0093 Anniversary Live

I didn't go to a live last weekend or the 2 or 3 potentially good lives during the weekdays because my brother was here. However, despite being balls tired from getting 4 hours sleep max per day during this week, I forced myself to go.

Since it was the Rock 0093 3rd year anniversary, there were 7 bands today, and this was part 2 LOL. Part 1, on Thursday, had 5 bands, which I unfortunately missed. The first band, Five Pence, was probably a relatively new band. They played two original songs which sounded pretty good with interesting riffs--especially the bassist, who was pretty Tetsu-esque. The last two songs were, unfortunately, covers of Highway to Hell and Sweet Child o' Mine. It would've been nice to hear more originals.

One thing I realized is how difficult it is to be the opening band. Since the mood hasn't been set yet, it's extremely difficult to get the audience into the music--even with the more familiar covers that they played. The whole idea of stage presence is super important and it seems the more inexperienced bands struggle with this by letting the audience's mood control how wild they are willing to act instead of trying to go all out and forcing a change in mood like the more experienced bands.

I say this because the popular numetal band, Five Pointed Star, followed Five Pence. The vocalist of that band was able to get a great reaction from the audience because of his experience MCing. Though they are pretty established as a band, it wasn't as if a majority of the people there were already fans of them. In fact, I don't think even 25% of the people there were fans of Five Pointed Star because the couldn't even get a real mosh going like they did at Mao. However, they were also the only band of the night to play an encore because the audience enjoyed it so much by their last song.

It also might be worth noting that, it seems that numetal has a greater advantage of engaging the audience. It might be because Chinese people LOVE numetal, but I think it's at least partly because numetal tends to have these half time feeling heavy riffs that are easy to headbang to.

The third band was a pretty sweet band. I think it was called New Vector. They are a three piece instrumental band that I would liken to a more noisy, less refined, shoegazier Rega. Also, they are not as technical. But in any case. The three songs they played were awesome. Of course, Chinese fags had to ruin it. I heard at least 5 different people ask why they didn't have a singer. WTF? Do people come to listen to music or a singer? In any case, they were awesome and the people who didn't like them aren't. Haha.

At this point, I am unsure of the order. 8 bands is hard to remember and I'm balls tired. I think, however, it was Momo that played next and they are, well, Momo. Their singer was absent today and the guitarist was singing. Her singing voice is the super little girl sounding voice like on the openings of cutesy anime. Also, their drummer basically manhandles the drum. They sounded even louder than Five Pointed Star.

I think Momo was followed by Hanging Gardens, whom I have a hard time recalling anything special.

Little Nature seemed to be the big band of the night, despite being in the middle. They had a few interesting riffs, and seemed like they would be alright at first. But most of their songs ended up sounding repetitive and generic. Also, the bassist/vocalist, isn't much of a vocalist. Mostly sounds like punky yell screaming. This brings me to another point though, either Chinese people love generic songs and along with their pretty boy image makes them a good band in the eyes of Chinese people, or they were so pretty boy that their looks overwhelmed their mediocrity.


After they played, tons of people left--mostly girls. Which brings me to yet another point. Half the time, the audience is just trying to take pictures/film the bands. This is especially true in during the sets of pretty boys as one might expect. But seriously, everyone needs to take a step back and learn from TJ's Put Your Camera Down, which has pwn lyrics BTW.

There were two bands after Little Nature. The first was Joker, I think. Don't have much to say about them except, folk rock is not really my thing.

The last band, which was Old Doll I think, played some really technical stuff. They are a Blues/Country band and have a very small fanbase it seems, despite their technical prowess. I should write more but I'm too tired. Maybe I'll edit this post tomorrow.