Oh dear!
My hotly anticipated weekend of music was thwarted by a mixture of alcohol, lethargy, and..... Chinese gig-scheduling being just a little fucked-up.
Friday night's rendezvous with Ziyo at MAO Live was a disaster. Now, this is a great venue in many ways: the space and the decor are absolutely right for a small-medium sized rock show, the sound system is superb, the bar's OK, and it's in a very convenient location for me. However, their scheduling (and their advertising) just sucks; and it's getting worse.
This was supposed to be a showcase for Ziyo, who have just launched their long-awaited first EP. According to the MAO website and the other advance publicity, there was only to have been one support act - which would have been appropriate: we didn't want to see anyone else, we wanted to see Ziyo; and we wanted to see them at a sensible time at night. When we arrived there around 10pm, we discovered that some idiot had decided to pad out the roster into one of MAO's occasional super-bills. Now, sometimes these work - if there's a coherent theme, and the bands are all fairly good. On Friday, it was a gaggle of bands who are fairly unknown, and for good reason. And they weren't even being very slick with the changeovers: in the 2 hours or so I spent there, I just missed one band, spent a long time waiting around for the next, endured 30 minutes of wordless bawling (my companion, Brendan the Translator, informed me that this style is called Nu Metal; I couldn't see any point of contact with 'Old Metal', which, even at its most mindless, is usually redeemed by fast guitar solos and a certain self-deflating humour; this stuff just seemed like a particularly dull, tuneless, chugging variety of Grunge), and then another seemingly interminable wait for the next act to show up. At which point, not being able to bear the thought of having to listen to 2 or 3 more Shit Metal acts before the main event, I gave up on the evening and returned across the road to the Pool Bar (two more demerits for MAO: they've stopped serving Yanjing beer in cans, and the other booze options are just a tad expensive; moreover, they've stopped allowing re-admission [although I suspect they don't really enforce this too strictly, especially later in the evening]; the combined effect of these two dumb-ass policies is that when the punters get thirsty, they leave).
If Ziyo were going to be on last (by no means a safe bet in this crazy town, of course), that probably wasn't going to happen until 2am or so - much as I love 'em, they weren't worth enduring any more dross supporting acts, crappy overpriced beer, or sweaty crowds (a further demerit: the place is becoming too popular for its own good - Friday's turnout was the biggest crowd I've seen there, really rather uncomfortably, even dangerously large. A further note to the schedulers: Ziyo can fill the place quite adequately on their own; you really don't need to tack on 5 or 6 other bands who all [however shite they are] might have at least something of a following of their own.). It was rather sad for Ziyo and their supporters, though; I would guess that a good 30% or 40% of the punters there had been driven to leave before the band came on. MAO Live bosses, pull your heads out of your arses, please.
Alas, a number of drinking companions in the Pool Bar had their 'stupid' heads on that night, and I ended up being out till dawn...... and needed to sleep in most of Saturday to recharge my batteries. That may somewhat have depleted my enthusiasm for the Bad Mamasan gig I had planned to go to that night (well, that, and my growing antipathy to the new Yugong Yishan venue, which, I'm sorry to say, has proven to be utterly CRAP). And the rival musical attraction of Panjir at the Stone Boat lost appeal due to the lousy air quality (and the fact that I've seen them 3 or 4 times recently in their new Thursday night residency at Jiangjinjiu; and the fact that it's such a pain in the arse to try to get across town mid-evening on a Saturday night). So, I ended up watching the FA Cup Final in a bar in my 'hood (something of an anti-climax, as you'd expect with a second-rate team up against a third-rate team: all worthy endeavour, but very few decent goal-scoring chances). And then back to the old reliable Pool Bar......... and then to the wee-small-hours 'happy hour' at Room 101....... and then home only just before dawn once again.
After two successive nights of late and heavy drinking, Sunday was a very slow day of recovery..... and I found, yet again, that I was insufficiently motivated to try to make a long trip into town in rush-hour traffic in hopes of taking in a cultural event for which I had no-one to accompany me, and which might very possibly be sold out, and which might of course turn out to be crap anyway. So, sorry, Chris Botti - perhaps you put on a great show, but I couldn't even rouse myself to think about heading down into the city centre until around 6pm, and by that time it was dangerously marginal as to whether I would be able to make it to the start of the show. I really will make a big effort to make sure I catch you next time you're here - honestly. Well, then again, perhaps not. I've been doing some YouTubing to see what I missed - and apparently what I missed is the most insipid Jazz Lite (so.... he was probably a complete sell-out, well on his way to Kenny G-dom or Claydermania here in China!). Maybe I (and my wallet) had a lucky escape there after all.
It is becoming something of a worry to me, though, that the twin we-never-close delights of the Pool Bar and 101 are resulting in more and more late nights for me, particularly over the weekend - it is preventing me from getting anything much useful or cultural accomplished over Saturday and Sunday (this is the third time in only 6 weeks or so that Sunday evening 'plans' have foundered in this way), and sapping my energy levels dangerously during the subsequent week.
Time for a new Resolution perhaps??
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