One Day in May…

News to make that Hangzhou joint appearance by the Shin Band and Mayday all the more interesting…

The Shin Band is playing its first set of real concerts on the mainland. They were delighted to discover that they have fans there – they had been worried no one would know them, even wondered if the record company paid people to come out and cheer them on. Their Shanghai performance went well, and this article reports on their arrival in Chongqing.

Because Shin Band lead singer Ashin has made a variety of statements about Mayday in the past, including his opinion that their music is not “rock” music, they want to avoid trouble by not talking about Mayday at their Chongqing press conference. According to the article, Mayday’s manager also called the Shin Band manager and asked that they keep the trash talk to a minimum, as it doesn’t do anyone any good.

At the same time, the Shin Band’s Ashin has been the subject of a great variety of rumors and bad press, including talk of his mistresses, drinking, an illegitimate daughter and, my personal favorite, an incident a few months ago when he got drunk and got into a fight in a bar, which ended up with smashed bottles and Ashin needing stitches. Mayday fans will remember this incident, as someone went online pretending to be Mayday’s Ashin and wrote about reading about the incident in an article showing his (Mayday Ashin’s) picture by mistake and being uncertain as to whether he got very drunk actually did do all those things. The Shin Band’s Ashin heard about the online “confession” and mocked Mayday’s Ashin mercilessly for this, until it came out that Mayday’s Ashin knew nothing of any of it, and publically diavowed all knowledge of the online statement.

Anyway, the Shin Band’s manager had the unenviable task of calling all the Chongqing media representatives before the press conference and asking them not to bring up either Mayday or any of the rumors about the lead singer’s personal life. Instead, they should talk music and the Shin Band’s albums.

As a result, the story concludes, there was very little to say, and the press conference lasted all of ten minutes. (Hah!)

Seriously, what could possibly be better than this? I could cry at the injustice of all this happening after I’ve left China.

And I’d also just like to say, every three minutes. Sheesh.

This September, the city of Hangzhou in eastern China (about an hour’s train ride south of Shanghai – a lovely city) will host a music festival that will include such illustrious mainland acts as Lao Lang (老狼), A-Duo (阿朵), and Pu Shu (朴树), not to mention Mayday and the Shin Band (信樂團) from Taiwan. Tickets are free, and unlike most Chinese concerts, beer will be available during the concerts. The article actually uses the phrase, “不醉不歸,” which translates (a little roughly) to “if you’re not drunk, you’re not going home yet.”

I don’t know Lao Lang or A-Duo, but I have a Pu Shu album – his most recent release, 2003′s “Life is like Summer Flowers (生如夏花).” I like it – it’s pretty mellow stuff, with some random – but not actually ungrammatical – English (“Imagination/never lose my passion/ it’s on my way on my way/ whatever it takes/ not for a destination/ it’s on my way on my way/ all the colorful days”) and one song oddly completely in French. But it’s definitely stuff I’d enjoy listening to while drinking beer in Hangzhou (or drinking beer in Washington… maybe I’ll go grab a beer and put on the album now). Importantly, he writes all his own music – I rarely bother with artists that don’t at least make an effort in this regard. As a result, I’m really *not* a Shin Band fan, ever since I brought home one of their albums (天高地厚) and discovered to my astonishment that the band didn’t write the music. As I’ve noted before, the lead singer is a bit belligerent about Ashin and Mayday, and that doesn’t score points with me either, for obvious reasons.

My only real consolation is that my favorite beer (so far… so many wonderful brews, so little time…) won’t be served in Hangzhou. But come winter, I can enjoy it with a Mayday DVD. A sloppy second, but the best I can do.

In the ongoing saga of Mayday-Energy cooperation, this article talks about how Energy patiently hung around Mayday for two years, hoping for their request of a song to be fulfilled. The music for “秒殺” was written by Monster and Stone, and the lyrics by Ashin (in this article, and frankly, most of the others, Monster is quoted praising Ashin’s efficiency – he was sleeping in the studio when Monster and Stone woke him up with the finished music, asking him to write lyrics. He replied, “Give me 20 minutes,” stretched, got something to eat, and then set down the words).

The music video is being filmed with famous model Patina Lim (betting is now open on how long before she releases her first pop music album…). Because Energy now only has three members, and Guanyou was not present for the filming, the boys joked (at length, it sounds like) about looking like “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.”

Larger pictures here (though they label a picture of Monster, “Energy”). The “dwarf” comment likely stems from Monster lamenting the fact that Patina is 180 cm tall (about 5’10) – while the other guys might be around 10 cm too short, he is likely closer to 15. Ashin (likely the only one in the lot not shorter than Patina), joked that they only brought her in because 许纯美 was unavailable.

The lyrics to the new song will deal with the way the influence of a beautiful woman will make a guy feel something like an electric shock (the character they use here is 電, which Ashin used in the same way in “Beside the Plum Tree/在梅邊.” This use is actually quite old, going back to the days when men and women not married would not be allowed to touch one another – so that first time you touch the other person, say, on the arm, you feel a bit of a jolt).

That pair of “Final Final Home” concerts last month apparently broke attendance records at the Taipei Arena. Both the arena and the band came out ahead, the arena for managing to draw major crowds to an event at the facility, and the band by not having to worry about potential weather issues (like typhoons) for once. (Mayday has had pretty bad luck with this in the past – watching old concert DVDs, the boys do more than their fair share of singing in the rain.) Because the Taipei Arena is a domed facility, the boys could ignore the forcasts and concentrate on giving a great performance.

Incidently, the Chinese for “dome” is great fun: 巨蛋, or “huge egg.” Which is exactly what a domed roof looks like. The Taipei dome is actually called the 小巨蛋, “little huge egg,” which I suspect refers to the fact that although it is large, it is nowhere near the size of, say, the Metrodome. (The Taipei Arena seats around 15,000 people; the metrodome, around 64,000.)

August 11, Angela Chang held her first solo concert in Shanghai, and Mayday came and performed “Embrace (擁抱)” as special guests. On stage, she demonstrated both her nerves and her lack of familiarity with the band by mixing up Monster’s and Stone’s names. After the concert was over, her mom demonstrated equal cluelessness by commenting at the after-party (in front of the media) how grateful she was to the Shin Band (信樂團) for coming. Er, whoops. Mayday made some jokes (one of which really, really doesn’t translate well in politically correct America) and laughed it off.

On a side note, Mayday has always appeared in the media to be rather good natured about the existence of the Shin Band and the fact that there are two rock bands in Taipei with lead singers called 阿信 (Ashin). The 阿信 of the Shin Band has never taken it anywhere near as well, and has alternately claimed to be the only true “rock” band and the only “true ‘Ashin.’” The former claim is fatuous – I have a Shin Band album, and not only does it sound like recycled 80s hair band music, but the band didn’t even write the songs. Who ever heard of a “true” rock band that doesn’t compose its own music? As for the latter claim, the Shin Band’s Ashin says that the 阿 + a character of your name nickname traditionally employs the last character of one’s name; therefore Mayday’s Ashin, aka 陳信宏, should rightfully be nicknamed “阿宏 (A-hong).” Yeah, okay, but it’s a nickname, and last I checked, a nickname can be anything you want it to be, rules be damned. There’s nothing in Monster’s real name (溫尚翊) from which one can derive “monster (怪獸).” My suspicion is that this Shin Band character is fairly jealous of Mayday’s relative success.

Anyway, to return to the ditzy Miss Chang, she was reportedly rather drunk by the end of the after party, which I suppose demonstrates immaturity more than anything else. Of course, if I had just spent an evening on stage dressed like this (scroll down for the full, terrifying effect), I’d be off to get drunk as soon as possible too.

On the bright side, it looks like Ashin left off those horrible glasses for the evening.

This model-turned-actress-turned-singer (*sigh*) claims that Ashin owes her a song (or, ideally, several) for her next album.

From the looks of things, she’s had pretty lousy luck in the music industry, with her record company folding right in the midst of promotion for her first album. Still, even if the entire thing is written by Ashin and Mayday, I sincerely doubt I’d buy her sophomore outing.

…which leads to some random Friday pondering. I wonder how many singers ask Ashin & Co. for songs each year? Including songs the band later performed itself, between 1999 and 2005, he wrote 16 songs for other artists (in one case just the music, in four just the words, and in the other eleven, both the music and the words), but he must get many, many more requests than that. Most of those came out during the band’s military hiatus, when he was less busy with Mayday activities, though it would make sense that he would have a lot of ideas that don’t really suit the band’s style.

Still, part of the request must stem from the fact that he is, as we all know (or should), a good songwriter. Talented, creative, etc. My own appreciation for his lyrics should be obvious. But some of the desire for a Mayday-connected album release, especially from a lesser-known artist, must be to gain some exposure from riding the “heavenly band’s” coat-tails. I know I’ve purchased albums from a number of artists with Mayday connections I wouldn’t have bothered with otherwise (though a good portion of those purchases were made in China, where CDs are very, very cheap) (or at least that’s my excuse for owning Ken Chu’s CD) (though really, “La, La, La” is a perfectly nice song, well worth the $1.50 I paid for the CD) (the rest of the album is not much to speak of, however) (so we’ll stop now).