These days it seems Vice magazine is trying its hand at almost everything. Besides the iconic music magazine and record label they do some interesting web documentaries at VBS. Like every other news organization in the world they decided in the spirit of the Olympics to do a month of pieces on Beijing and China. Since their main focus is music they did a bunch of interesting little stories on bands like PK-14, Subs, Demerit,......

UPDATE 3: Photo slideshow by Jake Newby UPDATE 2: By Wee Ling Soh Wondering if anyone else thinks the gig was too short or if Björk sang too few songs that we know. Ok so we like her but not to the extent of knowing lyrics to every single song like the girl behind us, and who made it clear everyone in the vicinity should know by drowning out Björk's haunting voice every chance she......

Time Magazine recently published a list (click here) of, what they consider, to be the top 5 Asian bands to watch in Asia for 2008. Representing China is PK-14, a band that Time is describing as postfolk. Shanghaiist isn't exactly sure what the hell postfolk is, or if it is an accurate description of the music...but we don't really care, no matter how you describe PK-14's music..it still rocks. The band is currently in Sweden......

By Michael Ohlsson It's 1987 in my family’s suburban California home. I've just started high school. I'm in my bedroom making a mix tape. I'm trying to mix Afrika Bambaataa's “Planet Rock” with Kraftwerk’s “Trans-Europe Express” (the original song that is sampled in Planet Rock). In the room next to mine, my little punk sister is listening to crap my hip hop friends and I make fun of, like the Sex Pistols and Violent Femmes.......

Migrant workers—let's face it, you either love 'em or hate 'em. There's just no in between. It seems that lately, they've been getting some love from the people, what with Chongqing's official Migrant Worker Day and now with the recent announcement by none other than Premiere Wen Jiabao himself that the popular "Migrant Worker Song" (or "Ode to the Migrant Worker" as we prefer to translate it when we're feeling poetic), a song written by......

... and spotted doing menial tasks like sweeping the roads, picking up the trash, cooking and putting up pictures of Chairman Mao. No, really, it's just the Red Laowai in his latest incarnation. Tired of singing Chinese commie propaganda songs, he became Jay Chou for a while before donning on his uniform again to become Comrade Lei Feng, the soldier in whose footsteps the youth of China have been indoctrinated to follow. In this latest......

The Red Laowai (红老外) — yes, that shirtless dude in New York that's been singing communist propaganda songs such as “My China Heart"《我的中国心》, "Without the Communist Party, there is no New China"《没有共产党就没有新中国》and "Oriental Red"《东方红》and putting his videos online — has done it again. This time, he has put his shirt on, created a music video and he's singing Jay Chou and rapping. The song 止战之殇 (The Wound That Ends War) is an anti-war song in......

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.......

At the risk of pissing off our rich and powerful film producer friends and thereby never getting invited to a press junket again, we want to begin this movie review with a simple declarative sentence, the likes of which has not and may never be seen again in film criticism: the movie Blood Brothers (天堂口) sucked ass. If you were to ask why first-time helmer Alexi Tan's film sucked, when it had John Woo executive......

Late last year, actress Zhang Yu made headlines for blowing the whistle on the widespread use of the "casting couch" in the Chinese film and TV industry. The above video reminded us of that, though in this case, the two men are attempting to get the woman, named Shi Mei, to do some kind of nude scene for her music video. They try to persuade her this way and that, while Shi replies that......

We're feeling a little lazy this afternoon. Could be the weather. Could be that we are distracted thinking about 21 kuai pints of Pale Ale. Anyway, we thought it a good time to share with you this music video. We downloaded the album last year but didn't see the video until recently. Thought you might enjoy it: It's a little bit more peaceful than that other video that has been floating around. Listen to more......

In Beijing, Changsha, and Xi'an, a certain group of people has decided to take on what they see as the coldness and apathy of human relations in the big city -- by giving out free hugs. They wear shirts and carry large signs that say things like "come and give me a hug," and while they attraction attention in public places, they haven't been all that successful -- in Xi'an, two hours of standing in......

UPDATE: Show canceled? We admittedly don't know much about Robbie Williams' music -- we lived a sheltered existence in the United States from 1973 to 2002 -- but we do know the guy is huge (as in a huge megastar ... not in any other way ... as far as we know). We also know he is coming to Shanghai on November 4 -- and that show also will be huge. Some 26,000 people are......

By now it is possible you have already heard that Macy Gray is singing (about three songs) in Shanghai next month. We thought perhaps we should try to present this news in a different light since we are a little late in getting it up on the site. But then we had to pick a friend up at the airport and his flight was late and his dog is arriving on a later flight (poor......

... And you should be, too. In fact, Shanghaiist has so much time on our hands that, despite cognizance of our own mortality, we surf places like Youtube for cheap laughs. And we're happy to report that we've found some things that might be of interest to you. First there's this video about a Shenzhen Disney factory and how they the workers there are paid miserably (33 RMB a day), are in constant danger of......

Drew Taylor (aka KidPlastik) escaped Salt Lake City for a month last fall and visited China. He recorded some of his trip with a video camera, edited the results, set them to music and posted the whole thing on the internet for all to see. Ain't the internet grand! Mr. Plastik used Shanghaiist fave YouTube -- like Flickr for videos -- to upload his "The China Experience" movie, which, Shanghaiist believes, borrowed its soundtrack from......