The Froog Bar Awards - 2012

This is it, my sixth (and final) annual review of the best and worst of Beijing's bar scene.

I suppose I'm not really very well placed to comment on the scene in detail this time around, since I've been away from Beijing for at least a third of this year, and didn't go out very much while I was here. However, my respect for tradition compels me to maintain the custom of a year-end 'review' post that I inaugurated in 2007.


As in previous years, my aim here is to provoke (and sometimes, godammit, yes, to offend) as well as to enlighten, so please feel free to pitch in - and bitch in - down below in the comments if you have anything to add in regard to any of these opinions. I hope a few people at least will find this post (although burying it a few days back from the ostensible closedown date of the blog on December 21st minimises its visibility, I know), and find it useful, or at any rate interestingly provocative.

Best Live Music Venue

Winner:  VA Bar
This place has grown on me over the last year or two. They impressed from the get-go with with their regular and eclectic lineup of shows, but compromised their appeal with inept/surly service and rather high prices. Prices have now been lowered, the attitude has improved, and the sound system remains about the best in town. Just about all of the best gigs I've been to in the last 18 months have been at VA Bar (although it now seems to be making a move to rebrand itself as Vanguard Livehouse).

Runners-up: Hot Cat Club, 2 Kolegas
I love the grunginess of Hot Cat, and its throwback-to-the-good-old-days prices. I don't love its erratic scheduling and non-existent advertising. Much as I want to like this venue, I suppose I've only gone three or four times this year; and only when specifically invited by a friend, rather than looking in on spec, or because I've seen an interesting lineup advertised. I'm impressed by the remodelling at 2 Kolegas, greatly improving their toilet facilities and their beer fridge capacity; but, unfortunately, as Beijing's taxi service has declined towards unusability, the place is just too darned far away to entice me very often any more. Similarly with the old What bar, I'm very fond of it - but it's just a bit too much of a hike for me to go all that often. Old local favourites Jianghu and Jiangjinjiu were both rumoured to be closing this year, but have both survived; alas, they are both now too well-known for their own good, and uncomfortably packed out for most shows. How I miss their early days, when they were a music-lovers' 'secret'! I suppose my most conspicuous omission here is Temple which, while I find it a welcome addition to the scene, is not a place that I've been able to warm to. The sound system, the prices, the clientele, the general vibe - it's all just a little bit off, somehow. [As I noted last year I always seem to overlook East Shore Jazz Cafe in this section, because I don't go that often, and it only does jazz; but it is very good. And I am going to make a point of getting in several visits before I depart Beijing.]

Worst Live Music Venue

Winner:  Yugong Yishan

Runner-up:  MAO Live House

MAO is actually the best venue in town in terms of the regularity of its shows and the quality of the sound system. It just does nothing to make itself attractive to customers - the air-conditioning and the bar remain huge shortcomings there. Yugong Yishan continues to SUCK, for all of the reasons that I catalogued here. I can't recall if I've been there at all this year; I am doing my best to boycott it.

Best Gig of the Year

Winner:  The intimate Beijing Beatles gig at tiny Nanluoguxiang bar 12 Square Metres in March
Limited advertising and inclement weather threatened to scupper the event, but after anxious delays and an awkwardly slow start, these adverse circumstances actually helped to make it into a rather magical evening.

Runner-up: Tulegur at Jianghu (a couple of times)
The artist formerly known as Gangzi has decided to start going by his real name (which could prove a mite confusing for people who bought his previous releases), but he continues to be in a different class from just about anyone else around: a superb musician, a great voice - spell-binding.

Worst Gig of the Year

Winner:  Day One of the IndieChina anniversary show at Mako Live at the beginning of September

I'd never heard of IndieChina, but apparently it's a Chinese website that has built itself into quite an important fan forum over the past 7 or 8 years, mainly focusing on 'post-rock' - not a genre I have a lot of time for. However, their two-day celebration down in Shuangjing was one of the biggest events of the year, and the Friday lineup included some well spoken-of - and non-post-rock - bands. I'd only just got back to Beijing after nearly four months away, so I was quite excited about the potential of this one. Unfortunately, just about everything about the show sucked. The venue was uncomfortably over-full, and got very hot, as they didn't seem to want to crank the air-conditioning up. They ran out of cold beers within minutes of the start. And even Omnipotent Youth Society, one of my favourite Chinese bands, failed to thrill on this occasion - largely because of a lousy sound balance that wasn't giving enough prominence to their trademark interjections of soaring trumpet. This was particularly disappointing because enduring the three bands on ahead of them had been nothing less than painful. Openers The Dyne were a drums-and-guitar duo who played formless, self-indulgent instrumentals while staring fixedly at each other and completely ignoring the audience; they managed a few half-interesting moments - probably by accident - in the midst of 25 minutes of utter tedium. Glow Curve, well spoken of by some, were perhaps hampered by the bad sound setup, but appeared barely capable of playing their instruments. Low Wormwood, much lauded of late, and supposedly one of the most popular rock bands in China, appear to have attained that status by playing schmaltzy, derivative, crowd-pleasing folk-rock pap (I thought I remembered having seen them play a few times out at 13 Club in Wudaokou several years ago, but if that was them, they were a completely different band then, much edgier and more experimental). They started with what sounded like a Chinese cover of REM's Everybody Hurts, followed that up with another bland and oddly familiar piece (guitar solo ripped off note-for-note from The Edge!), and then did the obligatory ska number. When they then went into a maudlin slow ballad, my friends and I left in search of chuanr and cheap beers outside for the rest of their set (and I was happy to notice that significant numbers of the young Chinese punters did too; this was predominantly a rock crowd, not your FM Lite types). Those cheap beers were the only consolation of the night.

Best Bar Food

Winners:  Frost, Flamme

Runners-up: Luga's, The Den, The Irish Volunteer, Plan B

2010 winner Sand Pebbles may finally be getting its act together again, I think; although service out of the kitchen is still slow, and the place has got a little too popular for its own good, it has seemed to be much improved on my last couple of visits - restoring it to the status of being about the best place in town for Mexican food (though I'm peeved they seem to have taken my favourite chicken dish off the menu). However, this revival has come too late - or I have discovered it too late (sorry, Ray) - for it to get back into a prize slot this year. I've dumped First Floor from a runners-up spot as well, because it's really a bit too expensive (other than on half-price Mondays), and the service continues to be terrible. The significant new arrival on the scene this year has been Frost, Jeff Powell's tiny bar on Xingfu Ercun. The burger is about the best in town (though I've heard some people gripe that it's a little on the small side), the side salad is more than generous, and the yellow pepper relish is superb. I'm less enthused about the hotdogs; the homemade brats are large and tasty, but tend to be a bit gristly, and to use a non-edible skin. There must be a fear that the Chinese staff are unlikely to be able to maintain the quality of service, now that Jeff is once again moving on to grander things. And the bar itself lacks charm: it's too pokey, and the drinks are too expensive for a hole-in-the-wall. Hanging out on the tables outside was an attractive option on warm evenings in early summer, but I imagine it's going to be dead for the next 4 or 5 months. The burgers down at new Shuangjing opening Plan B are pretty damned good - and good value - too. Otherwise, no change from last year.

Best Place To Drink While Eating

Winners:  Home Plate BBQ

Runner-up:  Traktirr, Biteapitta, 4 Corners

Last year's winner Fodder Factory has, I'm told, relocated to less cosy premises, and bumped its prices up quite a bit - alas, alas. Ah well, it was always too far away to be more than a once or twice a year special adventure, anyway. I'm pleased to see that the original Traktirr has reopened (a much warmer vibe than its larger sister around the corner on Guijie, Traktirr Pushkin), and it easily takes the prize as my favourite Russian joint - as White Knights, sadly, continues to get stroppier and stroppier staff and stingier and stingier portions. Biteapitta is losing its place in my heart as well: the falafel - long a favourite of mine - has become ridiculously salty. It clings on to its place here because there are still plenty of things on the menu I like, and the draught beer is about the cheapest you can find in Sanlitun. I've heard some very good things about 4 Corners, the revamp of the old Orange Tree bistro, but I haven't got around to checking it out myself yet.


Best Place To Go For A Cocktail

Winner:  Flamme

Runners-up:  Mai, MaoMaoChong, Más

Flamme, for me, continues to be head-and-shoulders above the competition, thanks to Paul Mathew's superb recipes - although the loss of both Coco and Sophie from behind the bar there this year has been a blow. Mai and MaoMaoChong continue to be very welcome enhancements to my neighbourhood. And newcomer Más has some interesting original mixes too - although they don't taste very strong, and the place is severely lacking in ambience.


Best Place For Sitting Outside

Winner:  Home Plate BBQ

Runner-Up:  Alba

No change from last year.

Worst Bar

Winner: The Stumble Inn
No changes in this category, either. Food, prices, and service at the Stumble all continue to provoke regular complaints. And it's upstairs in a mall. I refuse to set foot in the place.

Runner-up: Drei Kronen
How does this overpriced Bavarian theme-park keep going?????

Additional Runner-up: BeerMania
In the old days, it was unassuming, it had no delusions of grandeur. The original space was at least cosy, projected a sort of ramshackle charm. The new, vastly expanded venue has the ambience of a college cafeteria. The beer list is irrationally long, and overpriced - and, of course, none of the staff knows how much anything costs!


Worst New Bar

Winner: The Red House

I would have thought it was pretty much impossible to screw up a 'dive bar' - but this franchise extension into the city centre by the popular Wudaokou grot-hole is just dismal.

Least Surprising Closure

Winner: Danger Doyle's

The only surprise was that it had managed to limp on for - what? - nearly three years.

Most Sadly Missed Departures of the Year

Winner:  Mike and Lauren at 12 Square Metres
Their tenure as managers at my favourite bar was only planned to be temporary anyway, but they were abruptly, prematurely driven out by the absurd 'anti-foreigner crackdown' in Beijing this summer.


Runner-up:  Chad Lager - ousted from Fubar  
(at which he was really the only reason for visiting)
I have a feeling he'll be back next year in some new venture...



Party of the Year

Winner:  My leaving party in May
I feel a bit guilty about nominating a small private event, but I just didn't go to any major public events this year. And this was everything a leaving party should be - including barely making it home, crashing out on the sofa instead of in my bed, and struggling to get my packing done in time for my flight. My friends and I ended up in Amilal until nearly 4am, after consuming many, many, many shot-glass servings of mengjiu at a leg o' lamb restaurant in the hutongs.

Most Promising New Bar

Winner:  Plan B
Its tiny space, haphazard decor, and obscure location limit its prospects, but it's made the most of its meagre resources, establishing itself as a friendly and characterful little hangout for those lucky enough to live nearby - and it's an appealing enough oddity to entice us Gulou boys outside the Third Ringroad every once in a while.

Runners-up:  None - lots of new openings this year, but none of them quite cut the mustard for me.


Barperson of the Year

Winner:  Jane at Nearby The Tree
The only bartender in town who still gives me liver-wreckingly generous free pours. (I actually had to ask her to leave some room for the ice the other day!) She laid on a very nice spread for a friend's wake in September as well.

Bar of the Year

Winner:  Modernista
I don't love Modernista, myself. It's got a bit too much of a European vibe for me, the service isn't great, and it's an unfortunate size - just big enough to make you feel self-conscious if there aren't many people in, but too small to cope with the kind of crowds that it regularly attracts, rarely if ever attaining that happy medium of being buzzy but not cramped. But there's the thing - it is regularly drawing large numbers of people; far more, I would think, than any of the other recent openings (and it might well have claimed the prize as best newcomer too, since it only opened towards the end of November last year). And it's built up this following because the owners have made sterling efforts to create and publicise a packed programme of events. Whether it's swing dance classes, film shows, or mah jong evenings, there's almost always something going on at Modernista. Other bars could learn a lesson from that. And they deserve a lot of credit for their achievement.

There we have it. Any comments, queries, abuse??

Lost songs

Nearly a year ago, I mentioned in passing that I had once been involved (behind the scenes rather than onstage) with a school band called Ded Lemming. I wrote most of their lyrics; but, seeing as it is over 30 years ago, I have - perhaps fortunately in most cases - forgotten nearly all of them now. I can't even remember many of the titles or subjects.

Only two of these songs still persist in my memory. One was inspired by a Classical reference (I specialised in Ancient Latin and Greek in the 6th Form, and at university - a quirk of my personal history which has come up on here before once or twice). The celebrated Athenian playwright Aeschylus died, according to legend, on a visit to one of the Greek colonies in Sicily in the 450s BC, when he was quite elderly. It is said that the eagles in those parts were especially fond of eating tortoises, and would break open their shells by carrying them high aloft and then dropping them on to round stones. Aeschylus's bald pate was apparently mistaken by an eagle for a suitable tortoise-cracking rock. Oh boy, I found that a compelling image, and I had long wanted to try to write something (I probably originally aspired to something far more serious and poetic!) about a great writer's brains being dashed out by - and mingled with - the squished innards of a tortoise. When my friends briefly formed this punk band, I found myself penning a jauntily manic number for them on this theme. I'm sure nobody but the handful of Classicists in the school had a clue what it was about; most people just thought it was an engaging nonsense song. The chorus (I don't think there was much to it apart from the chorus) went: 

Never thought that I would wind up lying out here dead,

Lying in the baking sun - with a tortoise in my head,

Tortoise in my head, tortoise in my head, tortoise in my head!

You think that's grotesque?! Well, that was as nothing to our 'greatest hit'. I created a sort of catalogue song which imagined a situation most of my mid-teen schoolmates were familiar with - being left at home alone for the first time by our somewhat mistrustful parents, and being given a long list of rules we shouldn't break (which, of course, we tended to find unduly provocative, and would often treat more as a list of suggestions). I think the idea started off as a fairly straight depiction of this parent-teenager confrontation, but then I started taking it in a wild and surreal direction. The verses had a two part structure, beginning with two lines from a nagging mother issuing prohibitions (our singer did a particularly good - vaguely feminine - anxious whine for this), and then another two of her bratty son sarcastically mimicking her with more bizarre examples of the creatively evil things he might get up to if left unsupervised (the singer did an even better mocking sneer for these bits). The distinction between these two parts became blurred, as the mother's anxieties escalated, and she began to imagine more and more terrible things that her son might do (and her son found it harder and harder to outdo her in his perverse responses). I wish I could summon this back from the void of oblivion; I have a feeling that it was one of the best things I have ever written - in any genre.

Anyhow, I remember the chorus (very catchy!):

Be a good boy, Johnny. Now, see you behave.

And don't put kitty in the microwave.

Don't put kitty in the microwave, don't put kitty in the microwave.

[After a while, we recorded the 'ting' of a microwave finishing its programme, and started using that to give the song an abrupt ending.]

Unexpected tastes

For a final entry in this 'Music Week' (although I'm still playing catch-up after a week of problematic Internet access, hoping to insinuate a few more posts into empty slots earlier in the week - so keep an eye out lower down the page), I thought I'd review some of my slightly more left-field enthusiasms, the musical predilections that people tend to find a bit surprising about me.

A Top Five Unexpected Musical Weaknesses

5)  Early rock'n'roll

And the cheesier, the better! I'm not quite sure when I developed this vice. I suppose I must have had some exposure over the radio when I was a kid, but there was none of this good stuff in my parents' record collection (their tastes were very, very middle-of-the-road). I imagine George Lucas' American Graffiti must have been an important influence; that soundtrack album was probably one of the first (of many) '50s/'60s anthologies I acquired over the years. The Shangri-Las Leader of the Pack epitomises all that is so wonderful - and terrible - about this area of music: cheesy as all hell, yet an utterly irresistible singalong. Here's a 1964 TV performance of the song - ropey sound quality, but worth it for the visuals, especially the hilarious depiction of Johnny the motorcycle rebel. [You can listen to the album version here.]

4)  Henry Rollins

How can anyone not like Henry Rollins? He's so loveably crazy! But sensitive and literate with it. I like quite a lot of American music out at the more punk-ish edge of things (Dead Kennedys a favourite during my college days), but Rollins' work has more depth to it than most of these. Here's the Rollins Band doing Next Time. [Audio only, unfortunately. You can also check out a live video here: terrible picture quality, but a fun performance.]

3)  Country & Western

I mentioned my susceptibility to this yesterday (although I try to keep it hidden around my buddy The British Cowboy, because he proselytises a little too hard). It can be trite and cheesy, yes. But accessibility is not a bad thing. And, thanks to its folk roots, it is distinguished more than most other genres by its tunefulness and its lyrical craft. Hey, beyond just liking C&W, I actually like Canadian C&W. Well, I had a lot of exposure when I lived in Toronto for a year back in the '90s. And the dedicated TV channel there (CMT, I think it's called - Country Music Television) is way better than its American counterpart GAC. This, She's Got The Kind Of Heart That Breaks by Chris Cummings, is one of those earworm songs that got permanently lodged in my head during that year of watching CMT (The Cowboy probably wouldn't even admit this to the C&W fold; too poppy for his taste!). And it's a lovely little video too - a bit of a Gregory's Girl thing going on, with the goofy boys bewitched by the pretty girl who also happens to have superior skills on the hockey rink (so Canadian: they really are all obsessed with ice hockey!). [It's a pity it's such dreadful picture quality (transcribed from a VCR??), but this seems to be all that's available on YouTube at the moment; and likely to be pulled shortly because the record company are such fascists about their videos. As a back-up, here's a nice live performance from 2008.]

2)  African music

Like most Brits of my generation, I got my introduction to this field through the wonderful Sowetan township sounds that Paul Simon incorporated into his Graceland and Rhythm Of The Saints albums in the mid-1980s. That led me to start checking out some compilations of '70s and '80s township bands, as well as, of course, the wonderful Ladysmith Black Mambazo choir who had performed with Simon. A little later, Peter Gabriel's Real World record label started introducing me to people like Youssou N'dour, Geoffrey Oryema, Daby Touré, and the Kenyan nyatiti master Ayub Ogada. And a guy I became friendly with while backpacking around Fiji in the early '90s later sent me a CD of Missa Luba, another tremendous choral record by the Muungano National Choir of Kenya. However, the fountainhead of modern African music - as I only started to discover in the later '90s, not long before his death - was Fela Kuti, the mercurial Nigerian who pioneered the 'Afrobeat' sound, a heady brew of jazz, funk and psychedelia infused with native African rhythms. Here's one of his great instrumentals, Expensive Shit.

And here's a live performance from some time back in the '70s. [You should also check out this great little excerpt from a 1971 documentary about him, shot by legendary drummer Ginger Baker.]

But the top spot today goes to....

1)  Michelle Shocked

I'm sorry - I'm an über-fan. I was completely blown away by her 1988 debut Short Sharp Shocked, and have bought everything else of hers I can get my hands on since. I saw her play live at the Apollo Theatre in Oxford (unaccountably renamed the New Theatre a few years ago) round about 1990, and it was one of the most enthralling shows I've seen (actually, not wonderful all the way through; she was experimenting with a 'big band' sound that didn't really suit her, and wasn't entirely winning over the audience; but then there was an interlude in the middle where the band left the stage and she played three or four songs solo on her guitar - and that was a shivers-down-the-spine experience). She is, I think, possibly the greatest female singer-songwriter of my generation - and certainly the ballsiest, the most politically engaged.

This song, Come A Long Way, is a particular favourite of mine, one that I often play to pep myself up before heading out for the evening. The beautiful tune gives it a very upbeat feel, although the subject - riding around the soulless streets of Los Angeles all day on her motorcycle to try to avoid having it repossessed - is actually rather downbeat.

An autobiographical anecdotal postscript:  In a bar I used to drink at quite a lot during my Oxford days, the student Beer Cellar in New College, they had an entire Shangri-Las album. This was just after CD jukeboxes had started to appear (so, I suppose it must have been during the early '90s, when I was working back in Oxford for a while, rather than when I was an undergraduate in the '80s). I wasn't a member of this college, but a mate of mine had been the elected student Bar Steward there for a while, and I'd hung out drinking with him so often that most of the staff had got to recognise me - and come to assume that I was a member of the college (it was stricter than most in trying to limit access to members only). I was still able to get away with this four or five years later, when I started hanging out there again - this time, in pursuit of a girl! On one occasion, I even managed to persuade them to grant admittance to two of my Oxford Union drinking buddies of the time, passing them off as my father and my younger brother - a somewhat implausible blag, since their ages were ten years either side of mine. But I digress....

Yes, I was fascinated to discover a whole Shangri-Las album - none of which I'd ever heard before, apart from Leader of the Pack, of course. I wasn't sufficiently fond of the group to check out many of the other songs, though. And other punters in the bar were apt to be intolerant even of my frequent selection of Leader of the Pack; I might have provoked a riot if I'd cued up any of their more obscure tracks. Once, I did a bad thing: I succumbed to a sudden mischievous impulse to feed pound coins into the machine until I could select the whole album, 10 or 12 Shangri-Las songs back to back. I never heard them myself, of course; I fled the scene of the crime as soon as Leader of the Pack had finished. And I didn't dare to go back to that bar for quite some time.

Bonus Treat  -  Henry Rollins on modern 'music'

My Song

Oh dear, yes, it's no longer 'acceptable' to admit to liking Gary Glitter songs. The last but one time I was in America, I found his albums had been withdrawn from record stores, and the clerks thought I was a demented pervert to be asking about the status of the stock. His depraved sexual appetites have, it seems, pretty much robbed us of one of the great cheesy highlights of '70s glam rock.

While I deplore his private conduct, I yet regret this spurning of the music. I think a person's creative output takes on a life of its own, and you shouldn't make judgements about it based on the artist's personal life (unless he's actively seeking to promote objectionable ideas or conduct through that creative work, of course). Heck, so many of the great musicians have been wife-beaters, drug abusers, religious fanatics, or people who'd behave unnecessarily snarkily towards wait staff. If we started getting too prissy about this sort of thing, started enquiring too closely into the backgrounds of the people producing the records we listen to and the books we read.... well, we'd have to be spurning a lot of rather good stuff. And silly, fun stuff.

Arriving back in The Jing after two-and-a-half weeks away, this song inevitably broke out of the maximum security compound of my memory to carry out a messy home invasion of my consciousness. I had quite forgotten that it was officially titled Hello, Hello, I'm Back Again. It's always been the refrain (unexpectedly morbid, counter to the general upbeat self-confidence of the song) - Did you miss me (yeah?!) when I was away? I know you didn't miss me at all - that  lingers with me.

You would hope that your absence from your 'local' would leave rather more of a hole, but in fact nobody really notices you're gone.

The Monmouth connection

At the start of the year, I did a little post on the development of my musical tastes in childhood and young adulthood.

I closed that piece by mentioning that accident of birth (I was born in the small Welsh border city of Hereford, and spent my childhood in the even smaller town of Monmouth, 20 miles to the south) may have had a significant influence on the evolution of my interest in music, and I threatened a further post on this at some point. It had slipped my mind for 9 or 10 months, but here it is at last.

For odd reasons lost in the mists of economic history (well, it was never plausibly explained to me, anyway), a record pressing plant was established a little outside of Monmouth (in the 1980s, it transformed into a CD pressing plant). Possibly predating the record plant a little, a recording studio was founded down at the bottom end of the town, in the area known as Rockfield. These studios became quite influential for a while in the '70s: most notably, this was where Queen recorded their landmark albums Sheer Heart Attack and A Night At The Opera  (I remember the studios actually got a mention in the credits on the gatefold sleeve of Night). Nimbus Records also set up shop in the area around about then.

So, there was a lot of activity in the music business in the neighbourhood where I grew up. I never saw any of the members of Queen when they were briefly in town to do those recordings, but I did quite often see people like Les Gray (lead singer of a band called Mud, briefly famous in the early '70s for a song called Tiger Feet - one of the greatest of the cheesy hits of that era, or of any era) and Robert Plant (also a fairly well-regarded vocalist), who bought houses in the area. Mott The Hoople, a band of some note at that time (Queen's first tour of America was supporting Mott! That's what that otherwise incomprehensible lyric in Brian May's Now I'm Here - "Down in the city, just Hoople an' me" - was about!), hailed from Hereford. So did The Pretenders. A decade or so later, EMF emerged from the Forest of Dean, midway between Hereford and Monmouth. Nick Lowe - a less illustrious name, perhaps, but a very influential and respected figure - also lived in the area for a while. I think the first gig I ever saw was Nick playing unplugged in my first local, The Nag's Head, in the early '80s.

Because of the recording connection, and the beautiful rural scenery of the surrounding Wye Valley area, quite a few rock stars acquired country homes round about. But they weren't full-time residents, and you'd only ever spot them once in a blue moon. More interesting to me was the community of session musicians the town attracted - guys who could play guitar or drums like gods, but just didn't have the ambition (or the craziness, or whatever it is that it takes) to want to be in a successful band, who were content just to make a decent living in the studios during the day and then hang out like regular people in the evening. Seeing one of these chaps step up to play on a small pub stage could be an astounding experience.

Robert Plant would usually arrange an end-of-year party for this local music community if he was around. And my brother would usually get invited through a couple of these session men who were drinking buddies of his. And a couple of times he took me along with him. These would be low-key, utterly unadvertised, invitation-only affairs in unremarkable local venues - but they were often quite star-studded, as Robert would inveigle all sorts of rock biz aristocracy to show up and jam. You'd do your best not to act too starstruck; and the booze flowed so freely at these things that you'd soon be struggling to recognise people anyway. But then you'd have a transient spell of lucidity where you'd find yourself saying out loud, "Fuck me! Isn't that The Edge?"

Those were probably two of the greatest shows I've ever been to; but, unfortunately, I don't remember too much about them.

Well, I remember the women. What is it about rock stars that attracts gorgeous women like moths to a flame?? I think I made a fool of myself more than once trying to hit on women who were clearly out of my league at those parties (you know, they might have been married to Jimmy Page, or something...). The memory loss is probably more of a psychological ego-defence strategy than a consequence of over-indulgence in booze and weed.

Aw, just for old times' sake - here's a blast of Tiger Feet.

HBH 305

An old hunger rises:

Desire for oblivion, 

Escape from endless thought.

I think I have now almost completely - no, completely - suppressed the urge to drink, the habituation to think of drinking as a natural or necessary accompaniment to certain activities (like being awake [no, I jest!]). But this does not preclude the occasional resurgence of the urge to be drunk. There's only a circumstantial connection between the two. There are times when I think that if there were a pill I could (safely) take to get off my face, I'd gratefully swallow one. And I had that feeling very strongly last night, when a sudden and deep depression flooded over me.

I have long recognised that my one potential 'problem' with drinking (not an actual problem, I don't think, because I'm well aware of it, and very much on top of it) is its relationship to my depressions. 

I have been ragingly bi-polar since my early teens (if not before: we're less aware of, and so remember less keenly, mood-swings and tantrums when we're very young). And since my late teens or early twenties, I have developed the habit of using alcohol to manage the experience. 

The thing is, I realised quite early on that I don't entirely dislike my depressions. They are a central part of my experience of the world, they feel comfortable and familiar to me; I actually miss them when I haven't had one for a while. Not only does the rest of life seem rosier by comparison (a great consolation to try to focus on if negative feelings at the bottom of the depressive trough start to seem too overwhelming), but sensations and emotions are somehow more vivid, more intense during a depressive episode, and that is something I find stimulating, even pleasurable (although one's thoughts and feelings tend to be directed into very dark corners of the soul when depressed, so it's an unconventional - perhaps perverse - sort of pleasure, inextricably mingled with a profound distress).

For me, what's bad about depression is not the simple fact of it happening at all, but its occasional propensity to stick around for an extended period: I hate the sense of being trapped at the bottom of the trough, unsure of when or how I'm going to get out. I once took a course of SSRIs (not for depression, for a physical ailment; but I knew they were supposed to have a psychotropic impact as well, so I was curious to see how they would affect my depression, which I had been suffering from particularly badly of late), and I absolutely hated what they did to me: they almost completely flattened out my variations in mood, so that I felt stuck in exactly the same state all the time. I suppose people who 'suffer' from depression, without any of the ameliorating thrill of enhanced awareness that I experience, will be grateful to escape from its pit like this, and will interpret their new stable mood state as 'happy', or at least as an acceptable average level of contentment. And perhaps it works better for people who don't run to the bi-polar extremes, who don't balance out their depressions with corresponding spells of exhilaration and euphoria - people who are only gauging the new 'steady state' against the worst sensations they have known, not the best. For me, it was horrendous: I experienced the 'steady state' as being slightly, but significantly, below a reasonable median level; I felt mildly depressed - permanently. But without the heightened sensitivity that usually made depression tolerable for me; and, crucially, without any sense of when I might ever escape from this feeling, without any sense of control over whether I might be able to escape. I missed the emotional rollercoaster. And I missed the sense I usually have that the rollercoaster is not entirely outside of my control, that I can influence how fast I progress through its various stages.

That's where the booze comes in. I use it to ride the rollercoaster. There are other stimuli I can use as well to speed up the ride: cannabis (very occasionally), music (almost invariably - Pink Floyd and The Pogues have probably accompanied me on the ride even more often than whisky has), poetry, certain films, or just reflecting on particularly unhappy experiences in my life. But mostly I've relied on getting myself blind drunk. If I just leave a depression to run its course, it can linger for two or three days, sometimes even a week or more. If I blitz myself with alcohol, it accelerates the whole process; I can be fairly confident that it's going to shoot me out the other side very quickly, and that I'll at least be on the up-slope, if not approaching another euphoric peak, within 24 hours or so. Unfortunately.... the depth of the pit, and the speed of plummeting into it, may also be exaggerated. It seems a price worth paying in order to not be stuck at the bottom too long.

I know many people might see that as a rationalisation of addiction. But I sincerely believe I am not an addictive personality - rather the reverse, if such a thing is possible! If I do have an addiction, it is to depression itself; or to the - I know, possibly unduly romanticized - conception I have of it as a beneficial workout for the psyche, emotionally cathartic and liberating to the imagination. But I'm absolutely confident I don't have any kind of addiction to alcohol.

I have tried both ways of dealing with my depressions, making use of drink and abstaining from it. I prefer using drink, and haven't encountered any negative side-effects from so doing (such as tendency to relapse into depression more quickly, or irritability or loss of concentration... or anything). But, just to be on the safe side, I don't allow it to become my invariable policy; I make a point of enduring some of my depressions without alcohol.

Last night, though? Well, I think I'll keep that to myself, thank you. 

At least I'm feeling rather better today.

Our 'theme song'

Just lately, we've been enjoying a blast of '80s nostalgia down at my local: a number of almost-forgotten tracks from my student days have been starting to come up rather regularly on the music playlist. Who knows how these things happen? Foremost amongst these guilty pleasures has been Twisted Sister's We're Not Going To Take It - an anthem of teenage rebellion which, it seems, I never grow out of.

Bluegrass makes everything better

I was casting around on the Net last week to try to find a song appropriate to announce my return to Beijing, and I couldn't get beyond this (first thoughts are always the most inspired, aren't they?): Return To Dismal Swamp, an up-tempo instrumental number by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.

There's another great version here (founding member of the band, John McEuen, playing with some other musicians on America's Country Music Television), but unfortunately video embedding is not available.

Is it "accurate" to describe this as 'bluegrass'? I'm not an aficionado of the genre, so I really have no idea; if it's got a banjo, that's enough for me...

The 3rd Avenue crawl

It's a curious facet of Manhattan's development that the richest bar-crawling areas are a couple of blocks in from the shore on each side of the island. You might have thought that the riverfront would be prime residential real estate, but in fact most of the shoreline is dominated by docks, and much of the area immediately inshore is given over to warehouses or other industrial use. The high-tone areas are mostly clustered more towards the middle of the island. Close to the river, it's mostly a bit of a wasteland, not much residential property, and what there is often very low-end. It's on the third block in that you start to find a lot of amenities for the working-class population. And so 3rd Avenue and 9th Avenue are the two best bar strips in the city.

The other week I hooked up with former Beijing drinking crony Dr Manhattan. Since he now works in Manhattan, and indeed near the lower middle reaches of 3rd Avenue, we arranged to meet there for a night of debauch.

On a few of my previous excursions to the Big Apple I had stayed in the Vanderbilt YMCA, which is in Mid-Town, in the upper 40s midway between 2nd and 3rd Avenues. The nearest bar I'd discovered on one of those trips, and still one of my favourites in the city, is a no-nonsense Irish boozer called Muldoon's. I therefore nominated that as our initial rendezvous.

Muldoon's is, I believe, unlike so many bars of its kind in America, genuinely Irish rather than faux Irish. The bar staff always sound pretty authentic to me, anyway (and on this occasion, one of them was a dazzlingly pretty blonde girl). And it has something of the subdued, occasionally funereal, atmosphere of pubs in the 'old country', where people slump solitary at the bar, silently contemplating their own thoughts. If you feel yourself in need of a spell of gloomy introspection (and I often do!), this is just the place. It is pretty much the perfect template of a bar for me: a long narrow space, low light, lots of aged wooden fittings, and a LONG wooden bar - just the right height for leaning. 

There's another fairly similar - but rather livelier - Irish bar called O'Neill's a block or two further north, which often has some great traditional musicians playing there. Alas, I didn't get to go there this time because the Doctor was lobbying for us to wander southward. He had his heart set on a bit of country/bluegrass music at a place about sixteen blocks away, but... that's a modest walk, and it was intermittently spotting with rain, so we had to duck into another bar en route to break our journey. There were many to choose from, but I plumped for the endearingly named Black Sheep, another Irish joint, uncannily similar to Muldoon's inside: LONG bar, good selection of Irish whiskies, tasty bar meals, and a chirpy, fresh-off-the-boat barmaid (although a sceptical Dr M wondered if she was in fact a resting actress who was merely putting the accent on; I am reasonably convinced it was authentic). Its distinctive quirk is that the bar top (which must be a good 25 yards long) is entirely covered with 'pennies' (1-cent coins); trying to estimate how many coins there are in total is quite a challenge to booze-fuddled powers of arithmetic.

I could quite happily have spent a longer part of the evening there - the curly fries were excellent and the barmaid was charming - but Dr Manhattan would have his music, so we pressed on to the Rodeo Bar at the corner of 27th Street, an expansive C&W joint that I think my friend The British Cowboy would approve of. Most of the space is given over to a very decent looking BBQ restaurant (although I didn't have a chance to sample the food), but the narrower left-hand side of the establishment is more of a bar, with the long room focused on a small stage at the far end. There are live music shows every night, mostly of a country-ish flavour, and the majority of them FREE. The Dr and I were fortunate enough to catch the excellent Dysfunctional Family Jazz Band (you can check out some of their music here). I found myself becoming rather smitten with their gorgeous singer Melissa, but I gather she's married  to - or divorced from?? - one of the other band members, or something....

The most memorable thing about the Rodeo, though, is that in the music bar section their bar is actually... a chuck wagon. Yep, they have rolled a complete (well, they might have removed the engine) mobile taco stall into the bar to dispense their drinks from - check it out.

This had been a thoroughly excellent evening: three great bars, cheap drinks, superb free music - not a single disappointment. Ah, but it wasn't over yet. Oh no, this is Dr Manhattan we're talking about....

A culinary 'Unsuitable Role Model'

How time flies! It's nearly three years since the great Keith Floyd passed on, and I've been meaning to do an Unsuitable Role Models post in his honour ever since - and continually forgetting to get down to it.

Floyd was one of the great British eccentrics, an intermittently successful restaurateur who, in early middle age, fortuitously found his ideal milieu on television. Long before cooking became hip - essential, unavoidable - on our screens, he had one of the first really successful TV cookery shows in the UK, starting in the early or mid-80s (round about the time I started at university) and continuing for a decade or more. He amply conveyed his passion for food - and drink - but with a sincerity and an absence of pretension that few of his successors have been able to match.

He played up to his reputation of being an avid drinker, almost invariably having a glass of wine in hand when on camera and making it a running joke that he favoured recipes which called for a glass or two, so that he would have an excuse to glug the rest of the bottle himself while he cooked. On more than a few occasions, he appeared to become significantly stotious during the filming of a sequence - although he may have been play-acting just a bit.

The other distinctive feature of his shows was that he shunned the studio, choosing instead often rather challenging outdoor locations: half-way up a windswept Welsh mountain, a barbecue pit in the middle of the jungle, the galley of a storm-tossed trawler. And there didn't seem to be too much of the 'cheating' that we now regard as inevitable in such shows: the cooking was filmed in extended takes, and 'mistakes' were left in (his teasing monologues with his never-seen-or-heard cameramen ["Clive", "Richard"], constantly chivvying them to try to keep up with things in these hectic and demanding environments, was another of his endearing trademarks). It was seat-of-the-pants stuff, almost always a bit chaotic and occasionally threatening to spiral out of control; but the food always looked pretty damn good at the end of it all. For sheer bloody entertainment value, I don't think there's been a better cookery show before or since.

I hardly watched any TV in my late teens and early twenties, but Floyd was essential viewing for my generation. He was a terrific populariser of good eating, and he was the epitome of joie de vivre.

Here he is cooking up some beef...

And here making a fruity cocktail...

He had good taste in music, too. As the theme tune for his series on the BBC he chose The Stranglers' demented instrumental Waltzinblack.

When he died in September 2009, The Guardian rounded up a nice selection of tributes to the great man from today's celebrity chefs.

Time is tight

And ain't that the truth!

I have been hoping to put together a collection of musical highlights from the career of legendary bassist Donald 'Duck' Dunn (of Booker T & the M.G.s and Blues Brothers Band fame), who died this May, for the upcoming holiday weekend (7th/8th seems to be when most of the Independence Day shenanigans are going down this year), but... well, I was without Internet altogether last weekend; and I am kind of busy this week - catching up with friends, sampling barbecued food, rekindling my amour fou with beer, and so on.

However, early researches turned up this gem, the all too appropriately named Time Is Tight, one of Booker T & the M.G.s' signature tunes. This is a superb live performance from 1970, opening a concert in Oakland for Creedence Clearwater Revival (the beardy fellows glimpsed  a couple of times mooching in the wings, watching the number slack-jawed with delight, are John Fogerty and co.).

A fuller post of songs in which Duck's bass played a key role will be forthcoming... shortly. For now, sit back and enjoy this.

The one day I might miss The Jing

Yes, today it's 'dazeFEAST II, an even bigger and better re-run of last year's stupendous all-day music party put together at 2 Kolegas by Badr and Ruby, stalwarts of the BeijingDaze music blog. Something like 15 different acts on the bill this time, I think, including many of Beijing's finest - SUBS, Residence A, The Amazing Insurance Salesmen, and The Flying Mantas.

Unfortunately, if Weather Underground is to be believed (it often isn't!), the weather today is going to be fairly grotty, with a high chance of heavy thunderstorms tonight. Let's hope that blows over. On the evidence of last year's event - one of the nicest days I've seen in a decade in Beijing, sandwiched in amongst a run of quite vile ones - I suspect Badr has some pull with the boys who operate The Weather Machine (actually, that would be a pretty good band name, especially in Beijing!).

Oh well, I'm sure even a downpour won't spoil the fun; it'll just make it more Woodstock!

Good luck, folks! Have a WILD time!!

Sorry I can't be with you for this one. I look forward to reading reports.

A decade of change (Part III)

The last ten years have seen a lot of changes in Beijing, and in its bar scene. I've reflected on these transformations a number of times before (for example, in considering the evolution of my own drinking habits, in reminiscing about the SARS summer, in categorizing the various expat 'types', and in satirizing the life-cycle of the 'hidden gem' bar). However, having just gone through my China Meltdown Moment and quit the country, possibly for good, this seems like an apt time for one last review of the major nightlife phenomena I witnessed during my time in The Jing.

This is the final part of a three-part series begun last Tuesday and Thursday.

The burgeoning of the music scene (and the bursting of the bubble?)

Back in the day.... we had Get Lucky bar (which was awful), Nameless Highland (which was rather good, but remote and difficult to find), River Bar (which was a bit small), and What Bar (which was - is - tiny). That was about it for live music venues. All except What had succumbed to the chai by the mid-Noughties. Yugong Yishan forerunner Loupe Chante was great, but lasted barely a year from its 2003 opening. But then, in fairly quick succession, we got the first Yugong Yishan appearing in the Gongti car park, 13 Club and the (recently demised) D-22 opening up almost side by side near Tsinghua University, and the Tango/Star Live club next to Ditan Park becoming the city's first purpose-built 'medium size' venue (early summer 2005; Yugong and Star might have been a bit earlier). The following year, music came to the hutongs, with Jiangjinjiu opening on Bell Tower Square and Jianghu off Nanluoguxiang; perhaps the greatest of all Beijing's cosy, divey music bars, 2 Kolegas, first opened its doors that year too, and the city's best music venue (at least for its sound) Mao Live House came shortly afterwards.

Unfortunately, this brief flowering of the scene got squelched by the approach of the Beijing Olympics: all music festivals in the capital, and very nearly all outdoor performances of any kind, were blocked for nearly two years; foreign acts found it hard to get visas and permits; music bars suffered a lot of harassment about their licences. Not surprisingly, no-one else wanted to try and open a new music bar for a while. However, after three years or more of arrested development, 2010 saw another wave of expansion, with small venues like Zui Yuefang, VA Bar, Hot Cat Club, Tushuguan, and Gulou 121 suddenly appearing, as well as new mid-size event venues Mako Live and The One. And now we've got Temple and (D-22 offspring) XP as well, establishing the Gulou area as the centre of Beijing's music scene (despite rather than because of the proximity of the new Yugong Yishan, which has completely dominated the scene for visiting foreign acts for over 4 years now, but is - I'm sorry to say - a truly terrible venue).

Perhaps, though, as with the proliferation of music festivals in the last few years, Beijing's and China's rock scene isn't yet strong enough to warrant this many outlets: most of the newer openings have failed to establish themselves very convincingly. I worry that this profusion of venues may actually be counter-productive, tending to foster ennui as we see the same rosters of bands appearing again and again all over the city.

The sudden escalation of cover charges (almost completely unknown 7 years ago, and rarely more than 30rmb until about 4 years ago, but now rarely less than 50rmb and often 80rmb or 100rmb) is also harming attendances (many of the visiting foreign acts at Yugong are now failing to attract any Chinese punters - not because they haven't heard of the acts, but because they can't afford the tickets); and I'm not convinced that it's for the good of the bands either (anything that diminishes attendance is ultimately bad for the bands; they ought to be cannier about making money for themselves off merchandise sales, rather than demanding a  percentage of the door take).

The slow development of a service ethic
Back in the early Noughties The Den was the only bar that had a consistently good level of service and English-language skills among its waitresses (though less so with its barmen or doormen). In most of the other foreigner-targeted bars, many of the staff spoke no English at all, few spoke more than a handful of stumbling phrases, and service standards were... pretty wayward. Amazingly, The Den is still leading the field 10 or 12 years on, but the rest of the scene has been catching up, particularly in the last 5 years: you can expect a functional level of English from almost all customer-facing staff in Western bars and restaurants now. The service standards, though, are still decidedly iffy. Staff training may have improved, staff motivation (and, hopefully, remuneration) may have improved; the available talent pool has expanded enormously (an awful lot of college graduates are now willing to start off in low-level F&B jobs; but the migrant workers with little education who study English for hours in their spare time to get a better job are the ones who really impress me); but a service ethic is still largely absent, I fear. It takes a very long time to develop that kind of culture.

The decline of the taxi service

The number of subway stations has gone up four- or five-fold... but there's still very little coverage across the city centre, and the service starts grinding to a halt around 10.30pm. The buses run an hour or so later at night than they used to, but that still means there's nothing after 11pm. Late-night public transport in this city is non-existent: revellers who've strayed too far from home are utterly dependent on the taxi fleet. This was not a problem at all when there were 80,000 taxis and only 20,000 expats (and hardly any local Chinese who wanted to use cabs late at night). Now the cab fleet has shrunk to about 65,000 (last unofficial estimate I heard), while the number of expats is probably close to or above 100,000 (and huge numbers of young Chinese are now using the new subway lines to venture in from the far suburbs for a night out at the weekends). On top of this, taxi rates have been frozen by the government for the last six years (largely in order to manipulate the official cost-of-living index), with the result that drivers are now struggling to make a living - and hence ill-tempered, misanthropic, and, at busy times, frequently inclined to turn down rides, go 'off meter' to demand exorbitant ad hoc fares, or simply vent their latent xenophobia by spurning (or attempting to run over) any foreigners who try to flag them down. In the past year or two, it has become extraordinarily difficult to get a taxi at peak periods (5pm-7pm or 11pm-1am), and it is often pretty nigh impossible (for a foreigner) to get a taxi from the Sanlitun area at almost any time of the day. I sympathise with the cabbies' plight: bumping up the fares by 20% or 30% (and perhaps introducing tipping??) would be a fair and reasonable solution to the problem.

Oh my, this is far cry from the good old days. Until a few years ago, I'd almost never had to wait more than 15 seconds for a cab, at any time of day, in any part of the city (though, admittedly, I was never trying to get out of the CBD in the rush hour). Recent arrivals find that impossible to credit, but I assure you it is quite true.

I fear the current situation will exacerbate the Balkanization of the Beijing nightlife scene. It's just becoming way too much mafan to travel across town for a night out, with severe uncertainties about how you might get back. People are starting to restrict themselves to bars they can walk home from.

Fragmentation

Several new bar/restaurant areas have grown up across the city during the past 10 years: in Wudaokou, for the student crowd; in the Lido area, catering to the wealthier expats who live in the north-east, or venture in from Shunyi at the weekends on shopping expeditions; in Shuangjing, suddenly a favoured ghetto for the less well-off expat; in the heart of the city around Nanluoguxiang and Houhai (and now rapidly expanding north through the Gulou area and eastwards along the Fangjia and Wudaoying hutongs). People still talk about 'Sanlitun' as the city's nightlife centre, but it's shrunk to the single cramped thoroughfare of 'Back Street' - Sanlitun Houjie and the Tongli Building. And that's overrun with raucous youngsters, and starting to get a very bad reputation for fights and street crime. The Beijing bar scene today is much broader than that; as a whole, it is arguably much classier than it was 10 years ago, and certainly a lot more expensive; it's also become far more differentiated and geographically spread out. There has never again been - and probably never will be - a great mixing pot like the old Sanlitun South Street, which could bring together the entire expat population into one narrow space (if not all into exactly the same bars), regardless of age, income, or nationality. I rather miss that sometimes. But not as much as I miss a 10-kuai gin & tonic.

A Japanese lesson [Great Love Songs - 32]

I was a huge Queen fan in my youth. Still am, I suppose. 

Odd how they seem to have passed many people by, even in England, even amongst the generation who enjoyed the prime exposure to them in the '70s (which was when they produced all of their best music, though they continued to be the best live act in the world throughout the '80s, and gained a new audience for themselves in 1985 when, after a few 'wilderness' years, they saved the Wembley 'Live Aid' concert with a showstopping set). A lot of people didn't quite get it. Or they liked it for a while, and then became embarrassed at themselves, dismissed this music as a youthful folly and moved on to other things. Queen never really took off big time in the States at all.

Maybe people couldn't take the sheer bloody exuberance of them, the orgiastic parties, the publicity photo shoots with dozens of naked girls on bicycles... There was probably a certain amount of homophobia working against their flamboyantly camp frontman Freddie Mercury (in fact, I was initially a bit uncomfortable with the band myself, but was inspired to start liking them because they outraged my father so!). Maybe some people were alienated by their intellect too: they were notoriously the 'cleverest' band of that generation, pretty much unique at that time in all being college educated (heck, Brian May was working on a PhD in Astrophysics when the band broke big in the early '70s; he eventually completed it 35 years later, and is currently the Chancellor of Liverpool University). They could all play multiple instruments, and all contributed strong songs to the group, too.

Maybe some people were overwhelmed or repelled by their musical lushness and diversity: they dabbled in such a range of styles - metal, punk, rockabilly, folk, jazz, and eventually synth-pop. And, of course, opera. And while some of these experiments were more successful than others, none of them stunk the place up. It's really hard to think of a poor Queen song, at least from their first 8 albums. Most bands are guilty of using a lot of sub-standard filler to pad out an album. Even The Beatles, I find, don't have that many albums that you can comfortably listen to the whole way through: next to their truly great songs, the weaker ones stand out painfully. But with Queen, even the 'filler' is quite often exceptionally rich. Certainly with the great trilogy of albums that launched them to mega-stardom, Sheer Heart Attack, A Night At The Opera, and A Day At The Races, I can listen to them right through again and again. [All three of these deserve to be in the top few dozen of any all-time ranking, but it's a measure of the snobbery directed against the band from much of the musical establishment that Rolling Stone only grudgingly included A Night At The Opera in the mid-levels of its notorious '500 Greatest Albums Of All Time' list.]

And when you get to the end of A Day At The Races, you find this haunting oddity, Teo Torriatte - a brooding melancholic love ballad from Brian May which erupts into a surgingly anthemic chorus entirely in Japanese. It's ostensibly based on a Japanese poem introduced to them by their translator the first time they toured there. And Freddie, of course, could get a crowd of 50,000 non-Japanese passionately singing along with every word. All true Queen fans know at least a dozen or so words of Japanese.

It perhaps went down even better with a Japanese audience. Here are Freddie and the boys performing it at the Budokan, c. 1979. (Or you can listen to the album version here.)

Viva Mexico!

I had been planning to hold a Cinco de Mayo party this year, but... I have been in too much of a paralysing funk about my imminent - possibly permanent - departure to get down to any of the hard graft of preparation. I wasn't even completely sure that this Saturday wasn't going to be a 'make-up' working day after the three-day May Day holiday (since I don't have a regular job, I seldom get to hear about the government's quaint edicts on  'holidays' and 'non-holidays'). And I had pretty much renounced the whole party thing after the mass spurning of my last housewarming party - an unhappy indicator, I thought, of the general decline in manners that seems to be manifesting itself among long-time Beijing residents. Maybe I'll try to do something next week. Maybe. If the weather stays nice.

At least this leaves me free to go off on a merry tequila binge around some of my favourite bars today.

And my music-mad pal, Ruby, occasional collaborator on the BeijingDaze music blog, is celebrating her birthday tonight by inviting three of her favourite Beijing bands - Amazing Insurance Salesmen, Residence A, and Twinkle Star - to join the On Fires, the Aussie band she's been squiring around China for the past couple of weeks, for their last big show at MAO Live House. That should be a blast.

And to warm up, here's some suitably May 5th-themed musical fun: Antonio Banderas accompanying Mexican musical heroes Los Lobos in The Song of the Mariachi, the theme from Robert Rodriguez's wonderful action romp Desperado (so, frequent glimpses of Salma Hayek in the accompanying video of clips from the film - swoon!).