It is not uncommon for many of the Chinese indie bands to have their actual popularity and accomplishments embellished and twisted in order to drum up hype for upcoming shows. One of the few indie bands that actually is and does have the huge local following to justify the hype is Xie Tian Xiao and Cold Blooded Animal. This grunge/acid rock band formed back in 1994 when grunge was still riding out the Nirvana......

This weekend there is no shortage of gigs to check out and we suggest you take a little nap this afternoon so you will be ready to tackle as many as possible. Shanghaiist recommends checking out Queen Sea Big Shark tonight at the Living Design Center, last time we saw this band (way back when 4Live was still around) they had the crowd rocking hard to their surf garage sound. At Live Bar, experimental Korean/Japanese......

With all the mud slinging going on between the Chinese and Western media, Shanghaiist is looking forward to some mindlessly good fun without the political positioning this Saturday with dance punkers You Say Party! We Say Die!. Hailing from Vancouver, YSP! WSD! has been infecting fans with their brand of dance punk since forming in 2004. With 2 albums and several international tours under their belt YSP! WSD! has set their sights on bringing spastic......

Cold Fairyland are one of those rare Shanghai bands that consistently put out original music and have steadily been growing an overseas following. Check them out Friday at Yuyintang to see why everyone is raving about their melancholic folk sound. Jazz singer Pete Moore who will be performing at Labella's Cafe is also worth a look. For fiddle fans head to Two Cities gallery where fiddle master Hanneke Cassel is in town with guitarist Christopher......

What's up this weekend? Plenty of things, but Shanghaiist plans to attend these two events for sure. Friday night, Phreaktion and DJ Siesta bring you Matrix & Futurebound at Club Bonbon. MC Stride does the vocals. From their site: Phreaktion brings you two of the current drum’n’bass icons in March: Matrix & Futurebound are responsible for arguably “THE” drum’n’bass album of the year – “Universal Truth”. The album has enjoyed much praise and massive success,......

Touring season has official started for Chinese bands and this weekend Shanghai is bursting with shows worth checking out. Tonight the action starts early with three Xian bands playing at Yuyintang. Both Hush and 24hour Party People have played in Shanghai before and put on solid shows. This time they are joined by punk band Sucker. If you miss tonight's earlier show, you don't have to feel like a total bum, all 3 bands will......

Photos courtesy of Red Beat Bar We're in that terrible time of year when the weather is so bad that even this scribe opts for hibernating in his heated home, rather than exploring Shanghai's bars. There's also the annual hiatus between western New Year and Chinese New Year which puts many happenings on hold. Nevertheless, there are some interesting upcoming events that will draw us out from our cosy dwellings with much to lure......

After a long and wild New Year's break, things have slowed down on the music front and it seems that everyone is still trying to shake off their extended hangovers. Luckily, this weekend there isn't much happening, but if you are able to push yourself off the couch then head to 4Live (yes, it is still open!) where there are a couple of shows this weekend. On Friday, Beijing stalwarts, Catcher in the Rye, give......

With the holiday season in full swing things usually slow down in the music scene. But this weekend there are a few shows that should get us through to the New Year. On Saturday Live Bar is holding a show that we are pretty excited to see. Voodoo Gongfu from Beijing will be on stage. Shanghaiist happened to pick up a copy of their DVD in Beijing and with all the costumes and addition of......

We have never actually experienced or even witnessed a person's ears bleeding from a live show, but last night we were pretty damn close. Thursday, the Ex-Models put on an interesting show of sharp, sonic blasts for a small 4Live audience. If you happened to miss it, no worries, the band will be joined by Carsick Cars and Torturing Nurse on Saturday at Yuyintang. Carsick Cars has enjoyed a stellar year, opening for Sonic Youth......

For a second straight week Shanghaiist has missed our Friday deadline, oops. The good news is that Saturday is when all the really good stuff happens. Today, eight Shanghai bands (1 from Beijing) will take part in the 0093 show at 4live, scheduled to start at 4:30pm. This should be a great showcase of the various genres of music that Shanghai bands have to offer, ranging from noise to metal to garage rock and everything......

Over this weekend, Blue Frog celebrated its grand opening in Macau's Venetian in a glitzy event that featured performances by Shaolin monks, Australian DJ Alex Taylor and Shanghai's very own Sugar Mama and the Cotton Club Band. Apparently, quite a number of people flew over from Shanghai for the event (too bad for us, we were never invited). In this video, Blue Frog looks a lot more like a club than anything else, and certainly......

If you are like us at Shanghaiist..... then weeks in advance you strategically map out a strategy to maximize potential fun for the weekend. So here are a few noteworthy events coming up that we think should not be missed and we are always (sometimes..maybe) right when it comes to picking events. The 8th of December will be a big night with PK-14 back in town as is Coldcut w/ DJ Nu-Mark and Pfadfinderei. PK-14......

Well...after a day of bloating ourselves on turkey and pumpkin pie (sorry Shanghaiist is American and assumes that everyone else wants to be one) the perfect cure is a night of live music. Lucky for us Convenience Store, one of Beijing's longest lasting and most reputable Brit-pop bands, is going to be playing out at Live Bar tonight. Shanghaiist has waited along time to see this band, in the past we were busy or too......

In Shanghai there are a couple of early week shows that are worth checking out. Tonight, Too Dumb to Die, a bohemian group of gypsy vaudeville musicians who have rode their oddly tall bikes from Istanbul will take the stage out at Yuyintang. Sound interesting? Well, Shanghaiist thinks so, and can't wait to see them perform. While tomorrow, Yuyintang will host German hardcore punk band, No Opinion. Shanghaiist had the chance to catch No Opinion......

After much hype and 2 years without a CD or performance in Shanghai, Third Party (formerly known as Muma & Third Party) celebrates the release of their debut album 'Velvet Highway' with a special show at 4Live on November 15th (Thursday). What has really got us excited about this show is that their record label, Oriental Sky, has informed Shanghaiist that props are being flown down from Beijing to recreate scenes from their music video.......

Even though today might be Friday, for many of us it isn't the start of the weekend. With the upcoming National Day vacation period approaching, many people are stuck in their offices over the weekend to make up for the extended break. This has carried over into the live music scene, with only a few note worthy shows before the craziness that starts next week. The Jazz it Up week of music continues with a......

Their 2 albums (to date) are sub-par. Their songs are not very original, with unintelligible lyrics. Yet, they are one of the few, must see, melt your face good, bands in China. They are the Subs. The Subs are a breed of bands that isn't meant to be listened to with your tiny, perfectly aerodynamic ipod. No, that would be stupid. To truly experience their music you need to catch their live performance in a......

Due to multiple requests (total of two, and one was me) here is more golden week festival news. The previously mention Hop Festival has gotten an official name...so....let it hence forth be referred to as the Yue Festival. Ticket prices are set at 140rmb for students, 280rmb advanced purchase and 360rmb at the gate. Rock-ing has also released their ticket prices and they range from 280-880 depending on how special you want to feel. For......

As we get closer to July 7, the day of Al Gore’s Live Earth concert, more info has popped-up on the official artist line-up in Shanghai: RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS KANYE WEST BON JOVI ARCTIC MONKEYS JACK JOHNSON DAVE MATTHEWS BAND BEASTIE BOYS …will not be playing at Shanghai's Pearl Tower. Instead, we get to rock out to the sounds of 12 Girls Band, Sarah Brightman, Eason Chan, Evonne Hsu, Anthony Wong Yiu Ming, Huang......

Tonight, New Zealand punk jazz prodigy Aron Ottignon descends upon Shanghaiist’s favourite weekly, Freaklub. Critics have ladled some lavish praise upon the 23-year-old pianist, who began tickling the ivories — “really playing!” Ottignon insists — at the age of one, when most of us were still trying to wrap our heads around the concept of left-foot-right-foot-left-foot-right-foot. At age 11, he picked up what was to be his first of many jazzman accolades — New Zealand’s......

Or more like who won't be performing. We've already told you about Live Earth, Al Gore's 24-hour, 7-continent series of concerts on 7/7/07. Well, lists of performers at different venues (cities participating are: East Rutherford, New Jersey [near New York]; London; Rio de Janeiro; Maropeng [near Johannesburg]; Tokyo; Shanghai; and Sydney) are starting to be announced. First up, the US and the UK. Here's who will be playing at Wembley Stadium in London: Beastie Boys,......

We'll keep this quick. It's beautiful outside and half-price beers await. FRIDAY Shotgun She-Ras @ 4Live: We've been telling you about these girls for two weeks now. In addition to rocking our happy hour tomorrow, they will be playing 4Live tonight. "Fans of Dolly Parton and Lorretta Lynn, these 4 girls don't have time for none of that cheesy new country music they got real ol' country souls" — that's what the PR people say.......

The tiny Caribbean island of Grenada suffered a huge diplomatic embarrassment at the inauguration of a US$40 million China-financed stadium built as a gift from Beijing when its police band decided it would perform the Taiwan anthem instead of the March of the Volunteers. Oops. The Associated Press reports that Chinese Ambassador Qian Hongshan and scores of blue-uniformed Chinese laborers who built the new stadium were "visibly uncomfortable as Taiwan's anthem echoed inside the 20,000-seat......

While the rest of the world is wondering how George W. Bush will further fuck up Iraq and where Becks and Posh are going to settle in L.A., we came across a report about a concert event in Las Vegas: The two-day event — designed to serve as a showcase for Chinese bands in America and vice versa — will take place at the Aladdin Hotel and Casino Theatre of the Arts on February 13......

Have all your friends abandoned you? Got a case of the holiday blues? What better pick-me-up could there be than Chinese Brit-pop? (Just play along, folks.) Beijing band Super VC (果味VC or "fruit flavored VC" ... we think the VC part stands for "vitamin C" and not "venture capitalists") will play Friday and Saturday shows at 4Live this weekend — and what we've heard from the band so far sounds good (if not a lot......

We were lucky enough to hear about the concert held by the Espoo Big Band from Espoo, Finland held last night before it happened. Held in a ballroom at the Regal International East Asia hotel, the show was not widely publicized, and most people we talked to at the event had only heard about it a few days beforehand like us. There was still a pretty good turnout, but it’s too bad more people didn’t......

We received an email yesterday from Fabrique telling us about a "re-opening" party on Saturday, and we wondered, How many re-openings can one club handle? But this most recent incarnation looks a little more interesting than previous ones. Zooma, formerly of the old Tang Hui and formerly of the new Tang Hui, is now the GM at Fabrique, which will now be known as 4 Live (same name as the party held at the club......

“Great day, great bands, great venue…but we wished more people would have turned out”. -- Unnamed Fuxing Park Jazz Fest promoter Oh, we feel your pain. Here’s hoping that you attended one, if not more, of the gigs listed below. We’ll start with the one mentioned: Fuxing Park Jazz Fest: We attended Friday night’s show, and it was well put on. Despite the early rain soaking the asses of the ass-less pants wearing kids there,......

Today is the first of three days of jazz music in Fuxing park, and if you aren't into jazz then perhaps the enticing prospect of being allowed to sit on the grass field is enough reason to show up. Yes, folks, you heard it right- an outdoor music festival on a lawn, in China. The last time they had a music festival here, the grass was covered with some protective hard lego-like pieces of plastic......