Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Rocking in Beijing


The Chinese capital has an eclectic music scene.

You can hear everything from country and jazz to rock, 80's pop, covers and metal. Lots of metal.

And there's several foreigners who play with Chinese bands, but few purely expat bands.

One of them is Shake Hands with Danger and they're pretty good.

They only started up five months ago and mostly play at a bar near the university district in the northwest side of the city.

The band was started up by two guys from the China Daily newspaper and they found a keyboardist and drummer.

Most of their music is pretty dark, talking about war and gunfights. They say their main inspiration comes from the Sharon Stone movie The Quick and the Dead.

But the band's sound is great. It's loud, but it's definitely head nodding music, with a few catchy tunes.

Although they play to a mostly university crowd, they do wonder at times if their lyrics are getting through to their audience.

The lead singer, Ben Davey, definitely had the "frontman" look, with the white shirt, skinny black tie, fitted jacket and cigarette black jeans. Oh and don't forget the pointed cowboy boots.

He jokes that he gets mistaken as a bad version of Corey Haim, but if Shake Hands with Danger sticks around Beijing long enough, he might get a gaggle of girls running after him down the street recognizing him for his musical looks.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

this is another example of westernization of china. it may not be bad. hopefully these rock bands will have good librettists to write meaningful verses instead of rap music which only yells rhymes without any meaning. afterall music is an expression of emotion not just creat sounds.

Anonymous said...

You would be so embarassed if you actually understood the depths of your ignorance....