Results tagged “bradferguson”

Following the news of Brad Ferguson's dismissal as manager of Windows Underground, a recent announcement on Smart Shanghai reveals the new guy in charge of the to be Steve Bamford, a DJ who has been playing "all colors of house" around Shanghai and China for the last four years.

Freshly fired from Windows Underground, Brad finally has time to blog again. Here's a snippet from "My Shanghai Story (Part 1)", about the Texan's introduction to Shanghai's underground live music scene: "About a month later John, some other friends, and I went to our first real underground rock show at the Sus2 Music Factory (a real factory!) where Reflector (反光镜) and Loudspeaker (扩音器) played a late-afternoon show to a crowd of pierced/mohawked/Dr Marten’d students. I remember complaining that Loudspeaker’s guitarist was out of tune, and when I got home I downloaded Reflector’s EP from their website. Their song 'Wuliao Contingent' (无聊军队) is still in rotation on my iPod."

Yesterday, we learned that our friend (and ex-Shanghaiist contributor) Brad Ferguson had been fired from his role as manager of Windows Underground. We asked him some questions about the recent developments and he agreed to let us publish them "as long as it doesn't make me look like an asshole. I still don't think I did anything wrong, but maybe it looks different to other people."

Updating yesterday's post, the once-canceled Dandi Wind concert in Shanghai is now back on ... but at a different venue. At 12:55 am, the handy SMS hotline the promoters set up (see previous post) told us:

RIP: 4Live (November 2006-January 2008)

Just when you think that everything is starting to turn rosy for Shanghai's live music scene, something comes along that hits you like a kick in the teeth.

Well, at least the Live Bar we have known since Austinite Brad Ferguson took over the place, gave it a fresh coat of paint, new sound equipment, regular gigs and decent beer last October. We received these text message from Brad while at the Ziggy Marley show last night:

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 not too long ago). Here's the musical line-up for the re-re-re-opening party: Blue Garden, Honeys, Crystal Butterfly and Zooma himself. No invitation is needed for the party and there in no cover charge. Doors open at 8 pm and there's an open bar from 8 to 10 pm. The email we received said going forward 4 Live plans to have live bands before 1 am and "underground electro music" afterward. We tend not to get too excited about such things because the live music scene in Shanghai changes so frequently, but this at least sounds promising. It's a good venue in a non-residential area that is used to music and crowds. And with his connections, Zooma could potentially bring in some solid live acts. Let's keep our fingers crossed -- and hope they start adding their events to our Public Calendar.

GigShanghai: Pinkertones, goth an the NFL?

GigShanghai: Trannies, 5 dollars and moon cake

Shanghaiist asked its contributors (and a few "music people" in town) to list their five favorite albums released (or yet-to-be released) somewhere in the world in 2006. Got a list of your own? Submit your favorite 2006 music as a comment to this post. Enjoy!

The Shanghai live music scene really started to pick up in 2005, and thankfully occasional Shanghaiist contributor Brad Ferguson was there to document it with his camera. He has chosen his 12 favorite concert photos and posted them over at his website dedicated to the Shanghai underground music scene, Shanghai Streets. You can also view the pics at his Flickr site. It's an impressive collection, especially considering Brad only got started with concert photography a few months ago. To the right is a collage of the 361 live music photos Brad uploaded to Flickr last year. The amount of red in the image shows how much a boon to the scene Live Bar has been. Shanghaiist thinks the collage would make a nice cover for the 2006 concert photo calendar Brad should put out.

Texan and Shanghaiist contributor Brad Ferguson has been busy hammering away at his latest internet project, Shanghai Streets, a site wholly dedicated to Shanghai's upstart rock music scene. It's already the definitive English-language resource on the topic (well, okay, maybe it's tied with Shanghaiist). ShanghaiStreets.net has articles (some of which might look very familiar to Shanghaiist readers), gig photos, a forum, venue listings and artist pages. And it's just getting started. Go check it out now. And while you are at it, visit Brad's great photoblog, as well.