Freddie Mercury would have been 65 on Monday. Yugong Yishan celebrated with a (little advertised!) tribute show on Sunday night, with Los Crasher, Kick Ass, and Bad Mamasan each adding a few Queen covers to their 30-minute sets. It was a fun show, although the shortcomings of the original material were inevitably rather highlighted by juxtaposition with the classic Queen hits. However, Los Crasher (who I hadn't seen before, but will now look out for) and Kick Ass (seemingly breaking in a new guitarist, but none the worse for it) are both distinguished by having frontmen who can really sing (and sing in English, at that), which, until recently, was a real rarity on the Chinese rock scene... practically unheard of!
This is the first time I've ever heard any Queen in China. I recall The Weeble telling me that Hong Kong diva Faye Wong has been known to cover (er, murder) Bohemian Rhapsody in concerts, but I think that might be the sum total of China's exposure to the band. I have never heard their stuff played in a bar (other than 12 Square Metres, of course, where we regularly have a little early evening headbang to Bo Rap), on the radio or in a CD shop, being attempted by one of the aspirant guitarists in the numerous musical instrument stores on Gulou Dongdajie or covered by a Chinese band, and certainly not manifesting an influence in any Chinese band's music; not a trace of them - one of the greatest bands of all time - anywhere, ever. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I fear they somehow passed China by, and are almost completely unknown here... at least until now. I hope we'll start hearing a lot more of this kind of stuff from Chinese bands in the future.
And - on a loosely thematically related note - I am indebted to The Dissolute Choirboy for forwarding me a link the other day to this tribute to Flann O'Brien (real name Brian O'Nolan, the first of my 'Unsuitable Role Models' celebrated on this blog) from last Saturday's Irish Times, extracted from the latest edition of the Dublin Review, which invited several of Ireland's most distinguished living writers to share their personal responses to their country's greatest humourist. It will be the centenary of his birth on October 5th. I shall probably write something more on him then.
No comments:
Post a Comment