anyway, on friday night i went to see one of two nights of an annual indie rock festival put on by a local record label. a (government seeded) thunderstorm rolled through town right before the show, which helped cool things off and made the lawn at the venue rather attractive. so between every set the crowd would roll outside to drink beer and eat chuanr.
the bands were all fairly good, even though only one of five was on the original bill. a group called the linga that i'll liken to a chinese franz ferdinand stole the show. you can see a poor quality video of them playing below (still trying to figure out my camera).
the crowd was mostly expats, and relatively small, though i think comparable to rock shows around beijing, and i ended up chatting with a nice guy from france for most of the night. but the arrival of the olympics crowd has clearly begun. i heard a couple of guys talking loudly about how surprised they were about how free life was in china, how they loved it and wanted to live in beijing, and how you should go down to yangshuo were you could teach english and rock climb and party and do crazy drugs all the time. one said he was working for nbc.
so in all i've been pleasantly surprised by the quality of live rock music in beijing, though i also get the feeling that it's easy to see it all fairly quickly. the popular local bands seem to rotate between several venues every couple of weeks, and out of town bands are probably hit or miss, with no real way to listen to them beforehand.
ADDENDUM: as for the name of this post, the venue was inside the entrance to a drive-in movie theater.
