Second chances

One of the nicer suprises about the Sonic Youth gig on Monday was that the venue - Star Live - did not completely suck.

The last time I went there, it sucked mightily - as I obliquely mentioned while praising DC's 9:30 club in an early post on here. I had pretty much vowed never to go back. In fact, I passed up the chance to go and see Ziggy Marley there last month - who would, I think, have been a blast - because I was still so down on the place (though also somewhat discouraged by the high ticket price - Beijing is drawing more and more top bands these days: we've just had Marley, Sonic Youth, and The Roots in the space of barely a month.... and I just can't afford to go to all of them).

When I went there in November..... well, it was a 'mare: one tiny bar, right at the back, staffed by only two people; ridiculously expensive drinks (particularly after the 'cheap' local beers ran out almost immediately, leaving us to pay 40 or 50 kuai - twice the going rate - for small bottles of crappy Carlsberg); tacky decorations; no atmosphere; surly and unhelpful staff; the area in front of the stage populated with "VIP" tables on which there was something like a 200-300 kuai minimum charge, and which were being continually, somewhat aggressively touted by the waiters. The music was a bit of a disappointment too: a band I like and have heard many times before, but a folkie acoustic outfit - utterly dwarfed by the cavernous space.

But, to be fair, the place had only just opened. And catering to an a visiting foreign folk band, with an almost entirely foreign audience, would have been an untypical challenge for them. They really seem to have sorted their act out since then.

The bar has been moved to the side, much nearer the stage; it is much bigger, with more and better staff (the girl who served me all night was quite charming, and actually spoke a little bit of English). The beers are now 20 kuai - which is more than I usually pay in the sort of divey bars I like - but by no means outrageous for a rock venue. A pretty standard price, in fact. And they've introduced a ticket system for buying drinks: this threatened to be a bit of a pain, but in fact worked pretty smoothly; and I can see the advantage of not having the drinks servers have to worry about change (although on this occasion, they weren't really kept busy enough for that to have been an issue; it was a big crowd, but, strangely, not a hard-drinking gig).

I'm still not ecstatic about the place, and not convinced that Beijing really yet needs a venue of this size (there probably aren't any local bands that could fill it; and any really major foreign artists are still more likely to want something bigger, like a theatre or a gymnasium). I much prefer the intimate, grungy venues around town - where you can literally reach out and touch the performers. (Last week at Jiangjinjiu, we were almost sat on the stage with the band. When the exuberant Xinjiang girl got up and began dancing, my pal Nick O'Pix was so uncomfortably close to the action [I rather think she wasn't wearing any knickers, but - of course! - I coyly averted my gaze whenever she did one of her 'can-can' skirt swishes.] that he overbalanced and fell off his stool, wallowing helplessly at her feet with an embarrassed grin on his face.)

However, this does teach us that places can sort themselves out, put things right, earn redemption from my 'hate list'. Perhaps I'll even give the dismal Centro another try one day.