Missing out again... (and again...)

After missing out on the largely unheralded performance at Peking University last month by mind-blowing Aussie guitarist Tommy Emmanuel (my biggest musical disappointment this year, or for many years past), I followed that up by missing the visit of Clive Chin, a Jamaican dude of Chinese ancestry who, as an engineer/producer at Randy's Studio 17, worked with most of the greats of the reggae scene in the early '70s (in particular, he's known as the Duke of Dub, and is usually credited with creating the dub style with seminal stars of the form like Lee 'Scratch' Perry). He was appearing at Bed bar (which is practically on my back doorstep!) a week yesterday, to give a talk about the history of Jamaican music and then play a DJ set to demonstrate the work of the artists he'd mentioned. I had been meaning to go, but.... well, I got distracted by something or other. I take some consolation from reports that the bar's compact and discrete spaces were so packed out that it was difficult to hear the great man's lecture, much less to get a view of him. That's another big regret of my musical year, though. He's a fascinating character, and I love the 60s/70s Jamaican sound. And then last night I was going to check out Au Revoir, Simone - a trio of young ladies from Brooklyn who seem to be well spoken of: folky synth-pop (not really my thing), but with catchy melodies and decent lyrics. Unfortunately, they were playing at Yugong Yishan, so I wasn't sanguine about the event. The acoustics in that place are so bad that it's often a struggle to hear a quiet band at all, especially if there's a big crowd. And the crowd for this seemed to be huge - spilling over into the entrance foyer and the corridor leading to the loos; the din of chatter from inside the main room didn't augur well for my chances of being able to get close to the stage, or being able to see or hear anything..... so I decided not to shell out the door fee and settled for an early night instead. Again, something of a disappointment. I don't think they're a band that would have wowed me, but I was curious to find out what they're about. [The one thing Yugong is getting really good at is publicity. All credit to them for drawing such a big crowd out on a chilly Friday for a (relatively?) little known band. Unfortunately, it's just not a good space for live music: the layout's all wrong, and the sound's terrible; it can't cope with an audience in the hundreds.]