American porch music this week, in anticipation of Friday night’s big “Roots Rage” show down at Mako Livehouse. The gentleman on the fiddle is Michael Ismerio, visiting us in Beijing from North Carolina. He’s been gigging around town, sitting in with the Yellow Hutong Weasels and others, doing roots music workshops, playing shows, and calling square dances. Serious. He was the caller at last night’s square dance at the Home Plate BBQ Sanlitun preview dinner. Goes something like this. Dare to be square, man.

Ismerio is a pretty interesting guy. With a performing and recording history in Old Time music that goes back to the late 90s, he’s on a slew of records with various acts over the years — check those releases out here – and he’s also a veteran train hopper, zine maker, an ex-record store owner, and a community activist of sorts. Read his full story here. A well-traveled man indeed.

Anyways, Ismerio is on the bill for Roots Rage, which is basically every Americana / Old Time band in Beijing on one bill, down at Mako Livehouse for Friday night — tonight, that is. It’s a bill that should draw out every beard and plaid shirt for miles, stompin’ boots, partying like it’s 1899. Randy Able Stable, Hutong Yellow Weasels, and The Confectionairies. 50 rmb cover. That’s the jam this weekend. Giddyup.

Morgan is the editor of Smart Beijing and fake DJs around town. Suggestions for Friday Music Send Outs and feedback to editor@smartbeijing.com.

Throwing something a little different at the blog this week. Trance music. Yes, you welcome.

Beijing’s hardest working and ubiquitous Psytrance promoters Goa Productions are hosting an event down at Mao Livehouse on Saturday, celebrating the release of their latest compilation record, Kui 2, which features tracks from a global host of trance producers — Braincell, Audioform, Ohmnidrive, Karna, Blue Lunar Monkey, Black Noise and more.

So. Trance music. If you’re a bit foggy on the genre, Trance is huge heaving swells of spazzoid, hyper melodic synth arpeggios into mid-song breaks, into huge, euphoric, climactic eruptions of exalted sound and energy. On ecstasy. On a shitload of ecstasy. So, so, so much ecstasy. You’ve definitely heard Trance music. Either blaring out of speakers set up outside ridiculous hair salons, pumping out of the tricked-out rides of village gangsters, or blasting out of your German co-worker’s headphones at work. Rock people, you know how you “fucking hate that bullshit techno music”? You’ve probably actually just been exposed to that sweet, sweet Trance music. When it blew up in the ’90s and beyond, the mainstream face of dance music around the world was pretty much Armin Van Buuren (cousin of Dave Van Buuren, FYI) and Paul Van Dyk — two of the genre’s most influential figures.

Anyways, Trance music is something you get or you don’t. Even in dance music circles, Trance is a much maligned genre. The prevailing opinion: it’s cheesy as fuck. And you’ve got to be gacked to the gills to even appreciate it. Taking it a step further, Psytrance or Goa trance, which is more of what you’d hear on Saturday, is a sub-sect of the genre, which sees the general Trance idiom imbued with elements of EBM (industrial), tribal, and psychedelia. Comes from off-the-grid zonked hippies in Goa and is even more of an inscrutable subculture with its own sound, iconography, and… je ne sais quoi.

Hence the video above, which is a great-looking Psytrance party. Crazy tent shit all over the place, day-glo aliens, tie-dye shit everywhere, glow sticks, tweakers tweaking out large, and a thoroughly blissed out crowd in the midst of a big ol’ trip. A real beatific scene indeed. Niiiiiiice.

Anyways, Goa Productions are pretty much the big game in town for this kind of rager. And they put in the real effort to pull it off. Respect. The video is them doing one of their shows in Wuhan. They’re on a national tour behind the release of Kui 2, and they’re celebrating in Beijing on Saturday at Mao Livehouse. 50 beans to get in. Starts 10 pm.

You should go, maaaaaan.

Morgan is the editor of Smart Beijing and fake DJs around town. Suggestions for Friday Music Send Outs and feedback to editor@smartbeijing.com.

If music is an international language, French musician Jean Sebastien proves that Mandarin Chinese is becoming one, also. Although he plays in several bands, the focus of this episode is his “Djang San” persona, a folk artist playing traditional Chinese instruments, singing in the Chinese language, and mixing Western experimental and jazz influences into ancient melodies. See what Chinese music is, and can become, in the eyes of a talented outsider.

Here’s more of Jonathan Alpart’s The Sound Stage on CRI.

Outro time! We’re featuring an independent artist from Limerick, Ireland tonight, John Carroll, who has been singing and songwriting for the last decade. It was a tour that brought him to China in 2007, where he married and settled. He’s been living in Hangzhou ever since.

Carroll also runs an indie label called Medic Records, which you should check out. The song featured here is the title track off his Let Every Tongue album, which “is a result of five years living in China, emigrating, adapting and adjusting to the culture, language and all the personal changes,” says his friend Lee Davies.

Here’s Carroll’s Douban page.

It’s Friday, friends, and there’s tons and tons of shit on this weekend. Tons and tons. Too much. Too, too much. And on top of all these good lookin’ shows, it’s Halloween as well. Damn. And it looks like it’s going to be Halloween for the next three weeks or so as well. Seems like no one can figure out what day to celebrate it on. (Pssst! It’s October 31, fuckers! That’s when Halloween is! Not the Saturday before! It doesn’t matter that you have to work the next day! It’s on the 31st!)

Anyways, here’s a few shows on this weekend you might want to think about hitting up.  All of these are getting the “Friday Musical Outro Seal of Approval,” a hallowed honor indeed.

Friday and Satuday @ The Post Mountain Space: Beijing Electronic Music Encounter 2013

This one is a pangbianr.com and Metrowaves joint — two days, two stages and all kinds of electronic music with Beijing-based perfomers and a few visiting guests. This looks like probably the best program and line-up for this sort of thing in like… forever. Real solid. Runs 7 pm to 4 am both Friday and Saturday – you should really fit this in. All the info you need — artist info, logistics, links — is right here.

Friday @ Temple: WHAI One-Year Anniversary

Local hard rock electronica act WHAI celebrates their one-year anniversary. Pretty good band this one. They’re pros. And whenever they play Temple they draw a good and game crowd. Actually, if Temple is your thing, the next night, Saturday, looks right-on as well: Illness Sickness are on stage supporting their EP release. Also a real solid band that one. You should give them money and other nice things in exchange for their record.

Saturday @ Blue Stream: Jingweir Vol. 2

Jingweir kids are celebrating the launch of Volume 2 of their zine. They’ve got some stands set up and some locals are gonna play a show. It’s just going to be a righteous time. Here’s the Facebook link for band links and all that shite. Sounds like a good one.

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Last but not least, let’s all take some time out of our day to discuss something that me, myself is involved in. Next Thurday. Halloween night. YOUR Friday Musical Outro Correspondent is playing at Temple in a MISFITS TRIBUTE BAND. For real. Be there, friend. Don’t fuck this up. Misfits on Halloween. Gonna be WIIIICKED.

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Video this week is Venom, “In League with Satan” because Halloween is Satan’s birthday and he fuckin’ LOVES Venom. It’s like his favorite band, you know.

Morgan is the editor of Smart Beijing and fake DJs around town. Suggestions for Friday Music Send Outs and feedback to editor@smartbeijing.com.