Shortly after arriving in Shanghai, I blogged for about a year via Typepad at Sound Friend, named after the cheap Chinese speakers Monika and I bought at Electronic City on Fuxing Lu to power our downtime and occasional parties. (Typepad because Blogger was blocked, and then Typepad was blocked, and then I gave up on blogging for a while, not necessarily because of the block, but because I’m lazy, though the hassle of dealing with the block did play its part.)
Also not long after arriving, we went to see the Dirty Three play at a theater usually reserved for the kind of Chinese cultural kitsch spooned up for tour groups. The show came to mind just the other week when I had a nice chat with an Australian friend whose rock fan bona fides include not only having seen AC/DC perform Down Under when Angus was still in short pants (the original pair) and Bon Scott was at the peak of his seedy tongue-in-cheek powers. Said friend (hey James) also, as it turns out, loves the Dirty Three and had been at the same show way back in October of 2006. As for the show itself, it provided an incredible introduction to the deep weirdness of the PRC. At the time, I posted a set of photos and text documenting the evening to Sound Friend.
All of this has prompted a visit to the digital vaults and my re-posting of the original Dirty Three-in-Shanghai tale here on PNS. The more I think about it, the more I find this experience to be a touchstone in my working understanding of China as a place where the grassroots often have far more on-the-spot situational power than we Westerners tend to think.
The fact that – as James informed me over beers outside of Le Café Des Stagiaires last week – the Dirty Three Uprising of 2006 wasn’t led by indie rock fans as much as it was by irate and passionate violin students from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music only reinforces my sense that China is as much (if not more) about a kind of impromptu consensual street-level anarchism as it is about a top-down authoritarian statism (not to mention face-saving theater on all sides – though that’s hardly an original observation).
[Originally posted October of 2006] Shanghaiist has posted an excellent writeup by Megan Shank, “a justifiably disgruntled Dirty Three fan,” of last night’s Dirty Three show at the Yunfeng Theater, which was interrupted by sequin-and-glitter-spangled Chinese acrobats and motorcyle cage riders backed by arrogant theater management. (The above is a shot of a disgruntled Chinese acrobat fan).
Monika and I didn’t catch wind of the impromptu Yuyintang make-up/encore show that happened later that night, because we’d understood that – as a result of some twenty minutes of shouted negotiations between furious Dirty Three fans and management – the Dirty Three would return to the stage after the acrobats bedazzled the “dignified guests” and tourists, and had therefore stepped out for sushi while the deal was worked out that brought the band to Yuyintang.
I had, however, managed to make the free Live Bar show Wednesday night. More of that story to come (if I get around to it), including thoughts on chats with Warren from Dirty Three Wednesday night and three guys from the Taiwanese band Goodbye!Nao! after the Battle of Yunfeng.
An excerpt of Shank’s report here, joined in media res:
We held back the curtain. The security guards came out and pulled us off. They started to close the curtain again, so we pulled it back again. I tied one end to a pole. But when they started to close it a third time, we gave up. The security guards were already asking for my name and chasing me around backstage. Mick, Jim and Warren quickly packed up their gear. They were flustered.
James Chen took the stage and told the audience to behave itself and not to cause trouble. The kids weren’t having it. A manager of the theatre told the kids that they were an embarrassment. In any case, why did they care so much about an Australian band when something like acrobatics, that belonged to their culture, was set to perform? They responded to her questions by throwing wadded up homework and plastic tea bottles on the stage.
Backstage, fine-boned boys in make-up were stretching and looking scared by the commotion.
The audience chanted Dirty Three for another 15 minutes, but the band was long gone. When the students finally milled out, they were angry and frustrated but too worked up to be dejected.
Outside I sat and spoke (in Mandarin) with a group of 20-plus students from Jiaotong, Ligong and Fudan University.
Here are some excerpts of that conversation:
- “I feel like we’ve been cheated and bullied.”
— “We’ve never encountered anything like this before, but this is China.”
— “We don’t blame the band but that Taiwanese guy was really out of line telling us to shut up and go home. “
— “The tickets were so expensive (150 – 250 RMB) and then they played for less than an hour. I don’t blame the band, but it’s just crazy.”
— “My ticket cost more than an entire month’s food at university.”
— “I don’t know how the tour manager couldn’t have known this was going to happen. He should have given discounts or found another place for the band to play. He’s selfish.”
Chinese fan comments posted to from Shank’s report:
To tell the truth, I never expected great band like Dirty Three could have concert in China, even in my dream!! When that came true I was overwhelmed and got the ticket right away and counted this day to come; it’s supposed to be a sweet and memorable night. But what happened really hurt our audience and Dirty Three!
I never feel one-hour performance of Dirty Three doesn’t worth the money.
But audience cheated by the organizing party is unforgiving. If the organizing party could have been frank with us before the concert and had effective negotiation with Yunfeng Theatre, situation could never be like this!!
Today, a friend told me Dirty Three appeared in an additional two-hour free show in another little place beginning from 00:30. The news left me speechless! I solute to Dirty Three, not only because of their music, but also their soul!!
And below are shots of the action from where we stood, in chronological sequence and with comments.
The Dirty Three:
After perhaps 40 minutes, tour groups began filtering into the auditorium, anxious to see the Chinese acrobats. Neither the band nor the kids up front, who’d rushed forward in unison from their theater seating the moment the band hit the stage, seemed to notice the “distinguished guests” massing behind them and in the aisles.
The lights came on, the oil & water crowd became more confused (and, in cases, terrifically sour, as made clear in the face of the above Western matron and the exceedingly ugly American, below center, who cut loose with a “you suck!” worthy of a tipsy community college-dropout nu metal fan at a state fair Journey show – he got one hearty “suck!” out before his tanning-bed tragedy of a wife [not pictured, alas] viciously hushed him).
We should also note that a small number of middle-aged Chinese men who appeared to be in for the acrobats took to the Dirty Three like ducks to water and started swaying & flailing & punching the air to the cascading crescendos of “Everything’s Fucked” and “Sue’s Last Ride.” In the meantime, the theater’s main lights came on and the giant video screen began flashing slick promotional scenes of traditional Chinese staged music as played entirely by young, attractive Han women.
“Try to ignore the lights,” Warren politely advised before plunging into what turned out to be the final number. The band played on.
And play on they did, even as the theater management closed the curtains. As soon as the curtains closed, a number of fans jumped the stage and forced the curtains open again. The curtains began to draw a second time, and were forcibly held back by fans…and a third time…
Members of the Dirty Three crowd, especially those at and on the stage, were ecstatic (a few very nervous tour organizers aside, perhaps). At one point a Chinese fan ran across the stage at Warren and hugged him, hanging for a few moments from his neck. The Chinese acrobats crowd’s reactions ran from amused to baffled to pissed.
Warren Ellis, complete with recently grown Old Testament-grade beard and prophet locks, never looked so good pulling out the romantic rock-cathartic stops, and the video screen continued flashing beautifully disjunct scenes from what appeared to be a kind of Chinese Riverdance.
The tour groups tried their best to find their seats, slowly but surely surrounding the the thronging Dirty Three fans.
The band wrapped up the last song, hastily departed from the stage. Things began to get tense. The kids were going nowhere. A Chinese guy with long black hair in a Ramones shirt came out and started shouting things to the crowd; they shouted back. We couldn’t catch a word of it:
After another few minutes, a woman who appeared to be a theater official came out and scolded the kids, who responded by pelting her with plastic water bottles and wadded paper. A DIRTY THREE, DIRTY THREE chant started up, dying down after a few minutes to make room for more shouted complaints, admonitions and negotiations. We found a Chinese guy who could speak English to tell us what was going on and he said they’d come to a compromise: The Dirty Three would resume at 10 p.m., after the acrobats did their thing. We could leave and come back for part two. We went outside, talked to the guys from Taiwan’s Goodbye!Nao! for a while and bought CDs from them (we’d missed them thanks to screwed up publicity and confused start times – the show was publicized as starting at 7, but apparently the opening act started around 6). They figured there’d be no 10 o’clock show, that it was just a ruse to get rid of the angry kids, but we figured we’d eat, return, and perhaps find out otherwise. Off we went for sushi and a drink, returning to catch the last moments of authentic Chinese culture lighting up the stage:
After the motorcycle finale, we caught the a curtain call and bubble machine – but saw only a small group of Dirty Three fans – just a group of maybe 15 Chinese kids who stuck around after the acrobats finished.
Monika and I watched from the balcony as the stagehands broke things down. At one point, a woman – she looked like a student – came out on stage and shouted something that we couldn’t quite catch and the little band of fans all ran up on stage and exited, stage right. The backdrop of blue-sky Futurama Pudong – the face the city wears for tourists and the media – hung for a few minutes…
…before giving way to the theater’s bare brick wall and and some older props from a previous marketing campaign:
After several more minutes, we thought we’d see where the kids went. Maybe the band was outside or backstage talking to people, or having their pictures taken with their admirers like some of the acrobats were. No dice. We headed home, finding out about Yuyintang the next day.
Moral of the story: LEARN CHINESE