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and has to ask his tutors for time offwhen
the band tours.
Even the owner of Carsick Cars’ record
label and the club D22 has to hold down a
day job. Michael Pe is, anAmerican expat
who works as an economics professor at
elite Peking University, is the impresario
of the Chinese rock scene, a role he rel-
ishes. Perched on the edge of one of his
voluminous armchairs, he cheerfully
ra les off all the ways he’s losing money.
But it’s not about the money, he says—it’s
about the buzz. Pe is compares the scene
to the counterculture that shook up the
West in the ’60s. China has changed so fast
that the generation gap is huge, he says.
Middle-aged folk grew up withMao suits,
the Little Red Book and austerity; their
kids are subsumed in a flashy consumer
culture that celebrates individuality and
gratification. The Internet and rising
generational expectations have created
restless youth, thirsty for their own forms
of self-expression to help themmake their
own sense of the world.
Enter rock ’n’ roll. “The older generation
and the mainstream media simply have
no idea what’s going on here,” says Pe is.
“These bands get no radio play, they’re
never on TV and no one dares sponsor
them. Yet they’re filling venues night
a er night.” What he likes best about the
Chinese scene is its freshness: Since there’s
no indigenous history for thesemusicians
to refer to, they’re making it up as they go
along. And they’re refreshingly accessible.
“If you want to go backstage and talk to a
band, it’s not a problem,” says Pe is, who
describes buying a singer a drink and
winding up hanging out with the guy all
night. And, he adds, because everyone
got involved for the love of music, with
no prospect of fame or money, there are
none of the pretensions and hangers-on
that you might find in equivalent scenes
in the West.
Chinese rock’s newfound popularity
has brought changes. Bands suddenly
have many more places to play, includ-
ing new venues with decent sound, and
music festivals are popping up all over the
country. In the la er case, Pe is explains,
the government has actually played a role
in supporting the scene: It gives cultural
funds to local arts bureaucrats, who can
then decide to spend the money on, say, a
poetry reading that a racts adozenpeople
or a music festival that brings 5,000. And
since a bigger audience means a bigger
budget for the local arts department next
year, the advantage is on rock’s side.
ASTHEMUSIC
spreads, Beijing
is serving as the center of the scene.
Impoverished musicians in love with the
rock ’n’ roll dream are turning up in the
capital at a prodigious rate. Hundreds
now live in Shucun village on the city’s
outskirts, most of them on almost noth-
ing, hoping to break through, maybe tap
into some of the sponsorship deals being
offered byWestern corporations like Con-
verse. Xiao Wang is typical in expressing
ambivalence about all this; as well as the
dangers of commercialization and selling
out, he’s concerned about becoming too
noticeable. But the fact is, that seems
inevitable. The word is out.
The following night, I catch rock ’n’ roll
Mongolian throat singers at one venue
and a thrash-metal band at another. While
it’s hard to speak of a “Beijing sound,” the
musicians themselves havemuch in com-
mon: a sheer bloody-mindedness that’s
required when taking an ill-understood
path in a conservative country, and a
richly complicated relationship with the
city itself. In that regard Beijing mirrors
New York and London during their own
rock renaissances. As Yang Haisong of the
band P.K. 14 puts it, “There is a pressure
here. You feel the politics in the air. But
that’s good for songwriting—it gives you
something to kick against.”
XiaoWang ismore down-to-earth. “This
is where you have to be,” he says. “It’s
where things happen.”
SIMON LEWIS,
a Welsh journalist and crime
novelist whose latest book is titled
Bad Traffic
,
is pleased to live in a part of south London
that’s had a great song written about it: “The
Guns of Brixton,” by the Clash.
EARLY ON,
“WE’D PLAY GIGS TO
THREE PEOPLE, AND
TWO OF THEM
WOULD
GO HOME
ANNOYED.”
148
MARCH 2012
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