One Day in May…

The first thing I learned last night is that it is every man for himself at a mainland Mayday concert. Maybe that’s true everywhere but Toronto; I have no experience with it in Taipei or Singapore or L.A. But within minutes of the concert starting, the girls in front of me were standing on their chairs because people had crowded three deep into the narrow aisle in front of their seats (no doubt people who bought the cheap tickets and were delighted the ushers weren’t checking – I always get the impression that I’m pretty much the only person at concerts who finds their assigned seat and – *gasp* – actually paid full price for it. I have not yet learned to game the system, clearly).

The aisles down to the rows of seats in the stadium were filled with people, though every fifteen minutes or so the police would come and force them to clear the aisle, which meant they’d crowd into the row where people were standing. There was pushing, shoving, and people getting bonked on the nose with large blue lightsticks everywhere you looked. It was easily the most chaotic concert I’ve been to in China (number seven for me), and to date, it is the only one where everyone stood before it started and stayed on their feet all the way through. Needless to say, the bedlam was very rock and roll.

I’m reminded of a conversation had here after Toronto Jump: yes, Merry/Virginia, this IS a rock band.

Of course, if there was any lingering doubt at all on that point, the opening set cleared it up quite nicely, with “Moto Rock,” “Liver Busting,” “God of Gambling,” “Viva Love,” and “Hosee” all in rapid secession. Opening this way has the added advantage of giving Ashin a chance to warm up, get used to the earpiece, and go off-key a few times where it is easily drowned out by the noise of the music, saving his best efforts for later ballads. I was pleased to hear Ashin sing the real version of “Viva Love,” not the sanitized version created for the mainland; though maybe that was less a political statement and more just that they just couldn’t be bothered to change the subtitles on the screens. I was also glad that they just went ahead and sang the Hokkien songs without explanation or fake concern about whether the fans would know/understand the songs; at this point, they have to assume that most everyone has done their homework.

(Confession: I let loose and enjoyed the concert, assuming that I could come home and cull the playlist from postings on past concerts. The Taipei show seems to be the right list, so I’ll use that for now and correct later if necessary. I know I could list everything they played; it’s the order that escapes me.)

Kudos to B’in Music, by the way, for transporting the entire, complicated set to a “lesser” stop like Nanjing; I think we usually get a simplified version and the understanding that if you want to see the real thing, you should take the two-hour train ride to Shanghai.

The next set of songs came post costume change, and I think after the taxi backdrop had been replaced with the giant white half globe. They slowed things down just a little, with “You’re Not Truly Happy,” “More Than Surviving, Less Than Living,” “Crazy World” [with part of “Migratory Bird” inserted in the middle], “The Apple,” “The Yet Unbroken Part of my Heart” (LOVE it!) and “Contentment.”

There was one really jarringly flat note in “Yet Unbroken…” though oddly, it was not the really high note near the end. Still, it’s Ashin, so you’re thankful and a bit impressed when you only notice one in a song like that. I remember there being a really unexpected and unwise attempt at falsetto in one of these songs, but it was over quickly and I have apparently blocked out all memory of which one it was. I’m not sure if Ashin used a teleprompter – I didn’t hear any flubbed lyrics at all, which is so unlike him it makes me think he did – but I was hugely thankful for the helpful big screen subtitles on “The Apple.” I love, love, LOVE that song, but I cannot remember all the lyrics unprompted.

Things picked up again in the third set with “People Life, Ocean Wild,” “Spring Scream,” “Call Me Number One,” “Masquerade,” “Jump,” and “DNA;” I think it is wise for the sake of concert energy to sing as few ballads as possible, actually. That strategy has its downside, though; by “Spring Scream,” Ashin was starting to sound tired. His voice was getting a bit hoarse and it didn’t have the energy you’d expect it to; by “Jump,” though, he was jumping with the best of them, so he must have gotten his second wind.

Now for a confession. In spite of being fully aware of the existence of the song “DNA” (and, I’m remembering right now, even having translated it but having completely forgotten to post the translation… hold on while I create a sticky note reminder…), I’d never actually heard it all the way through. I know I started to listen to it at one point, but I must have gotten distracted early on because I didn’t remember it at all. Listening for the first time through at the concert, then, I was struck very deeply by how it seems to have this superficial hardcore exterior, but the underlying foundation is pure Annette Funicello and the Mouseketeers. This was reinforced in the pre-encore video, which showed the band doing some dodgy dance moves to the song which were all very “Beach Blanket Bingo” and not at all badass. (Every time I think I have put the (*shudder*) “Camouflage Incident” and “Little Nurse Fiasco” behind me, they start up again. You’re not Fahrenheit, guys! And that’s a GOOD thing! Don’t get talked into making bad choices by an insistent audience. What every happened to all that famous 倔强/Stubbornness？)

From “DNA” we moved into the last section of the concert. When the boys came back this time, they asked everyone to grab the hands of the people on either side of them, to look at their neighbors, and then promise that if they needed help, needed money, needed a smile, they’d give it to them. In light of the number of people who’d run into each other, stolen seats, and pushed forward through the crowd to get a better view during the concert, these promises seemed somewhat empty to me. For example, although the girl on my right tearfully swore her agreement to every one of Ashin’s requests (along with her undying love for the man himself, I think), I watched her knock someone down on the exit rush to the last subway train.

As it turned out, this bit of melodrama was an introduction to “our song,” which turned out to be “The Song of Laughter and Forgetting.” From there, we heard “Like Smoke” and “Sun Wu Kong,” the latter of which offered an opportunity for everyone to do a solo (and for Ashin to get a bit of clearly-needed rest). Monster did his famous guitar-behind-the-head trick, and Guanyou (who seems to be going by “Ming” again, the ill-fated attempt at being a “Ryan” now behind him) played a long drum solo. I’m sorry, but drum solos are always a bit too long; there were about three good stopping places before he was finally through.

All through the night, the sections were separated by the ongoing DNA story (which we’ve all heard about before from other stops on this tour). Well I’m happy to report that the human cloning project in the video was once again successful, with a midget John Lennon having been recreated on earth. Whew.

I think my favorite idea stemming from the video, actually, was the moment at the end when the giant characters flashed up on the screen saying, “Only you can decide your DNA!” And with that, Ashin flunks science class, in addition to the math and history with which he has been known to struggle. I mean, I get it, I do – “DNA” is supposed to be like your future, your life (as the giant English letters reminded us at regular intervals, “Who are you?” and “Be-A-Life!!”). But that’s not so much what DNA is, now is it?

Anyway, as the story came to a close, the band played a slow version of “John Lennon” with lines from “Me” worked in a few places and the Beatles’ “Love, Love, Love” tacked on the end. I thought at first that was the end of the concert (having purposely NOT studied up on past DNA concert reviews), but no: then came “The Most Important Trivial Concern” and I knew that song couldn’t be the last one, if for no other reason than that no self-respecting rock band could possibly end a show with Hello Kitty. Instead, it segued into “Angel.”

From there, Mayday acknowledged the ongoing National Day holiday celebrating the Sixtieth Anniversary of the Founding of the People’s Republic of China with a rousing rendition of the PRC national anthem:

Just kidding. That was not really “March of the Volunteers,” but instead a song from the now-defunct indie Taiwanese band backQuarter. (And there we got our only NFL connection of the night – backQuarter adapted their name from “quarterback” in the sports pages.)

Ahem, just in case someone doesn’t get my bad joke: the PRC national anthem also repeats “起来！起来！” in the middle; in Taipei two weeks ago, I’m sure that was the furthest thing from anyone’s mind as Mayday sang the backQuarter song (itself a GREAT song), but remember that this concert was right in the midst of the eight-day National Day holiday on the mainland. We have been doing a great deal of 起来ing for the last week.

Something that really stood out for me near the end was how badly they need a new schtick for talking between songs. At this point, I could do it for them: last night I worried no one would come…how glad we are to see all of you… we want to come back to [insert city] next year, and the year after that, and the year after that… next time, we’ll meet in [insert name of larger, nearby venue]… blah, blah, blah.

The only truly organic moment in the talking portions was when Ashin started reading fan signs. He saw a sign from Chengdu and asked all the Chengdu fans to cheer; the resulting sound was so pathetic he jokingly put it out of its misery. He had more luck with Shanghai and Suzhou, and pretended to mistake a few signs about songs (or their love of Ashin) for cities in China. Eventually he asked a fan for her “If you’re sweaty, just strip! (湿了，就脱了！) sign. They then made a big show of doing paper, scissors, rock to decide who would strip; first Monster and Masa lost, and took off vests (meh, cheaters – they left on their t-shirts), the second time Stone lost (four rocks to one scissors – a crushing defeat) and did a similar move. In the encore Monster finally did pull off his shirt, though he put it back on minutes later when the attention was focused elsewhere (not my attention, clearly).

Ashin also talked about it being their first proper concert in Nanjing; every time they’ve visited in the past it has been for a campus mini-concert or an autograph session. He started listing them, telling fans who’d been to each one to cheer; on the last one, he looked out and admonished the crowd for the loud cheer saying, “Yeah right, there wasn’t anywhere near that many people there!” (Fun fact: Mayday’s first trip to Nanjing was actually when I lived here the first time a few years back… but that week I was in Hong Kong for a mandatory conference.)

As the regular show came to end, I realized that we had dodged a huge bullet: they didn’t sing one of my absolute least favorite songs, “LOVE-ing.” Excitedly, I joined the calls for an encore, hoping for “Tenderness” or maybe “Fool.”

Incidentally, everything the reports said Nanjing fans were planning for the encores didn’t materialize; I heard no organized singing, and there was only one encore by necessity – the city of Nanjing ran exactly one late subway train from the stadium pretty much just to get students back to Nanjing University, so I suspect they weren’t allowed to run past 11.

The results of the clamoring were mixed: yes they came back, but they came back with loud shouts of “L….O….V…E!” (*Sigh*)

One of the reasons I dislike this song – beyond the fact that it’s simultaneously boring and cheesy – is that when they do it live it takes a half an hour to get through. Ashin has to get all sad about the crowd not being loud enough, the guys have to lead different sections with different letters, and they work in their calls for audience response into the middle. It takes forever when I would so much rather hear an extra song or two. I’d even take the oft-reviled “Youth Needs Compatibility” over this one, because at least being a total embarrassment means it’s bound to be mercifully short.

Despite not being a favorite of mine, the song turned into comic gold, as when they lined up to lead the crowd, Monster started with “L,” the Masa with “O,” and then Guanyou chimed in with “E!!!” Haha, whoops. Poor Stone – the rightful “E” – was doubled over with laughter.

During this mess, Ashin took over on drums, and Guanyou led the rest of the song, then sang two songs after that (one was originally a duet with – I think – Michael Wong and Fish LeongKelly Chen and Ronald Cheng (“Making Romance (制造浪漫)”), so he sang Fish’sKelly’s part in very screechy falsetto). Ashin joked that because the crowd was so enthusiastic, we’d be rewarded by not making Guanyou sing any more.

Having endured the loving and the laughing, we were next forced into an extended Pepsi advertisement in the form of “Unbridled,” which I’m sorry but just sounds like a jingle and was not helped by the sudden appearance of sparkly red, white, and blue Pepsi logo guitars. At this point, I started contemplating if this was, by any chance, the worst encore ever.

Next was “Suddenly Missing You,” a vast improvement but not, in my mind, a way to end a concert. Fortunately, just when I’d begun to despair, they returned to form and played “Tenderness (Return Your Freedom Version)” and used the end of that to segue into “Stubbornness,” which is really “Fool” for the Mandarin crowd (or at least, a far better choice on the follow your dreams theme than “Salted Fish”).

Now don’t let my few ending complaints about trite commentary, “YMCA” wannabes and crass commercialism fool you. Here’s what I love about Mayday: they sang for over three high-energy hours, looked like they were having a great time, and managed to be both subtlety subversive and innocently inspirational all at the same time. That last trick is no mean feat; while a great deal of the Mandopop world manages to be somewhat sappy about following your dreams and being hopeful about the future, few manage to do so even while calling for rebellion and insubordination. It’s the combination that makes Mayday who they are – it’s the “Hosee+Happy-I-N-G!!” factor that is not quite replicated elsewhere. They are very, very good at what they do, and even though I might complain about a song or two, I still love being there to hear it.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 7th, 2009 at 2:41 pm and is filed under Mayday. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.