Last weekend (and month) we were in a roller coaster of music, so intense I even forgot to complain about the ‘cold’ air coming back to Shanghai last Friday. OK, not cold, but not hot anymore and I’ve never forgot before to complain about summer ending.
This week hass been also full of things to do, and we have been having troubles (again) with our server so we’ll be moving to other one tonight, hopefully this will make layabozi load faster and you guys will not have to waste time waiting to read our super interesting and cool articles (ha!).
But before we move to a new virtual location I will publish my review of last weekend and also I will tell you some news here in layabozi house: the classifieds are ready to be use, we are being shy on the categories inside, because we prefer to see how this music trading grows up to adjust it to our needs on the way. So if you feel you want a new category inside the classifieds send us a mail to layabozi@layabozi.com.
We also were doing some organization here, you can see now up on our menu bar, the tab “Regulars”, under there you will find the link to “Playlists”, “Reviews”, “Gallery” a new regular one to watch photos and videos, and “MusicStyles” were we’ll be publishing the styles of music we run into, the fun thing there is they can be rated, we want to have this popularity contest of music styles, just with the only objective of smiling at categorizations of music and of anything actually. If you want to add some music style, please send us the title of the style and a small paragraph describing it, add your name or nickname to give you the credit on that one.
So lets go to last weekend music events.
Saturday at LOgO was fun and interesting. S.T.D. Event with The Rogue Transmission an AV Okubo was loaded of energy and rock stars. We all know the sound is not the strength of LOgO, neither of Shanghai, I might be insisting on this a lot from now on, but what the heck! Don’t you think that is the right of music to have a good supporting sound? Anyway, this is not something to put only on LOgO’s shoulders, I think we all agree, it is on most of the stages of Shanghai with some few exceptions occasionally. We desperately need to be invaded by sound engineers. And by the way I think I saw an UFO that day before going to Logo, did anyone else there too?
Ok, lets go back to LOgO and The Rogue Transmission, these guys have been together for one year and this week they were releasing their first EP in Beijing and then they’ll bring it here (to layabozi’s main operations base… or at least we’d like to have it deliver here). Last Saturday, with sound issues and all, Dan, the singer, guitar player, writer and leader of the band showed his power; his vision of rock projected on himself through the music with hi-res. Clement, John Lynch and Fab B; guitar, bass and drums, were solid musicians behind Dan giving him the base to jump, kick and sing, all at the same time. The sound was not as good as I would have like to hear better the back vocals and even Dan’s voice, which I lost at times. But well, resignation and patience seem to be part of the recipe to enjoy life, although I believe resignation is good in small amounts only.
The next band AV Okubo was cool, funny and fun. I have to find out more about them, I talked with the singer but I honestly can’t remember any of the names I hear that night (!). These guys were badass rockers, their look is fun, the bass player has put a lot of work in himself and part of layabozi staff noticed it more than the rest of us. The guitar player surprised me all the time, and the audience had so much fun I had to go out to survive. You can see it by yourself in this next video.

[youtube width="425" height="355"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yb44AnShI0E[/youtube]

From Logo, we ran to The Shelter to meet DJ Wash. I was planing to interview him, but he was just going to begin his set, the interview could wait, but the music couldn’t. We wait to hear his set, and this was one of THE entrances I will remember when I’ll be old in my beach house watching the young boys playing around; The Shelter was tired, people was drunk and sticky, many had left already and many were on the back caves relaxing, then DJ Wash took the controls and this bass sound coming from the very lowest labels of the planet began to move there deep in the ground, vibrating so deep that it first came in through the sole of our feet resounding up, vibrating through our stomachs, to hammer us through our chests and heads into the sky. Wow! People multiplied and all this crowd was jumping at the rhythm of an amazing low sound. I remember I was opened mouth looking around what was going on, it was very impressive, I turned around and I saw behind me all the DJs that were playing right before Wash, they were all as opened mouth as me. It was breathtaking. Of course I ended up dancing and jumping like everybody else, so at the end I was so done that all my professional concentration to do an interview was gone. Good thing, I got all the coordinates of DJ Wash and his even coolest partner in their project Kongkretebass; Electronic Mistress. Soon we’ll be publishing an interview to this HK powerful kongkrete digger team from the lowest layers of the earth.
After surviving Saturday I had problems to get out of my pyjama on Sunday evening (!) but I made it on time to the Melting Pot for the so long waited Battle of the Bands. I have to say I was very surprised to hear the host saying so relax that this battle was showing the best bands of Shanghai, what can I say, there’s nothing wrong about self promotion but there is a limit near by … taste (should I delete this?… oh well… ).
The battle had six bands running for the price and the chance to go to HK to the national Battle of the Band, the winners there will go to London to the… war, should we say. So as much as I would have like a lot to see the bands battling with their guitars and bass and flutes against each other in some kind of comic style sequence, the competition was about the bands playing for 8 minutes two of their original songs.
The bands were Little Nature; nice looking guys inaugurating the sound problems the battle had all along the night, the drummer seemed very good and the singer had a cool voice, although the music was kind of plain. The second band was Crazy Mushroom, very crazy for sure, I liked the attitude of the singer, but he just needs to practice the singing better, the yelling is awesome and so it is the jumping and smashing, but the singing can be better. The music is alright and they rock, but again, the singing has to be better. Then The Dovetail Joints, we have had already talked about these guys, if we do a pass over all the bands of this night we could say it was a little unfair to have them there, or it was a little unfair to them to battle against bands not in their same level. These guys are professionals, they don’t make silly mistakes, they have their style already built and they do nice music, they were the only band there that had it all, that’s why they won actually. The fourth band was MoMo, a cute girly band, almost coming out of a manga film, my friends didn’t like them very much, I did, they need a lot to work still, including the singing, but the essence there was cool and deserves to be work out. The fifth band was Lan Cao, three string guys, an acoustic guitar, a banjo and an electric mandolin (I think!), they seemed a very interesting trio to check but the sound was not with them (as with anyone else), neither the attention of the audience. The last band was Guitou Hunter, other curious group, they were coming with traverse flute, didjeridu and African drums, very native style, but also the audience was easily distracted from them, the sound was not there again, later they said they are not really professionals but well, I thought it was an interesting group of guys; not every day you run into people doing ‘native’ music around this square of the world.
Back to the battle, the judges: Jack Newby from SH Magazine, Cao Jim from Shanghai TV, Zhang Pong from ICS and Chris B from “The Underground” Record Label from HK, and the audience votes and cheers, gave the wining price to The Dovetail Joints.
From the Melting Pot, we flied to Logo to finish the weekend with the chaos and craziness of the already well known Jam Session directed by John. Being there was kind of strange for me this time, I think I had one of those lightnings about the effect layabozi is having around, besides I had a super deep talk with a friend about him and his recent trip in life and all the noisy music around, I guess I finally got drunk, so did the rest of layabozi team and now that I’m getting ready to publish her photos I’ll see how did she end.
Remember to see more photos, go to our new Regular: Gallery… anyway for the lazy (because they deserve our respect) please go here