Too much music!!

You can never have too much of a good thing..... or can you?

I am feeling a little mentally exhausted - after experiencing three of the best gigs I've ever seen in the space of a little over 24 hours.

After the great line-up of girl bands at MAO on Friday (culminating in a stupendous performance by Ziyo), yesterday saw quite a change of pace, with an early evening concert out in Dashanzi by newly-formed jazz outfit, The New Glucose Jazz Septet. Well, 'New Glucose' has been around for a while - French pianist Christophe Lier and the slinky Bulgarian chanteuse Diliana Georgieva have been playing together around town for 3 or 4 years, and occasionally mounting a larger project with a rotating cast of local musicians. But last night was the first time it's grown to a seven-piece, I think; the 'regulars' (anyone ever been to a jazz gig in this town that didn't feature Matt Roberts's trombone?) supplemented by a couple of new arrivals, the very cool drummer Jimmy Biala (I loved the red cap, Jimmy!) and percussionist Dominic Bautista. A great, great show, featuring Christophe's novel arrangements of jazz standards (and one or two Bulgarian folk songs!) given an Afro-Caribbean flavour, and a few original compositions of his too. Alas, it looks like being a one-off - since it was also a farewell-to-Beijing concert for the lovely Diliana. We'll miss her.

Although scheduled for an early start, it got under way 20 minutes or so late; and they then played two sets of nearly an hour each (with a drinks interval in the middle), and then an extended encore, so....... it didn't wrap up until about 9.15...... which was ideal timing for me to follow up almost immediately with Black Cat Bone's Christmas gig at nearby 2 Kolegas. I hadn't been convinced I would go, actually: I'd been feeling weary all day after a string of late nights, and I was musically worn out by the jazz, but..... Kolegas was on my way home.

I'm glad I did look in. It was another awesome show. BCB are Beijing's premier party band, a hard-drinking quintet of laowai blues-rockers sinisterly attired in 'Reservoir Dogs' dark suits and shades. However, I've seen these guys so many times before that I feared there was a danger of them growing a little stale for me.... but last night they really turned it on (perhaps inspired by the presence of the Danwei TV team filming the event [watch out for it later in the week!]; perhaps just more than usually stoked up on alcohol....). Despite delaying the start, the crowd early on was worryingly thin and unresponsive, and it had looked as if the event might be an embarrassing fizzle..... but the lads went ahead undaunted; possibly all the more determined to rock the joint...... and, as if by magic, more and more punters started dribbling in. By the end of the first set, the tiny bar was becoming packed. The second set went by in a happy blur. They had been threatening to play "until dawn". A third set was definitely in the offing, but I was too exhausted (and, I admit, too drunk) to last the pace.

I did, however, honour a pledge to look in on a friend's leaving party for an hour. Just on the way home, you know.