Νοσταλγία | Nostalgia

On Wednesday, March 28, Bodega Pop Live on WFMU's Give the Drummer Radio spun favorite tracks from the Pathé 100 Hong Kong + Shanghai series, early Jamaican mento and R&B, Greek garage and laïka, Krautrock from Brain Records, 70s mor lam from Soi 48, and nascent hip-hop from the U.S.A.

Listen to the show now in the archives

Zhou Xuan | Golden Melodies

CD 1 reupped again on 2/17/2015 by special request, here.

CD 2 reupped again on 2/17/2015 by special request, here.

[Originally posted on May 25, 2011.] I found this amazing 2-CD set at the Flushing Mall in Queens in a smallish DVD/CD shop that I used to frequent for its Hong Kong films. They've since decimated their HK film selection and replaced them with Hollywood blockbusters. [2/17/2015 update: Last time I was there, this store was gone.] 

I had no idea who the singer was, but the photo looked sufficiently old to lead me to suspect this might be something in the Shanghai Lounge Divas realm. I was right: The singer, Zhou Xuan is included in that mix, though it's doubtful she ever sang in a lounge, at least not after becoming a superstar actress in the late 1930s.

Born Su Pu (蘇璞) on August 1, 1918, Zhou Xuan (周璇) was sold by a family member when she was three years old and later adopted by the Zhou family, who gave her her last name. Her first name, Xuan, which she took on herself when she began performing as a teenager, means "jade." Her performance in Street Angel in 1937 made her an overnight star. (It's on DVD with English subtitles; you should be able to either Netflix it or find it in your local Chinatown.)

Though she recorded one of the most famous songs of the era ("Shanghai Nights"), her life was not improved by stardom. She suffered numerous breakdowns, was institutionalized for brief periods, and finally, at age 39, died in a mental asylum.

A scene from Street Angel, including her infinitely popular song, "Wandering Songstress" (which begins about a minute or so into this clip):

Zhou Xuan | Golden Voice (2 CD set)

This 2-CD, 50-song collection reupped on 2/17/2015 by special request, here.

[Originally posted November 2, 2013.] visitors will note that this is the second 2-CD collection of Zhou Xuan songs I've added to the old bodega shelves. I'm still unboxing and weeding things after my big move and spent what downtime I had yesterday and today popping CDs into my computer -- this one stuck out because (a) there were numerous songs not in the collection I posted previously and (b) the sound quality is especially good. Yes, the file is 441 megabytes and will take a while to grab, depending on your internet service. But, trust me, it's worth it.

Various Artists | Red Rock

Reupped once again (on Feb 15, 2015) here.

[Originally posted in early 2010; first reposted in August 2011. See recent articles I wrote on Chinese punk here and here.]

After 10 years of bodega diving, very little surprises or shocks me. When I picked up, last summer in Brighton Beach, a Russian CD featuring on the cover two large shirtless orthodox Jewish guys made up to look like walruses, complete with huge tusks, I pretty much figured I'd seen and heard it all.

Not so, as it turns out. I found Red Rock in one of my favorite Bowery Video stores, all way the in the back of the joint, where they keep the stuff from Korea and mainland China.

The rock versions of these communist songs are intentionally ironic; artists include Cuī Jiàn, whose "Balls under the Red Flag" I posted here.

In addition to a lot of the music on this admittedly uneven collection, I love the list of songs as translated into English on the back cover:

The long march newly on the road shakes to roll
The Chinese people's liberation army army song
Socialism is good
The internationale
The small bird
Member of a society all is a light exposed to the sun
Brother
Colorful clothes clothing
Ideal and peace
Leave oil lamp light
The Chinese people's volunteer battle song
The detachment of women even song
We walk on the main road
The egg under the red flag
Nanniwan area
Not own a thing in the world [this is actually Cuī Jiàn's legendary anthem "Nothing to My Name"]
Feel too ashamed to show the face
Is not that I am in vain unknown
The end rises lucky its tommy gun
The tunnel warfare
The holding in arms armed forces flower drum
Learn the good good example of Lei Feng
The rambles in the sky
Big production
Mans and wives are in pairs the family still
It is full of water
Greenhouse girl
Together Hong Bu
Girl is handsome
Elder sister
The ant ant
The river water of folk song in the spring of Caing be compared to
Beijing that good night
The beacon-fire Yangzhou road
The bird hovering

Check out this fabulously punked out video of Communist classic "She Hui Zhu Yi Hao" ("Socialism is good," the third track in Red Rock):

Yellow Music: Shanghai Pop 1930s-40s

Freshly reupped, by reader request, here.

In the 1920-30s, American jazz musicians began to visit and, in some cases, make extended stays in Shanghai, where a songwriter and composer originally from Hunan, Li Jinhui, was taking in everything he heard and integrating it into the popular Chinese music of the time. He composed hundreds of songs from the 20s to 40s, helping to launch the careers of China's most famous singers of the time, and single-handedly inventing shidaiqu, the precursor of contemporary Mandopop. Denounced for his "yellow" (meaning "pornographic") music, Li would eventually fall victim to Mao's Cultural Revolution in 1967.

Li's contribution is covered in depth by Andrew F. Jones in Yellow Music: Media Culture and Colonial Modernity in the Chinese Jazz Age, a well-written academic history of this period that, despite how the subtitle sounds, steers clear of academic language to tell an engaging and fascinating story of one of the most culturally rich periods of modern Asian history.

What Jones' book does not do is to breathe life into the specific histories of any of the singers of the time (though there is a passage near the end of the book detailing a bit of Zhou Xuan's performance in Street Angel). For that, we must piece together what little we can from Wikipedia entries on shidaiqu and the so-called Seven Great Singing Stars, and then hunt and peck our way through mostly other blogs for whatever scraps are out there. 

Despite the richness of Chinese pop music of the 20s-40s, it's effectively unavailable anywhere in the United States outside of media stores run by Chinese, Hong Kong and Taiwanese immigrants. Which is where your friendly bodega proprietor comes in.

As you've probably guessed, I'm on a constant lookout for recordings of shidaiqu, the Mandarin-language pop music that migrated from Shanghai to Hong Kong in the 40s, where it slowly morphed into the Twin Towers of Mandopop and Cantopop. Most of the nearly 50 CDs I have of this music is later stuff, recorded in Hong Kong, but I do have a dozen or so very coveted collections recorded in Shanghai that I've managed to pluck from mostly two stores (one no longer extant) on Bowery, just above Canal, in Manhattan's Chinatown.

For this mix, I included six of the Seven Greats: Zhou Xuan (Golden Voice), Yao Lee (Silver Voice), Bai Guong (White Light), Bai Hong (White Rainbow), Wu Yingyin (Queen of the Nasal Voice) and Lee Hsiang Lan, who was born Yoshiko Yamaguchi to a family of Japanese settlers in Manchuria, and thus apparently does not deserve a nickname. I have only a few songs by Gong Qiu Xia (Big Sister), but nothing that thrilled me as much as the songs that made the cut here.

Two other singers of the period are also repped: Chang Loo and Yun Yun. I limited myself to my two favorite songs by each of the eight, bringing the mix to a tight but hopefully fulfilling 16 songs. 

A final note: Just as easily as an enterprising scholar of popular and/or Chinese culture could make a career telling the life stories of these singers and placing their significance into the cultural context of their time, she or he could write a really interesting paper on the preservation of this music. A number of people, including a handful of non-Chinese, have been exploring a variety of methods for noise reduction and arguing about whether or not one should digitize the music directly from the original 78s or later LPs. And, as you'll hear on the first track: Someone is doing something ever-so-slightly obtrusive, but nonetheless kind of cool, using some form of digital overlay and delay.

10 Best Albums of 2013

Merry Christmas, everyone. With a mere week to go until the ball drops in Times Square, listeners all over the globe have been compiling their Best Of lists for the year. For the Bodega, 2013 was a complex but often exciting time to be paying attention to international music. In early March our superfriend Carol hipped us to a program at BAM that would change our lives: Mic Check: Hip-Hop from North Africa and the Middle East. Later in the month, the Bodega returned the favor, taking her to see pioneering Palestinian rap group DAM at Drom on New York’s lower east side.

As more of our regular CD-findin’ haunts in the city dried up, new doors were opened, including two previously undiscovered stores selling Czech and Latin music, allowing us to exponentially grow our stock of both, literally overnight. For more recent music, there’s the endless rabbit hole that is Bandcamp. In fact, most of our 2013 faves came from this revolutionary end-run around the terminally ill Music-Industry-As-Such.

Above all, our fellow music bloggers kept their little rooms on the Internet warm even when the sun wasn’t shining anywhere else. Special Big Love to stalwarts Awesome Tapes from Africa, Jenny Is in a Bad Mood (Japan), Jewish Morocco, Jugo Rock Forever (former Yugoslavia), Madrotter Treasure Hunt (Indonesia), Monrakplengthai (Thailand), Moroccan Tape Stash, Music from the Third Floor (India), My Passion for Ethiopian Music, and Turkish Psychedelic Music 2, to say nothing of fellow eclecticists Flash Strap, Ghost Capital, Global Groove, Inconstant Sol, Kadao Ton Kao, Music for Maniacs, Snap Crackle & Pop, and Terminal Escape — to name but a few of the dozens whose offerings fill our hours and ears.

Two great but seemingly dead blogs got new life this year: Brain Goreng (Indonesia) and Voodoo Vault (Japan), though whether either will keep up the good fight into 2014 is anyone’s guess. Meanwhile, Interstellar Medium | Foreign Lavish Sounds stormed onto the scene to raise the bar unconscionably high and show us just how awesome a music blog can really be. We’re humbled, shamed even, but genuinely grateful for their existence.

2013 was a year of personal triumph for the Bodega: We not only published some of our least egregious nonfiction to date (in Burning Ambulance, Indiewire, LA Review of Books and Roads & Kingdoms), we received the ultimate worldly acknowledgement of our humble efforts in poetry: Inclusion in a Norton anthology. 

But there were setbacks. In April, our then-host, Divshare, kicked us out of the file-sharing playground, citing multiple complaints about our *cough* copyright infringement *cough*. Tail between our legs, we hooked up with ADrive and began to restock the shelves, offering customers a new feature: The Bodega Pop Comp (see “hot comps” in the sidebar to the right).  

Then, in May, Super DJ, creator and director of WFMU’s Give the Drummer Radio stream, and music blog supporter extraordinaire, Doug Schulkind asked if we’d like to bring the bodega to WFMU in the form of a weekly broadcast. Our ego said yes, yes, oh god let us, yes. Our ego has never been the brightest bulb in the tulip patch, but he tends to get away with pretty much whatever he wants.

So, every Wednesday evening from 7-10pm ET, starting on January 15, we’ll be hosting Bodega Pop Live on the aforementioned stream. Shout outs are due to several fabulous people—in addition to Doug, of course—who helped make this happen: Brandon Downing, Andrew Maxwell, Andrei Molotiu, Sianne Ngai, Mel Nichols, and above all, Carol “Craftypants” McMahon, who donated a Macbook we desperately needed to do the actual streaming. 

Still awake? Hello? Awrighty, let’s move on to the sole reason you’re even here tonight: Bodega Pop’s Top 10 Albums of 2013 …

DAM
Dabke on the Moon ($8.99)
December 15, 2012
As we intimated earlier, middle eastern and north African hip-hop reigned supreme in our ears this year, including this album, technically released last year, but for all intents and purposes not readily available until 2013. It wasn’t the first album we’d heard by the pioneering Palestinian rappers, but it was easily the best of their work to date. The album blasts off with the unlikely-sounding rocker “Street Poetry” and doesn’t let up, kicking out jam after jam all the way through the anthemic “I Fell in Love with a Jew” and final deep groove of “Handcuff Them War Criminals.” If I was Christgau (“Christmas with Christgau” has a nice ring to it, eh?) I know three very talented young men who’d be getting a big ol’ A+ in their stocking.

The Girl
UR Sensation ($8.99)
January 9, 2013 (planned December 19, 2012)
I almost can’t breathe when I think about the awesomeness that is Aiha Higurashi. Her first band, Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her, was easily the best rock group of the Aughts, and with every subsequent project Aiha has shown us a new or at least slightly different side of herself.  The Girl, who released their second album this year, brings it back home to the stripped-down, noirish rock Aiha first explored with SSKHKH—but the sound is grittier, more disconcerting. Our sole complaint? Try setting up a Google alert for “The Girl.” 

Various Artists
Spanish New Wave, The Golden Age (6 Vols.) (Free)
January 20, 2013
See, I told you music bloggers were awesome this year. Compiled by Sebi and Jose Kortozirkuito for free download on Boozetunes, this six-volume set of post-punk music from Spain is everything the bodega dreams of: A vast, and vastly entertaining panorama of pop from a faraway time and place, lovingly introduced with a smart and relevant preface. 

Various Artists
Khat Thaleth (Free)
January 22, 2013
Goodness gracious: The year really started out with a bang, didn’t it? This late-January Arabic hip-hop compilation, released two days after the awesome comp above, is pretty much the coolest international rap collection we can think of since 1988’s Brazilian overview Hip Hop Cultura de Rua. And the download is gratis on Bandcamp. Yep, you heard us: Free.

Satanicpornocultshop
Picaresque ($10)
February 2013
The Japanese sound-collage trio put out seven albums and EPs in 2013, which makes them among the most prolific groups of … dare-we-say all time? A perennial favorite here, the shop’s funked-up February release had the bodega rawkin out on the 7 train as we rode it in to work every morning. 

Various Artists
Harafin So - Bollywood Inspired Film Music from Hausa Nigeria ($5)
April 23, 2013
Holy crap, but Christopher Kirkley’s label is amazing. 2013 was a stellar year for Sahelsounds, beginning with a January release of the second volume of Music from Saharan Cell Phones. This Bollywood-inspired, auto-tuned Nigerian pop was a real revelation to us, having had no prior idea that such a thing even existed. 

Nisennenmondai
N (iTunes store, $9.99)
July 2, 2013
OMG I love these women, who put out what was easily my favorite music video of the year. (Don't stop watching before the 3:20 mark, seriously.) A must-have for all fans of the N-group and for any lover of the industrial / instrumental / experimental wing of J-rock. 

MWR
Because I’m an Arab (Free, if link works)
August 14, 2013
A publicist for this Palestinian rap trio sent me word of this album—a retrospective of the band’s brief but thrilling career-to-date. Hailing from Gaza, these guys are as sonically rich as they are politics-forward. I’m not sure if the Dropbox link I’ve provided is going to work for you — but I have no earthly idea how else to get a hold of this album, let alone pay for it. (If you know, send the info/link our way.)

P.K.14
1984 ($8)
September 13, 2013
The fifth album by one of Beijing’s oldest post-punk bands, formed all the way back in 2001. (It must be liberating having such a short music history.) Though they’ve mellowed slightly with age, they’re still awesome—in fact, even more so this decade than last. You can listen to the whole album on Bandcamp for free … so go listen to it, not to me.

Various Artists
Sounds and Colors: Brazil ($11.43)
November 25, 2013
I have heard the future, and it sounds an awful lot like the República Federativa do Brasil. Seriously, this record is fabuloso. Also, this label looks like it’s gearing up to give Sahelsounds a run for its money. Blaspheme? No, blashphe-you. Get over to their Bandcamp page and start digging around — and don’t miss out on their earlier “name your price” collections. You won’t be disappointed.

Zuoxiao Zuzhou | You Know Where The East Is

There is no equivalent to Zuoxiao Zuzhou in any culture I can think of. In addition to having launched one of China's most notorious rock bands of the 90s, No, Zuoxiao Zuzhou is a successful visual artist, poet, novelist, and film score composer. (His CDs, which are often self-released, typically include his own artwork on the cover--those are his pigs, to the right.)

If the U.S. were a bit less culturally provincial he'd be nearly as well-known here as Ai Weiwei; as it is, he's probably best known in the States, if at all, for having contributed vocals to the Cowboy Junkies' "A Walk in the Park."

His music is all over the place, as is his voice, which at times seems to evoke Nick Cave, Leonard Cohen or even Tom Waits, and at other times--especially on this album--Pere Ubu's David Thomas. His music defies description, having a foot in traditional Chinese music as well as the more experimental strains of American and British post-punk.

You Know Where The East Is is considered by more than a few critics in China to be one of the--perhaps even the one--greatest rock album(s) to have ever been recorded in the People's Republic. It's not something I'm inclined to argue with.

Check out 方法论 from this album:

This ("Money Song") is worth watching as well, though it's from a different album (which I'll upload soon):

Reupped double CD album here.

Hang on the Box | 4 Albums

Just reupped here.

Hang on the Box, mainland China’s first all-girl punk unit, was a glorious mess of contradictions and extremes. Their first live performance, for a small but fanatical crowd of fellow Beijing punks, was met with boos, laughter and jeering; six months later they were on the cover of the local edition of Newsweek, serving as poster girls for an entire generation of Chinese youth. Lauded by critics for politicizing gender through their empowered, femme-forward lyrics, they were famously scornful of Cobra, the only other all-girl rock group before them on the mainland. [Read the rest of the article in Burning Ambulance.]




A reader's comment this morning about the article excerpted above prompted me to go ahead and post the full run of albums by this much-loved legendary band. 

The Fly | The Fly I

Reupped in 320 glorious kbps at a reader's request, here.

It seems fitting that my introduction to Chinese rock would be through a random CD I picked up in a dollar bin in Brooklyn’s Chinatown shortly after 9/11. The CD was the 1997 debut album by pioneering Beijing punk band The Fly. The bin was outside of Xinhua Bookstore/Fantasy Audio & Video Inc. (8th Avenue just below 53rd Street) in Sunset Park.

Fitting because, after all, rock and roll in the People’s Republic took off in the late 80s to early 90s with the introduction of dakou (打口, “saw gash” or “cut out”) cassettes and CDs from the Western world—literally, remaindered discs and tapes intended for landfill but rerouted to dakou stores where people like Feng Jiangzhou, the Fly’s lead singer, got his first taste of the once forbidden music. [Read the rest of this article in Open City.]



Part one of two, from what appears to be a Japanese documentary about Beijing punk.


Part two of two, of same.

Hang on the Box | "No Sexy"

Listen to "No Sexy"

An article I wrote about Hang on the Box, China's first all-girl punk unit, just went live at Burning Ambulance. Read it here.

10 Best Albums of 2012

It's that time again: Holiday lights have filled the windows; radio stations are besotted with Christmas ditties; Fox News commentators have dusted off their War on Christmas toilet paper cozies; and dorky listmakers everywhere are starting to put together our Best Ofs for the year. 

But, can we be honest? What I offer are really not the best albums of 2012. For one thing, how could anyone in good conscience ever confer such a status on anything when there is no qualitative system we can all agree upon to measure "bestness"? When, in fact, "best" can--as we've seen happen this year--include sonic driftwood by the likes of Bruce Springsteen and Frank Ocean? It should be pretty ding-dong clear that the word means wildly different things to different people--anything from "I'm sympatico with this dude's politics" to "I guess the D'Angelo album is going to be delayed another year."

So ... awrighty, then. Here, in order of their release dates, are my personal favorite albums of the last more-or-less 12 months:


Birdstriking 
Birdstriking 
January, China
Purchase a copy of the CD ($15.60 US) or individual songs at 75 cents each, here.
I first came upon this album half a year ago while doing research for this mix; I somehow forgot I even had it until maybe two months ago. Since then, it's been the most re-listened-to album on my iPhone. This obnoxious review in Timeout Shanghai to the contrary, what separates Birdstriking from other Beijing two-chord wonders is their unflagging level of energy: they might be the Metz of mainland China. I don't care who invented this general sound--Sonic Youth, the Velvet Underground, a group of Neanderthals in prehistoric El Castillo--what ultimately matters is who is currently kicking the most ass with it. That would be these kids.

 
Listen to "Monkey Snake"

* * *

Noisecat 
Sunday Sunset Airlines 
February, Korea
Buy a digital copy for $7 here.
One of the nicest things about doing a music blog is that people begin to come out of the woodwork, offering to turn you on to music from their own part(s) of the world that for, whatever reason, you've given short shrift to. Noisecat, who I "discovered" thanks to a guy currently based in Seoul going by the name of "Male Cousin" who put this mix of South Korean pop (as opposed to K-Pop) together for us last month, is a bit like one of those American bands from the 1990s who wishes they were British and it was the 60s (e.g., the Dandy Warhols or Brian Jones Massacre). They remind this listener a bit of 22Cats and Guitar Vader--my nerdy, hipster-hat-y, "look how much I know about shit" way of saying that I've quickly grown very, very fond of them. As, come to think of it, so might you. 

 
Listen to "Running" 

* * *

Mati Zundel 
Amazonica Gravitante 
March, Argentina 
Procure an MP3 version of this album for $8.99 here.
Anyone remember the Nortec Collective? Well, a similar movement is afoot in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where musicians like Zundel and others associated with Zizek (aka ZZK) Records are blending electronica with local forms, such as cumbia. A fitting thing to be happening in a city about which the great Japanese photographer Daido Moriyama once said "the epic and lyrical meet." 

 
Listen to "Bronca" 

* * *

The Yellow Dogs Upper Class Complexity  
May, USA/Iran 
Get the 4-song EP for $4 here.
My first experience of this four-piece was a live performance at the Brooklyn Bowl that I witnessed with my friend Carol in October that completely blew both of us away. After that, we became obsessed with the group: we downloaded all of their available music and watched No One Knows about Persian Cats, a film about the underground music scene in Tehran that the Yellow Dogs appeared in. I even begged my editor at Open City to let me write about them. A self-described dance-punk unit (we hear a bit of Gang of Four and Siouxie and the Banshees, yeah?), the Dogs are currently living in Brooklyn and working on a full-length collection of new songs that they hope to have ready some time next year.

 
Listen to "This City" 

* * *

Sharliza Jelita 
Strange Things 
June, UK/Singapore
Seize your own digital copy ($12.88) or autographed CD ($16.10) here.
This album is to pop music what Falai's Elementi is to dessert offerings: decadent, fruity and a bit self-consciously exotic. (That's Carmen Miranda in the lower right quadrant, btw.) This record--Jelita's first after having moved from Singapore to apparently still-swinging London--lays down one sugar-filled gnosh after another--from the one-two (fruit) punch of openers "No Go Pogo" and "Is That Your Underwear on the Floor?" to the heartbreakingly gorgeous "Breaks My Heart in Two" and curtain-closing title song. But what I love most about Strange Things is how it can feel simultaneously pop-pitch-perfect and amateurishly awkward ("I Want More Sun"? "Credit Crunch"?), as though, hey look!, one of your best friends made a record and you're sort of obligated to listen to it, but actually, whoa, wait: It totally doesn't suck.

 
Listen to "Breaks My Heart in Two"

* * *

Melhem Zein 
2012 
June, Lebanon
Preview and grab it (gratis) here.
Is it a failure of imagination or just brutally candid honesty that leads one to title their album after the year it was released? Maybe it's an avant garde or, like, jazz thing? Whatever. If the year 2012 was this album, we'd have all had us one of the greatest years of our entire freaking lives. Oh, and guess how I discovered this album. No, seriously. Give up? On Amtrak. That's right. I had my computer open and was listening to something--God knows what--when suddenly, freakily, someone's entire iTunes library was being shared with me. I didn't even know such a thing was possible (I'm not exactly young or tech-savvy). I remember incredulously scrolling through this person's vaults and randomly clicking on something from this album and, then, as the hard-driving music began pounding its way through my brain, my hands shaking with excitement, I quickly scribbled guy's name in my notebook. Within a few days I'd found my own copy at Alfra (25-23 Steinway Street), a few blocks from where I live.

 
Listen to "Taj Rassi" 

* * *

MC HotDog 
Ghetto Superstar 
June, Taiwan 
Want it? Go here and scroll all the way down.
MC HotDog, known for laying down some of the most vulgar lyrics over spliced-and-diced super-cheesy pop (from Glen Frey to Teresa Teng), released this year what your humble Bodega proprietor believes to be the second-best album of his career (first best would be this one). I picked up my copy at my favorite Manhattan go-to mom-n-pop, P-Tunes & Video, featured in the header image of this blog. How can you not love an album that includes a song titled "Party Like Hotdog"?

 
Listen to "Party Like Hotdog" 

* * *

Abou el Leef 
Super Leefa 
July, Egypt
You'll find it for nuthin' here.
Currently the fastest moving disc in the Bodega (click link above), owing to a shout-out from the fabulous Doug Schulkind at WFMU. I'm glad, because this really is the kind of record I want everyone to hear and know about, it's really just that good. Plus, how else can I bring it up "casually" in conversation? ("Yeah, it's like Abou el Leef says in 'Hatofrag Aleena' ...") Also-also? "Super Leefa." Now, that's a catch phrase just waiting to be super-memed into the collective conscience.

 
Listen to "Khaleek fe Elnoor" 

* * *

Pussy Riot
Kill the Sexist! 
July, Russia
Your copy is waiting right here.
The runaway success of PSY's "Gangnam Style" has apparently made Seoul a newly popular destination for American vacationers; can't say the same for for Moscow after Pussy Riot members were imprisoned and their videos banded in Russia. But these gals so quickly and thoroughly became an international cause célèbre, there's already a doc detailing their story premiering at Sundance next month. The music, which I actually do happen to like, is almost beside the point.


 
Listen to "Ubej Seksista (Kill the Sexist)" 

* * *


My Little Airport 
Lonely Friday
October, Hong Kong
Pick up yours for $14.49 at YesAsia. 
Another P-Tunes & Video find, this is the seventh album by my all-time favorite band from Hong Kong. When Nicole and 阿P started a decade ago, they sang almost exclusively in English; 10 years later, only three of the 17 songs on this album are in English, including the uber-charming "How Can You Fall in Love with a Guy Who Doesn't Know Gainsbourg?" If I were one half of a twee pop due (阿G, maybe?), my song would be "How Can You Fall in Love with a Guy Who Doesn't Know My Little Airport?"


 
Listen to "How Can You Fall in Love with a Guy Who Doesn't Know Gainsbourg?"

21st Century Chinese Rock & Punk

Subs vocalist Kang Mao (photo by Bjørn Gausdal)

Listen to "Asshole I'm Not Your Baby"



Listen to "No! No! No!"



Listen to "Eat Me"



Listen to "Wahaha"



Listen to "爱之过往"


Get the 30-band, 30-song compilation here.


For decades now it seems like the most exciting expressive culture--no matter the discipline--has been coming out of mainland China. Ai Weiwei, Gu Wenda, and Xu Bing are at the forefront of a huge explosion of visual and conceptual art that a number of phone book-thick catalogs published here and in Europe can barely keep pace with. Writers as diverse as Ma Jian, Liao Yiwu, and Mian Mian are creating some of the most raw and genuinely engaging fiction and creative non-fiction in recent memory--and making international headlines in the process. And I don't think I'm alone in thinking there is no greater, more inventive living film director than Jia Zhangke.


So it should probably be no surprise that, over the last decade or so, the PRC has produced quite literally the most thrilling rock, punk and post-punk in the world. Or that much of this music--unlike so much else on this blog--has become increasingly available through western channels.



Watch Subs perform "So Fine Emo"


For this compilation I gave myself a couple of rules: I wouldn't poach from any pre-existing, readily available compilations (although I did wind up using one song from a free comp that some of you may already have) and I would only allow myself one song from each band, no matter how hair-raisingly great their other tracks may be.



Watch Rebuilding the Rights of Statues' "TV Show (Hang the Police)"


I'll keep this post to the bare minimum, hoping the reader will listen and judge for herself, and use the opportunity to seek out more, as the interest strikes, through Amazon, iTunes and the great independent Asian-focused site Tenzenmen.com.


And, as always, I'm totally curious what you think. ...