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.

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 2011

I've provided links to get most this music, all for free, and all from others' uploads. I encourage you in every case to seek out original CDs and actually buy them, whenever possible.

Marshmallow Kisses
Ciao!Baby
Released January 25, 2011

This is one of my top two CDs of the year, and possibly the album I listened to most after discovering it online a couple of months ago while sleuthing around about Hong Kong underground music. While the MKs are somewhat late to the Hong Kong twee party, their first two albums (their first being I Wonder Why My Favorite Boy Leaves Me an EP) have delivered far beyond my own expectations for the genre ... and I'm a huge fan of HK twee pioneers My Little Airport, Ketchup and the Pancakes.

I have no idea what sort of legs this terrific ray of sunshine would have outside of the Special Administrative Region, but it seems criminal that not even Pitchfork seems to know about it. Get it here.

Listen to "Jazz for Lovers; Solitude for Me"

* * *

Deerhoof
Deerhoof vs. Evil
Released January 25, 2011
I'm just as shocked as you are to see a U.S. band among my top 10, but along with Ciao!Baby, this was my most listened to CD all year. (My two top faves of the year were both released on January 25.) In another 2011 top 10 I read online, someone else described the album as "utilitarian," noting the lukewarm response it received from critics, who generally like the album but complain about it being unfocused, or even ADD. That actually makes it the perfect record for the kind of listener I am: completely bored with the simplicity of most western popular music but not terribly thrilled by most jazz or classical, either. It's what's driven me to track down every Albanian, Bangladeshi, Brazilian, Burmese, etc., etc. bodega in NYC, where I can get music I can really respond to on a visceral level. (Most western critics write about pop as if they respond to it on a purely socio-semiotic level; reading music more than than listening to it.)

Personally, I think this is the best album Deerhoof has ever made: sonically rich, forward-looking, utterly brilliant pop that sounds like it couldn't possibly have been made in this country. (File removed from link; sorry.)


Listen to "Qui Dorm, Només Somia"

* * *

Najwa Karam
Hal Leile ... Ma Fi Noum 
Released June 28, 2011
Holy crap, but I love Najwa Karam. I have--I'll admit it--zero objectivity when it comes to this woman; she could release an album sitting on the toilet reading Jewel poems translated into Arabic and I'm sure I'd buy it, listen to it and profess my undying love for it. That said, trust me when I tell you that this record totally and unimpeachably fucking rocks. Other than her voice getting consistently deeper and more powerful, little has changed since the Lebanese superstar began recording in the late 80s: nearly every record she puts out is either the dabke or the baladi equivalent of AC/DC, Rolling Stones or, closer to home, Hakim. And this one, quite honestly, is the most rockin' she's put out in a few years--it's like the Some Girls of her career.

Did I mention how hard she rocks? Or how hard this record rocks? If this wasn't such a recent purchase for me, it would probably be right up there with Deerhoof and Marshmallow Kisses in the "most-listened-to" category. I'm sure it'll earn that status soon enough. Get it here.


Listen to "Ya Baie"

* * *

Sōtaisei Riron
Correct Theory of Relativity
Released April 27, 2011
Sōtaisei Riron means "theory of relativity," so the title is kind of a play on the idea of a correct theory and the fact that most of this album is made up of remixes of the band's earlier work by Yoshihide Otomo, Spank Happy, Buffalo Daughter, Arto Lindsay, Cornelius and others. These aren't, however, remixes that sound like remixes--this album is completely unique, beautiful and totally perplexing. (Track three, for instance, is NOT a mistake; although it took me several tries before I was able to listen all the way through to the end and realize what, exactly, it is.) Perhaps appropriately, the first song, "Q/P," one of the two non-remixes on the album, opens with the words: "I. Don't know. Wha. Choowhachoo want ..."

The band has come a long way from its kind of Smiths-soundalike-with-female-lead-singer, and this album, though I bet it throws some fans off, is another great surge forward. Get it here.


Listen to "Q/P"

* * *

Pairs
Summer Sweat
Released September 30, 2011
I know next to nothing about this band, which I "discovered" via Music Has the Right to People a couple of weeks ago. From what I've been able to suss out, it's a male-female duo based in Shanghai; this is their second album; and this one was produced by Yanghai Song of Beijing punk superstars PK14. When my absolute favorite Chinese punk band, Subs, released the deeply disappointing Queen of Fucking Everything last year, followed this year by a less-than-thrilling Honeyed and Killed from the once fabulous Hedgehog, I just assumed that punk in China had shot its wad. Apparently, it's just moved south to Shanghai.

This record is stripped down, extremely raw and in some ways every bit as surprising as Wire's Pink Flag (songs range in length from the 52 second "Christmas" to the nearly five-minute long "My body is not a wonderland"). I suspect it'll convince at least a few of the more cynical of you out there that, in fact, "punk's not dead." Get it here.


Listen to "Cloud Nine"

* * *

Zee Avi
Ghostbird
Released August 23, 2011
This is the only record (other than the Deerhoof) that actually, so far as I know, has legs here in the U.S. In fact, you're more likely to know more about her than I do, as I only recently stumbled onto this record, wholly by accident, while scrolling through the music blog Chinese Music Collection. (Yes, I know she's Malaysian; thanks.) I don't know what her record was doing on that blog, but there it was, and I'm rather happy to have it, although I have no idea if I'll still be listening to it in another week or two; it's already starting to feel ickily like any number of earnest American or British neo-folkers whose work I have strenuously attempted to avoid for the last several years.

That said, I do love "Siboh Kitak Nangis" and "The Book of Morris Johnson," neither of which I can imagine getting tired of any time soon. Get it here.


Listen to "The Book of Morris Johnson"

* * *

Guitar Wolf
Spacebattleshiplove
Released, golly ... sometime in 2011
This is a self-released album, recorded in Tokyo in 2010 and intended to be sold during Guitar Wolf's 2011 Hoochie Coochie Space Men North American tour. It is so ear-shreddingly raw, so super em effin' rockin', words simply can't describe how much I love it. How is it that, while 80s Japan rockers Shonen Knife have gotten increasingly self-consciously cute, Guitar Wolf has just gotten more fucked-up and awesome? Don't get me wrong; I love both bands. But GW has no right to be this full of energy, this rockin', this far into their career. For one thing, it isn't fair to everyone else. For another, it's just confusing. 

Get it here.


Listen to "Hoochie Coochie Spaceman"

* * *

Da Bang
Bone Hug

Released October 1, 2011

I'm seriously running out of steam here, so don't expect a lot of vivid description at this point. And, honestly, we're starting to get into "uneven" territory now. But the "end of year" convention demands 10 albums so, so help me god, that's what I'll deliver. I don't love everything on this record, but I love the stuff that sounds like super-jacked up 80s synth pop, especially "No-Hero-Days," which is as good as anything Big Sea Queen Shark has recorded, and "冰心" (which I'm assuming is about the famous Chinese writer of the same name).

Definitely worth a listen. Get it here.


Listen to "No-Hero-Days"

* * *

Juusho Futei Mushoku
JAKAJAAAAAN!!!!!
Released sometime in 2011
I love this band so much it hurts. That said, their follow-up to their 2010 debut isn't quite as mind-blowing, though it certainly has its moments. I really, really, really, really, really, really wish I could find the video they shot for "One Two Three"; it was insane. Alas, it appears to longer be on YouTube, perhaps owing to the fact that it wasn't, to be perfectly honest, exactly P.C. Or maybe I just lack the skills to find it again. (If you find it, for god's sake, please let me know.)

Get it here.

* * *

10cm
1.0
Released February 10, 2011
In truth? I don't love this album, but I think this band, which I'm pretty sure is a duo, from Korea, has potential. They can either go one of two ways: Slicker and less interesting, or more Jonathan Richman/Crowd Lu-like and awesome. Time, I suppose, will tell. I wouldn't have included it here except that (a) it does seem promising and (b) fairly different from most K-pop.

Get it here.


Listen to "King Star"

* * *

So, what do you think? And, more to the point, what are your own favorite albums of 2011? Post your list in the comments below, or, better yet, include a URL to your own blog, if you have one. (But, seriously, if your list includes Wilco or PJ Harvey, don't bother.)