The Library Bar

I have once before mentioned on here that one of my favourite hangouts of the past couple of years has been a bar in central Beijing that is also a library (readers with over-active memories may recall that it prompted a comment from a random visitor to the effect that surely the books were at risk of suffering drink-related accidents, viz. being covered in vomit). Indeed, my young companion The Choirboy has taken to calling the place The Library Bar, which is admirably descriptive. Its actual name, however, is The Bookworm - though most of us regulars refer to it more succinctly as The Worm.

It has been going for several years now, but originally the project was just to establish a lending library of secondhand books for the expat community, and it was hosted by a succession of independent bars/restaurants. It changed location a few times; sometimes, I think, losing a significant number of its books along the way (its last partner, re-opened in new premises after a chai [demolition order] on the old, has now mysteriously established a library of its own). However, a while back - in the summer of '05, I think it must have been - The Worm finally established a venue of its very own. And it's a lovely space, large and airy, with a high, high ceiling and glass roof in the main bar area; and a pleasant if somewhat windswept roof garden for the nice days of early summer. A great location, too: right in the middle of the Sanlitun bar district, mid-way between the 2nd and 3rd Ringroads on the fashionable east side of town.

The Worm's formidable proprietress, a British long-time expat called Alex Pearson, claims (just a tad disingenuously, I'm sure) that she's really not interested in the F&B business but is driven by the ideal of creating the sense of a literary salon, a little haven of calm for the beleaguered intellectual in the heart of this hectic, grimy, go-getting city. In addition to the library, it hosts a poetry group, a couple of book clubs, the occasional wine tasting, and frequent book launches and speaker meetings. In the past couple of weeks I have been to see the hip and kooky young German forensic pathologist Mark Benecke (he has a great - not-for-the-squeamish - website) explaining why some people believe in vampires, American amateur 'Buddhologist' Bill Porter recounting stories of his investigations into the continuing hermit tradition in Chinese Buddhism and Daoism, amusing Aussie poet Peter Bukowski (inspired by but no relation to Charles) reading some of his work, and genial Irish raconteur Paddy Barry describing his epic sailing trip around the North Pole (the first ever westerly circumnavigation within the Arctic Circle). Tons of fun.

Central location, cosy environment, and good wi-fi facilities ensure that it is a favourite spot for many people to work, and particularly for Beijing's legion of foreign journalists. And, all in all, it is a great place for randomly bumping into weird and fascinating people, as well as for more targeted networking, or for just running into old friends by happy chance. It's quite uncanny, actually: I have scarcely ever been in there without bumping into at least one person I know; and if there's a popular event on, it's quite likely there'll be at least half a dozen familiar faces I have to chat to. (In fact, sometimes, when I'm in one of my unsociable moods, this becomes a reason for avoiding the place!)

Also, I fear The Worm may be my last chance for meeting a romantic partner, since it boasts such a high traffic of gorgeous foreign women, many of whom are young and single... or not-too-old, and 'available'. (I continue to be stubbornly averse to the local girls, which severely limits my opportunities to find a girlfriend.) Of course, it's a little style-cramping that the place is almost always full of friends, exes, and thwarted crushes of the past....

Yet aside from the social opportunities, the eye-candy, the comfort of the thousands of books lining the walls, the great events, the eye-candy.... it's also a great bar: the decor and atmosphere are a little too bright and swish and modern for my taste, but it's very comfortable, the staff are nice, and the prices are not too high. And they do have by far the best selection of single malts in town. (And back in their first year, they were only about $5 for a hugely generous free-pour - probably a double-measure, at least; quite a bargain! Now, alas, the prices have crept up a bit - they were probably losing money before.) Now that the dry and dusty autumn weather is bringing the annual return of the dreaded 'Beijing Throat', regular doses of this delicious medicine become obligatory.

Enough gushing, Froog! Very well, in the interests of a balanced review, I will say that I find the food is (though alleged by some to have improved a lot recently) disappointing and best avoided: it's overpriced and wildly inconsistent. Also, promptings of the libido aside, I've always been rather wary of places that attract such a predominantly - almost exclusively - expat crowd; I didn't come to live in a foreign country so that I could spend all my time in a protective bubble of pretend-home, insulated from anything Chinese. And these days, the place is in danger of getting just too darned popular for its own good - I looked in there last Sunday afternoon, hoping for a quiet drink and an opportunity to get stuck into my new novel; but it was absolutely heaved out, and far too noisy for me to read there; so I had to head elsewhere instead. Boo!

So, it's not all wonderful with The Bookworm. But I do rather like the place. Hell, I'd be lost without it!

And this, by the way, if you take Froogville and the Barstool together, was my 1,000th post. Time for a celebratory beer, I think....

HBH 49

Giving up beer is hard

Cheaper than water,
Longed-for lift to the spirits;
A cosy habit.

Yep, I have been attempting to give up - or at least cut down on - drinking beer for the past month or so, as part of my marathon-training regime, but somehow it's just not been happening. I had a really firm resolve (once upon a time, I forget exactly when) that I was going to go completely dry for a month after my birthday this weekend.... but I fear I'm not very confident of sticking to that any more.

"Willpower is the first casualty of middle age."

Inflation, by other means

Remarkably enough, the price of a locally-brewed beer here in Beijing is still exactly the same as it was back when I first arrived more than 5 years ago. OK, these days there's a rather higher percentage of grubby little restaurants that fancy themselves to be just genteel enough to warrant charging 3 kuai a bottle (about 40 cents) rather than the base rate of 2 kuai..... but basically there's been no movement on price in all that time. There have been quite big jumps in the cost of most other daily staples, but beer..... beer has seemed immune to these unfortunate side-effects of economic boom.

Except that...... heck, I'm sure the big bottle of Yanjing pijiu used to hold 675ml back in the good old days. But a couple of years or so ago, a lot of the bottles suddenly appeared to have been scaled down to 645 or 640ml. And just recently, a new standard bottle has appeared, of a paltry 600ml. The alcohol content has been slightly reduced too (and it never was all that potent). BOO!

Oh, they've done it very craftily as well - the elegant design of the bottle, the subtle thickening of the glass: it's really not conspicuously smaller than the old ones. But I am starting to notice that I can get through one a good 10% faster.....

Inflation by stealth - only in China would they conceive of such a thing! Or do my readers know of similar skullduggery elsewhere in the world?

The Bullingdon Arms

Ah, The Bullingdon - or The Bully, as it was generally known. I confess I was just a little intimidated by it when I first encountered the place as a student. It wasn't at all one of the rougher or more hostile pubs in East Oxford; but all the pubs in East Oxford had the reputation of being at least a little bit rough, and decidedly student-averse. And The Bully was - at the time - flamboyantly, aggressively Irish as well, which added an extra air of potential trouble to it. (I haven't now been back there for some years, but I'm sure I heard some time ago that it had undergone a radical personality swap with another pub in that neighbourhood, and had transformed itself into a West Indian pub. Must go back and check that out some time.)

It wasn't long, though, before I began to spend more and more time out east in the Cowley-Iffley triangle, and it came to be one of my favourite parts of the city - in large part precisely because students were comparatively thin on the ground there. And so I began to become familiar with, and even comfortable in some of these rather unwelcoming bars that I'd once been so nervous of entering, they became my favourite refuges.

I think I really started warming up to The Bully in my 3rd year (of 5, arguably 6....) - which was a kind of delayed 'gap year' (hey, I called it 'sabbatical', they called it 'rustication'). I was living in East Oxford, not far away; and for several months I had a job at the despatching warehouse of the publishers, Basil Blackwell's, which was just around the corner. So.... it had become my local patch; and I was a regular working guy now, not a bloody student any more. I felt safe enough going in there; I felt entitled. Friday lunchtime drinks in The Bully with colleagues on the monthly payday became quite a regular little indulgence for a while (well, either there or the next-along Ampney Cottage - but let's not confuse things).

Having established that necessary initial degree of recognition and acceptance there, it soon became a regular highlight of my traditional St Patrick's day pub crawl (usually in the company of The Bookseller, of course; and I think at least once, a few years later, in the company of The British Cowboy). The landlord, I remember, used to celebrate his national identity on that day by wearing a green blazer and an orange bow-tie. Ah, St Pat's in The Bully - there was usually a free pot of Irish stew on the bar, a decent fiddle band playing in the corner.... and one of the best pints of Guinness you could find in Oxford (all the better for being heavily discounted on that night).

Two particular memories stand out from my trips to The Bully (probably not that many trips in all, truth be told).

St Patrick's Night - 1987, I think it must have been. I'm on the traditional pub crawl with my mate Richard (yes, the one who originally lured me to China all those years ago), who happens to be living in the vicinity himself that year. We arrive at The Bully mid-evening, just as the band is about to get going. And the place is PACKED, fuller than I've ever seen it. There is scarcely a square foot of free floorspace. But Richard decides...... he wants to play darts. We had both liked the game from childhood, and had recently got into a habit of having a few games together whenever we were out having a drink. But neither of us was really very good, to be honest. The idea of playing in front of any onlookers at all usually unsettled me deeply. The idea of playing in front of hundreds, many of whom we had had to ask to make space in front of the board (many of whom were, indeed, still so close to the board that they were in acute danger of being maimed by any wild throws or unlucky rebounds) elicited something very close to FEAR.

But, somehow or other, this extreme stress focused our minds wonderfully. We were quite happy to quit after a single game, to let the crowd expand back into the corner by the dartboard, because we both realised that we would probably never play as well again in our entire lives. We had, by some amazing quirk of fate, managed to look competent in front of this teeming and potentially hostile crowd. No, more than that, we had managed to look good; we had managed to look almost like professionals. I think we both hit at list one treble-20 with each visit to the oche, scoring consistently around 100; and then Richard, as soon as he got on a double, nailed it with his first or second dart. I think it might well have been a 15-dart finish, or maybe even a little better. And I was hot on his heels the whole way, having started second. I don't think either of us had ever come close to doing that before - or would ever do so again. One brief, shining moment.

The other great attraction of The Bully was its tiny snug around the back. The walls were festooned with Gaelic football jerseys. There were two (or was it three?) pumps for Guinness behind the bar, and nothing else. And there was a fantastic jukebox, full of old '50s and '60s classics. I don't recall quite how this came about (though, obviously, the consumption of large amounts of alcohol will have played a part), but on one occasion I think Richard and The Bookseller and I were crammed in there with two or three random strangers when one of us had the idea of putting on Chain Gang, the classic song by R&B great Sam Cooke (it was probably me; I was going through a big Sam Cooke phase at the time). And we all joined in. The song is well suited to such impromptu group performances, since it includes so many discrete elements: we left someone who could actually more-or-less sing to try to carry Sam's falsetto part; there was a big guy in the corner who lent his throaty bass to introducing the chorus with a lampshade-rattlingly-deep "Well, don't you know...."; while the rest of us joined in on "... that's the sound of the men working on the chain ga-a-ang"; we also provided the rhythmic background grunting of the convict labourers ("oooh - hah; oooh - hah") and mimicked the clang of their pickaxes with pens or cutlery rapped against the side of empty pint sleeves.

We had so much fun, we did it again. And possibly even a third time.

Simple pleasures.

The importance of beer - a bon mot

"You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer."

Frank Zappa (1940-1993)

I mentioned last week on Froogville that Zappa had been appointed as a 'cultural ambassador' for the new Czech Republic by President Havel in 1990. They definitely have beer. And a good national football team. I assume they have an airline too - but that somehow seems so much less important.

A Glorious Pharmacy postscript

I just had a check on YouTube to see if there was any footage of the band. Alas, no.

There is, however, this brief clip of saxophonist Tie Qiao and guitarist/vocalist Xiao He chatting outside the 2Kolegas music bar. (I have no idea what they're saying, but they're such a cool pair of dudes it's quite fun watching them anyway. This may be of more interest, though, to those of you with a good level of Chinese.)

Ooooh, and there's this - a snatch of Xiao He playing a solo spot recently at 13 Club. Now, this is good.

Yet another LATE night

The stupendous Glorious Pharmacy reunion (I'm still dumbfounded as to how Li Tieqiao is able to torture such extreme sounds out of his tenor sax!) was done and dusted before midnight last night, but.... well, there were a lot of people I had to stop and say hi to; and then it seemed like a nice night for a stroll around the lakes (a very indirect route home... but there were actually stars to be seen last night, and that hardly ever happens in Beijing); and that led to a stopping into the 'Haiku Bar' for 'just the one'.....

So, that's now 3 nights in a row that I've got by on about 4 or 5 hours of sleep. Oh dear.

Glorious indeed!

After the cumulative exhaustion of three gig nights (and two nights of far too little sleep) in succession, and the anticlimax of Friday's shitfest at D-22, I really shouldn't have been at it again last night.

But.... well, it was a leaving party for some good friends.

And it was perhaps a one-and-only, last-ever chance to see Glorious Pharmacy play together.

And they did not disappoint - an absolutely mesmerising performance. Mentally exhausting for us, though: long, complex, challenging, amazingly intense and largely improvised pieces, with hardly any breaks: there was more music in their 70-minute set than you'd get from most bands in 3 hours. These guys looked remarkably chirpy and relaxed at the end of it, as if they could quite happily have done another hour or two - but were simply in a hurry to pack up and get back home to their families. The audience, on the other hand, were completely drained. Remarkable stuff.

I do hope they play together again some time.

Not such a good night

It was probably a mistake to get so excited about the idea of going to another SUBS gig. It's only a few weeks since I last saw them, and that was a cracking show - hard to top. And they're playing all over the place this month, so there will be plenty more opportunities to catch them.

Schlepping all the way out to Haidian - at the end of a particularly long and exhausting week - was not really a good idea. Especially since I couldn't find anyone to go with me. And it was at D-22, which, as you may have gathered, is my least-favourite music bar in Beijing.

Why do I hate thee? Let me count the ways.

1) It's too small. Positively claustrophobic.

2) It can be difficult to see anything - unless you get right to the front, or look down from the balcony.

3) The sound is lousy.

4) The equipment keeps going on the blink: I lost count of the number of times they lost one or other of the microphones last night.

5) The service is terrible. (The staff always seem to be too busy chatting to friends, chatting to each other, watching the show, or just generally zoning out to actually pay any attention to people who might, you know, be trying to buy a drink.)

6) There's a cloying smugness about the place - "ooh, aren't we cool?" No.

7) The clientele is becoming almost exclusively laowai (foreigners). Worse, they're almost exclusively students of Chinese from the numerous Universities in the area. I hate fucking students!

8) They start the show hopelessly late (even by Beijing standards).

9) Before the main band comes on, you have to listen to 2 hours of COMPLETE SHITE.

No, I didn't have a lot of fun last night. Because SUBS' frontwoman Kang Mao is a bit of a screamer, the powers-that-be seemed to have decided that this should be the theme for the night and had rounded up three support bands who bawl wordlessly into their microphones. It seems there is a whole musical sub-genre here of which I had been previously unaware. It almost makes me appreciate rap (previously my least favourite brand of music), which at least has rhythm and phrasing and the occasional moments of intelligibility - rather than just a continuous stream of vocal noise. With Kang Mao, the words are still (sometimes, at least) comprehensible, and the shouting conveys emotion. With these guys, it was just like: "Hey, watch me wreck my vocal cords!"

The final support band could at least play a bit (a kind of thrash metal, played on a pair of bass guitars); although they did go on a bit, and the meaningless vocals were extremely wearing (I thought for a moment that they might be singing in something like Icelandic, but no: it was just a kind of manic throat-singing scat). The first two were just dismal, but mercifully brief.

So, yes, I was bored and irritable (and parched) long before SUBS finally got going at about 1.30am, and I only stayed for a few songs. KM was as exuberant as ever, but I think they were a bit inhibited by the size of the venue, and by the size of the stage (it really is a postage stamp: no room for her to leap around as she usually likes to! I rather think that video clip I posted the other week must have been shot at somewhere like WuMing GaoDi; it doesn't look like D-22). I didn't get the feeling it was going to be one of their great shows.

It was quite fun, though, to be two yards away from her, and gaze deep into her eyes as she yells, "Die, motherfucker, die!" Yes, that's rock'n'roll.

A new record

I have commented before on the crappy service at D-22, but here's another little postscript to that.

It is possible to stand at the bar there for one-and-a-half hours with an empty glass in front of you - and not have anyone ask you if you want another drink.

Actually, I was quite grateful, because their draft beer was skanky and I am terminally bored with bottled bloody Tsingtao. And I need to be pretty careful with my spending too at the moment.

However, this does represent a staggering new low in the annals of 'bad service in China'.

Another great night in Jianghu

I always have a great time when my favourite jazz guitar duo, Dan and Nico, play - although I am in danger of having seen them too much: I was afraid I knew their repertoire inside and out now.

But last night, there were a few new things, a few surprises. Not least the extended line-up for the second set - joined by friends on accordion, viola, and a wonderfully twangy 5-stringed acoustic bass.

And La Famille Nico were in the audience too.

I had arranged specially to have today off work (well, OK, it was forced upon me by the travelling schedule of my MD, but...... I am claiming it was my plan), which gave me a little more freedom to kick back, drink more, stay out longer. But heck, the guys were starting a third set just before 2am. Part of me would have liked to stay up all night; but part of me also knew that I would be awake before 8am this morning, no matter when I turned in, and that I would suffer if I didn't get at least some sleep. So.... I slunk off after one or two more songs. And I'm feeling rough this morning.

And I have a lunch date a little later, so I must try to get myself energised again....

HBH 48

Staying up too late

Music charms the clocks,
Halts time, defers tomorrow
- Steals away our sleep.

Gig-tastic!!

Oh, my - it's an exciting and hectic few days we have coming up.

Tonight I'm planning to indulge in a Jianghu session for the first time in a month or two (I've seen my guitar buddies Dan & Nico at a few other places, like Salud, recently, but not there - the fantastic, tiny courtyard bar which has become their spiritual home).

As I've already mentioned, the fantastic SUBS are playing tomorrow night at a small club up in Wudaokou. That's a must-see.

If I've recovered from that.... Saturday offers an embarrassment of riches. The traditional Indian musicians I mentioned last night are playing an afternoon gig in Ritan Park (which I might just about be able to shoehorn into my schedule), and then later are supposed to be jamming with my favourite Xinjiang-flavoured jazz trio Panjir at the Stone Boat (which I'll have to pass on, sadly). There's also a very tempting line-up at the new Yugong Yishan club, with good bands Joyside and The Scoff (I'm afraid I'll have to pass on that too).

The reason I have to spurn these two very attractive gig options is that Glorious Pharmacy are playing in my 'hood. This is an event - sort of on a par with a Velvet Underground reunion! The Pharmacy (also sometimes translated as Glamorous Pharmacy - I've no idea what the Chinese is, I'm afraid) were a loose affiliation of eccentric geniuses who produced largely improvised, highly experimental music that fused Western jazz/folk/rock with traditional Chinese elements. I only managed to catch them once in their heyday, at the old Yugong Yishan, but it was one of the most brilliant shows I've seen here. The heart of the group was the delightfully batty Xiao He (who I have seen several times solo over the past year) - but he just got a bit too weird for everyone else, and the group split up to pursue individual projects a couple of years or so ago. I have seen them advertised to play a few times since, but these gigs always seem to fail to materialise (or it's just Xiao He on his own, like the show I saw out at Dashanzi a few months back).

This time, I am assured, they really will play together - at least, the three core members: Xiao He, Li Tieqiao, and Guo Long. Apparently my Indian friend Sumita and her Chinese hubby have known the band since their early days, and have persuaded them to get together again to play at their leaving-China party (Sumita's, that is - but I'm sure she'll be back). Not to be missed.

And Sunday? There's almost certainly something to be seen on Sunday as well, but I can't plan that far ahead at the moment - suffering from something of a cultural overload!!

Gig frustration; gig compensation

A very vexing time I had earlier this evening.

I received an e-mail this afternoon advertising the visit this month of an Indian woman musician called Shubha Sankaran who plays a rare kind of über-sitar called a surbahar (which has allegedly never been heard in China before). She's here for a few weeks, playing a series of gigs around town, with an American guy accompanying her on a regular sitar.

As luck would have it, I'm not free for any of their other dates. Their opening gig - TONIGHT - was going to be my only chance to hear them.

On the plus side, it was quite near my office.

On the minus side, I didn't know the venue, and had only the vaguest of directions to it - no map, no name/address in Chinese.

Finding anywhere in this city is generally a pretty huge ordeal (I could go into this unfortunate phenomenon at great length - perhaps in another post at another time, maybe over on Froogville - but, in a nutshell: everything looks the same; the system of ascribing addresses is wildly confused; names of streets and buildings are rarely displayed; and everybody - the Chinese especially, but foreigners too - gives appalling directions). At night, in the middle of a park, I had no chance at all. After I'd made several vain attempts to contact the event organiser, she did eventually send me a series of text messages - which appeared to be claiming that the teahouse hosting the performance was..... well, somewhere it plainly wasn't, a spot that I had actually stood on while hopelessly scanning 360°around me! Grrrrrrr.

Anyway, I managed to be fairly philosophical about it. I had known it was a pretty hopeless cause before I even set off, so was thoroughly mentally prepared for the frustration and disappointment when it indeed materialised.

And at least it was a nice evening for a walk home.

And, if I hadn't decided to walk home, I probably wouldn't have gone out at all tonight. But since I was passing by my local Nanluoguxiang bar street on the way back (well, a small detour), I thought I'd drop in somewhere for 'just the one'. I happened upon Salud (site of last year's infamous Christmas party where I was inveigled into playing Santa, and also of the French-babe-overload The Choirboy and I suffered some months later), which is now doing live music every Wednesday. And tonight it was really rather a decent little laowai blues trio I hadn't heard before - which was probably much more what I was in the mood for. (And they probably wouldn't have had any beer in that mysterious, invisible Zhongshan Park teahouse!)

Things have a way of working out for the best sometimes.

Pool divination blues

I have played quite a bit of pool over the past two weeks. I have been shite almost every time. I've hardly won a single game. I feel as though my cueing action has got shaky. I can't see the shots I need to make. My confidence is at an all-time low.

I have a long-standing superstition that such lapses in my pool-playing 'mojo' are generally symptomatic - predictive, even - of a more thoroughgoing slump in mood and fortune (I have written about this before - better, and at more length - here). This certainly seems to be the case at the moment. Which comes first, the dip in pool form or the insidious soul-crash? Chicken & egg. It's impossible to say.

I actually managed to beat The Choirboy a few times last night, but I didn't play well enough to restore my self-belief. I fear I need to take a complete break from pool for a while - until I am in more buoyant spirits again. That may take quite some time.

Sometimes when I suffer a run of bad form or ill luck on the pool table, I try to console myself with the old superstition - "Lucky in games, unlucky in love. (And - by implication - vice versa!)" But when the slump runs so deep, I know this isn't going to be true. I fear most of my current depression - and my dismal pool playing - is bound up with my despair about my romantic life. And if that's the case...... I may never play pool again!

'Traffic report' catch-up.... over on Froogville

I just posted a rundown of the facts & figures for both my blogs for July-September over on Froogville. If you have trainspotterish tendences, you may want to go and take a look. Or, more probably, you'll just ignore me until I have something interesting to say again.

This week's drinking bon mot

"Drinking makes such fools of people. And people are such fools to begin with that it's compounding a felony."

Robert Benchley (1889-1945)

Missing a gig (or three)

The week just past might well have been even busier.

I discovered - just too late! - that my beloved SUBS were making an unheralded appearance at the endearingly shambolic 2K on Friday. (Ah well, I suppose I can wait until their gig this Friday.)

My friend Gorgeous G was trying to entice me to join her at the Forbidden City Concert Hall tonight (the nicest in this city, I think - though not actually in the Forbidden City, but in a park next door) to hear a performance by the legendary jazz pianist Chick Corea. I'm afraid I just didn't have the energy today. (And I was slightly dubious about the idea of a solo concert; I'm not sure how at home solo jazz playing will sound in a classical concert hall; and I would have preferred to see him with a band. I'll have to make do with playing Bitches' Brew at home.)

And there was (yet another) open-air music festival in Beijing this week. It was a first-time event set up by a leading local indie label, Modern Sky Records, who have a number of decent Chinese bands signed to them. I thought I'd like to support it - on one day out of the three, at least. And the sole foreign import, scheduled to close the final day, Thursday, was the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, of whom a number of people have recently told me good things. Alas, the weather was depressingly cool and grey for most of the week, and particularly grim on Thursday; and then in the afternoon it started to pour with rain. Not the conditions for an outdoor concert - regretfully I abandoned my plans to go to that. Instead, I spent an hour or so checking out the Yeah Yeah Yeahs on YouTube. And that got me to thinking that maybe I hadn't missed all that much. They seemed interesting, but not great. Not quite my cup of tea, anyway. A couple of the songs seemed quite catchy (Turn Into, Cheated Hearts), but I didn't much like the singer's voice.

Hmm, I wonder if anyone went? I wonder if the event was cancelled?

A quiet week?

I think of myself as having been mired in apathy and depression of late. I think of myself as having had an exceptionally inactive and unsociable sort of week. Or 10 days, in fact - because that's how long I've just had off work for the Chinese National Day holidays.

But then I reflect that I have in fact been out on 5 of those 10 nights: 2 gigs, 3 dinners, a speaker meeting, and assorted general debauchery. It's only by the rather frenetic standards I have established for myself in my recent life in Beijing (where it is not unknown for me to go out every single night of the week) that this counts as a quiet phase!

The week coming up looks set to be rather busier.

SUBS rock!

I discover that there are a few clips of Beijing's best rock band, SUBS, popping up on YouTube now. They're not very long or very good, but..... at least it's something. This is probably the best of them. I fear it may not convince those of you who haven't yet seen them live (do, do, DO) how wonderful they are. The picture is mostly not great, and the sound quality is SHIT, but at least it gives you some sense of what a hyperkinetic sex-bomb their frontwoman Kang Mao is.

This looks like the gig I saw last month at MAO Live House, but I can't think where the elevated vantage point point would have been. No, the high camera angle and the tiny stage make me think this must have been D-22 (the most over-rated music bar in Beijing, and firmly on my 'Hate List'); I didn't know they'd played there recently (this is definitely KM's late summer '07 look). However, they are on there next Friday, so that's another date for my calendar (even though I loathe the venue, it will be fun to see them in such an intimate setting). Will probably have to arrive very early to be sure of getting in.

HBH 47

Almost forgotten
Pain returns, heart cracks again;
You, you, you, you, you.

A weary and depressive week leaves me vulnerable.... to ambush by wistfulness!

More curmudging...

There's quite a lot of music going on in town this week. Almost too much. I don't have the time, energy, or money to go check out anywhere near all of it, and am finding it hard to prioritise.

Last night The Choirboy persuaded me to accompany him to Beijing's biggest live music venue, Star Live (a comparative newcomer on the scene: it only opened a year or so ago), for a doubleheader of visiting American 'bands'.

I'm still in two minds about the place. It's really a bit bigger than I like; the more intimate atmosphere of Beijing's typical, pint-sized music clubs is usually much more fun. It's quite a lot more expensive than I like (there's another 'big name' act on there tonight, but there's no way I can go twice in succession at those prices!). The efficiency/friendliness of the staff is still pretty hit-and-miss (though improving somewhat, I think, over a year ago). The bars have become much better and much cheaper, but are still somewhat disorganised, and easily overwhelmed by high demand (last night they ran out of beer! I ask you!!). And there are only two very small circles on the entire floorspace that have effective air-conditioning (the weather's turned pretty cool here now; but last night, with a big crowd in, the place got very SWEATY).

A big crowd, yes. Even that was a mixed blessing, at best. Sure, it generates a better vibe. And I'm happy for the performers, that they have a decent number of people to play to. And for the promoter (a friend of mine), that he doesn't lose money on the event. But this wasn't a particularly diverse crowd. No, it was about 90% raucous young white Americans. Clearly last night's acts have something of a following in the States. I had no idea there were so many RYWAs in Beijing. I had seen intimations of their growing numbers and their growing raucousness in places like Rickshaw (which is partly why I stopped going there some months since), but really, I had no idea there were this many. They are, I'm afraid, not my favourite slice of the demographic pie.

And they would insist on 'dancing', many of them. Now, I know this is a terrible cliché, but.... one of the reasons clichés become so overused is that they generally contain a large measure of truth. And so, cliché though it may be, I really think that most white folks can't dance as well as most black folks. Hell, most white folks can't really dance at all (and god, I know - I'm one). Certainly I don't think you could call most of the barely co-ordinated lurching and twitching on display last night dancing. And this inelegant cavorting by the young white folks somehow seems particularly inept and incongruous when they're doing it to 'black' music (well, the first act was black New York rapper Talib Kweli, and the second was a predominantly Hispanic band - but with many rap elements - from LA called Ozomatli). At least there were a few black guys there who really could dance. But, oh god, the RYWAs were just pitiful.

Irritating audience members aside (and trust me, it wasn't just the spazzy dancing, but so much more besides: the loutish impatience when waiting at the bar, the ridiculously elevated decibel level of every conversation, the general air of smug entitlement they seem to exude all the time), it was not really my kind of gig. I am famously intolerant of rap. I just don't see the point. A DJ spins fragments of decent but VERY LOUD dance tunes, while a big scary guy in a baseball cap and a hoodie prances to and fro across the stage SHOUTING - very fast and utterly unintelligibly - into a microphone. Hello? Yes? And the point would be....??

Ozomatli were much more to my taste - a useful little party band who generate lots of energy with their high-spirited antics on stage (the three-man horn section provides their heart-and-soul; and the trombonist, in particular, is a centrepiece - although no mean player of his instrument, his more important role seems be, like that of Bez in The Happy Mondays, to enthuse his bandmates and the audience with his 'freaky dancing'). Yes, they play real instruments - which I like. And they sing mostly in Spanish - which I like. And they have a horn section - which I like. Alas, most of their lyrics are in a rap style - which I don't like. Their main vocalist is very weak (although he does bear an amusing resemblance to Rory McGrath*); and their second vocalist is an out-and-out rapper (oh dear; my heart sank every time he stepped to the front of the stage. What - more high-volume poor elocution? No, please - get back behind your drum kit, man.). The tunes were pleasant and upbeat, but there was a rather wearing sameness about them - and after about an hour, I'd had quite enough.

Still, a gig's a gig. Parts of the experience were certainly interesting, even if I - mostly - hated the musical styles involved. And it was good to have forced myself to get out of the house for the evening (it has been threatening to be a very glum and apathetic week for me).

And I am hoping for better things later in the week.

* For the non-Brits amongst my readers, Rory McGrath is a comedian who has become a well-known face on TV over the past decade or so, mainly for his regular appearances on a popular BBC2 comedy quiz programme called 'They Think It's All Over'. He is a portly man with a beard and long curly hair.

Curmudge of the week

Could I just say.....

Fat-Bottomed Girls..... you spilled my f***in' drink again!

Gig enjoyment tonight somewhat compromised by excess of clumsy dancing.

The Frankathon

This week is looking set to be a week of lurking at home, slobbing on the sofa working through a pile of recently purchased DVDs, having long middle-of-the-day dozes on The Infamous Man-Eating Sofa..... and just generally recovering......

Last week was a week of wild excess.

Big Frank, lynchpin of The Three Amigos (the triumvirate of 'intellectual' drinkers who were the main focus of my life for my first couple of years in China), was back in town.

He was here for 8 days, staying with me in my apartment.

I think I only barely survived the experience because I was out of town on the day he arrived (had to arrange for a Chinese friend to pick him up from the airport and let him in here), and because I wimpily wrote myself a 'sick note' excusing myself from his final night of debauch. For the 6 days in between, I was staying out until 1am, 2am, 3am every night. On 3 of those days, I had to get up early for work the next day (a particularly fraught last week at the office: end of financial quarter and approach of week-long Chinese national holiday!). On each of those days, drinking - heavy drinking - began in the early evening and continued until late. On the days when I didn't have to work, the drinking began by late afternoon. On at least a couple of occasions I got very heavily stoned as well.

Frank himself stayed out even later. He's fond of sport on TV (apparently there's some big rugby event going on in Europe at the moment; it's of absolutely no interest to me, but it was keeping Frank diverted throughout the night in various sports bars around town). He's also fond of Russian 'ladies of the night', many of whom he is (he claims) sufficiently friendly with to merit freebies (he has a strong ethical objection to paying prostitutes for sex - he's a curious man altogether!). He was, in general, not getting back here until 6am or 7am, and I didn't like to enquire too closely what he'd been up to in the interim since I last saw him.

Luckily, this meant I didn't have to worry about trying to keep him entertained during the day, because he would usually be sleeping in until at least 3pm or 4pm. Unluckily, this meant that by the time I got back knackered from a 9 or 10-hour stint at the office, he was raring to go again.

I hadn't realised he would expect - nay, demand - that I accompany him out on the lash every single bloody night. I hadn't realised that every one of these nocturnal excursions would extend so far beyond midnight. It was naive of me, I suppose. But there we are: I had supposed that, but for one or two token "good old days" sessions on nights when I didn't have to work the next day, we'd just have dinner or an early evening drink in my 'hood, and then I'd be able to despatch him off to wreak his mayhem around Sanlitun on his own. How foolish I was! (And it certainly didn't help that on the heaviest and latest of these evenings, on Friday, I developed a ferocious dose of indigestion which inhibited my drinking and fun that night, and contrived to wake me up the next morning - quite irretrievably, despite my best efforts to hide under the bedclothes denying the daylight creeping around the edges of my blackout curtain - after barely 3 hours' rest. As a consequence of which, I felt like complete SHIT all weekend - exhausted, depressed, cranky, and unsociable. Not to mention hypochondriac about whether my liver is finally packing up!!!)

It's looking set to become an annual event, too - since the Big Man works in South Korea these days, but doesn't particularly enjoy it; and particularly loathes their national holiday, Chuseok (which apparently sucks even more mightily than the Chinese National Day holiday we are suffering here this week); thus he's threatening to come and visit during this holiday every year from now on. Oh dear.....

In the words of Danny Glover: "I'm getting too old for this shit."

Return of the weekly bon mot

"Drunkenness is temporary suicide: the happiness that it brings is purely negative, a momentary cessation of unhappiness."

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

Of course, that assumes that you were unhappy in the first place, Russell, you miserable git. It's not unknown for people to get drunk to celebrate a cause of happiness; or to get drunk when they are neither particularly happy nor unhappy.

With me, however, I generally feel that drunkenness distils my unhappiness - enabling me to drink it down like medicine, and get it out of my system. Ah, the endless self-justifications of the manic depressive....