Music

Parlovr China Tour Vlog 5

by AUX staff

MUSIC: Cole Porter/Kate Kapshaw/John Williams, ‘Anything Goes’

While there are a lot of expats at the shows (tons in Beijing, including a nice gal that used to work for Pop Montreal and others who had actually seen us play in Canada), there’s also an awesome amount of Chinese kids who’ve come out, too. While it seems from afar that China is pretty closed off (Facebook, Myspace and a lot of Google sites are blocked), people find ways of discovering all kinds of new stuff from the rest of the world. They often do this by obtaining proxy servers from outside China and using them to surf forbidden sites.

In Tianjin, there were these girls who were seriously up on their shit. A lot of music fans here are really into genre-labeling. Whereas I find a lot of people in Canada/USA try to liken one band to another, here in China they often just describe the genre. Lots of stuff is called ’emo’, and a lot of ‘post’ stuff, various sub-hardcore genres, etc. While their favorite band was My Chemical Romance, these girls were also really into Handsome Furs (who’ve also toured China) and other relatively underground indie acts. They also gave me my Chinese name: Piao Ro (sp?), which means ‘shampoo’. Baptised.

After Tianjin, we headed off to Shanghai, home of Ciga. Ciga chose her English name after Sigur Ros. Being too difficult to pronounce for a lot of her friends, a lot of people started calling her ‘Rosa’ to make it easier. She hated this and so she just changed it to Ciga, to resemble the phonetic pronounciation of Sigur.

Shanghai was gorgeous. Obviously, with the 2010 World Expo going on it was quite busy and filled with visitors. But the natural beauty of the city held its own, especially in districts like the French Concession and the Bund. Louis and I took a 30-minute rickshaw ride around the city, something which is apparently ill-advised due to safety concerns. (see last video).

We also got to meet (and likely annoyed) the infamous Seymour Stein, who co-founded Sire Records and signed the Ramones and the Talking Heads among others. Pretty funny stuff. Louis and I spent a lot of our time acting tongue and cheek with a lot of the people around us, some of whom got it and laughed along and others who didn’t quite appreciate it. One of those people that Louis really got to was our new friend, Wil, one of the other performers on the TransmitCHINA tour. Wil’s is a super kinetic personality with a great sense of humor, but Louis has a way of jarring anyone. See Wil in the video giving Louis his just deserts.

After Shanghai, we headed back to Hong Kong to play our last show. We topped it off with an impromptu performance of Weezer’s ‘Say It Ain’t So’ with our new band bros, The Racoons (see our Facebook page for a clip of this). It was a total party.

After a late night, Louis and I got back to the hotel with only about an hour before our wake-up call. Well, needless to say, we slept through it. This resulted in a pretty absurd trip back to Montreal. Being stranded in Hong Kong by Jeremy and our manager, finding alternative routes, losing our gear and taking a flight through some awful storm that nearly flipped the plane.

We’re back now in one piece. Jeremy’s gone right off on tour across Canada with Nightwood, while I went straight to NYC to celebrate my Dad’s bday. Louis’ nice and snug at home, doing some of the things he couldn’t as easily get away with doing back East.

Just wanna say a big love and thanks to the TransmitCHINA people, Ciga Zhou, Matt, Murray and Jeff of the Racoons (check them out), Wil and all the other bands who we were lucky enough to play with.

Hugs and high fives.

X

– A (aka Piao Ro)