Author | Anfi
Edit | Not born
When it comes to which city in China is a natural language master, Beijing must be inseparable.
Every Beijinger is extremely able to speak the Tao, and speaking is not their only language KPI, can speak and sing is the hard test.
"Summer of the Band" has just ended, listen to the musicians who have been popular overnight in the show singing "I went from the drum tower to mao" "Good night Beijing Goodnight once", and then listen to Zijian's Beijing pronunciation, Peng Lei's Beijing-style spit, look at the reflector lead singer and the new pants members "fork" each other, and the old band faces who have been in Beijing for 30 years, and then think of He Yong's sentence "My home is inside the Second Ring Road", you will find -
Yo, the city of Beijing is indeed full of rock and roll stories.
part.1
Beijing, where urban rock originated
A closer look at a brief history of Chinese rock and roll reveals that the opening chapter is all about the story of Beijing.
Many people's understanding of Chinese rock and roll began with Cui Jian's roar at the Workers' Gymnasium in Beijing. In 1986, Cui Jian sang "Nothing", which shocked the music scene.
But in fact, before that, Beijing already had the bud of Chinese rock.
In 1979, a campus band called "Wanli Ma Wang" was born at the Beijing Second Foreign Chinese College, becoming the earliest rock band in China. At a time when there were few foreign cultures introduced, they mainly covered the songs of beatles, beegees and Paul Simon.
▲ King Of Wanlima
Rock and roll veterans like Cui Jian and Magic Rock Sanjie, who are now familiar with them, are also a group of children who grew up in the Beijing compound or in the dormitories of the cultural troupe and song and dance troupe.
Cui Jian was born in a musical family in Beijing and learned to play trumpets from an early age; Dou Wei was born in the Beijing Courtyard, his father was a Beijing folk music player; He Yong's father was He Yusheng, a folk music player of the Chinese Song and Dance Troupe; Gao Qi, the lead singer of the Overload Band, whose father Gao Wei served as the conductor of the China National Orchestra and the China Song and Dance Troupe...
If the old cannons in the Second Ring Road shaped the original image of Beijing rock, then in the late 1990s, the sound from the North Fourth Ring Road depicted another form of Beijing rock.
Haidian Wudaokou, one identity is the "center of the universe", and the other identity is the birthplace of Beijing punk.
▲ The five mouths in the center of the universe
In early 1998, at the fifth crossing of College Road, a bar called the Howling Club was born, while a group called the Boring Army set off a nationwide wave of punk.
The punk band Mirror, which has been established for 20 years, is the "debut" here.
Punk always gives people the image of rebellion, eccentricity and arrogance. They have exaggerated crown heads, skinny leg tights, and belts with rivet elements, fresh and rebellious.
▲ Beijing punk band brain turbid lead singer Xiao Rong
At that time, there was also a place called "Wudaokou Clothing Market", which was also called "Big Shed" by everyone, and there were many shops selling foreign imported CDs. However, due to restrictions, these CDs will be left with some destruction marks when they enter customs, but they will not affect the audition.
People refer to these audio-visual products that have been punched or pierced in the eyes as "mouth-punching plates".
Listening to the mouth of the plate is the best way for every Beijing rock youth to get foreign music, at that time, most of the people gathered in the greenhouse, Haidian Book City, Xidan and other places, little by little to find their favorite CDs, looking for refreshing foreign bands, those places to pan, but also become the happy cradle of rock youth.
Hand-painted posters of howling clubs and howling records were plastered on almost every small shop selling mouth plates, which became the most iconic portrait of Beijing punk at that time.
▲ Howling Club, Howl Records founder Lu Bo hand-painted poster, when the performance ticket ranged from 10 yuan to 30 yuan
Regarding Wudaokou, there is also a musical memory that must not be mentioned - D-22 Bar, which is an important base for underground music in Beijing. Once the hedgehog band performed here, joyside, carsick cars, snapline, Houhai sharks, gamblers and other new generation bands in Beijing started here.
In the eyes of many people, playing rock and roll belongs to "no learning and no skill" and "not doing business", but interestingly, D-22 is surrounded by colleges and universities, close to Tsinghua, Peking University, Beihang, Beilin, today is definitely one of the top "school district bars", come here to see the performance is also a famous school bully.
"Cheap tickets, cheap drinks, high-quality performances" once became the signature of D-22. Compared with old punk and old rock, this is the birthplace of Beijing's avant-garde rock.
part.2
The dream utopia of foreign rock youth
Of course, there are not only these native Beijing bands in the story of Beijing rock, but the rock dreams of foreign musicians also shine in Beijing.
For a time, Shucun, located just outside the North Fifth Ring Road, was the base where Chinese rock and roll had the most say.
▲A corner of the tree village
After the glory and frustration of Chinese rock in the 1990s, a group of young people came to Beijing along that road, settled in a tree village that barely could afford to pay rent, and pursued their musical dreams in a humble living environment.
Here, perhaps the conditions are simple, perhaps life is barren, but it is a gathering place for every young person with rock and roll dreams. Today' most typical representative is the "Pain Band".
The houses in The tree village are all rotten bungalows, which cannot be sunburned all day in the summer, and the stove is needed to heat up in the winter, and it is easy to be gas poisoned if you are not careful. But the low rent of one hundred yuan a month makes the extremely poor rock youth see this place as a "utopia" and freely vent their love for rock and roll.
At that time, I never felt hard, because the bands were living the same life. Although everyone ate a little and the house was a little broken, the heart of playing music was very pure and happy.
——Gao Hu, the lead singer of the band
The tour band, which is also the "North Drift Band", also admitted that when they first came to Beijing, they encountered countless setbacks -
Traveled to record companies large and small to deliver demos, but ate countless closed doors; could not pay rent, life was tight, and it was difficult to walk...
But despite this, they still chose to stay in Beijing to pursue their dreams.
In 2000, the Beijing Midi School, as the "Whampoa Military Academy of Rock and Roll", held the first music festival ever held in Beijing and even in China, and this year's midi music festival is also known as China's "Woodstock".
Look, this is the other side of Beijing, where everything new can be accepted.
Today, hundreds of music festivals are held across the country every year, but when you squeeze into the sea of strawberries and midi, you hope to remember the "free music festival" 19 years ago.
▲Strawberry Music Festival live
part.3
Why did rock music take root in Beijing?
If you want to understand the stories that really happened around rock musicians, check out their documentaries and movies.
When you watch countless movies such as "Beijing Music and Road", "Rock and Roll Duoduo", "Beijing Bastard", "Old Rock" and so on, which depict rock musicians and rock music as the background, it is not difficult to find that the background of these stories is almost all set in Beijing.
Why was the first band formed at beijing Second Foreign Chinese College? Why has Beijing become a dream paradise for foreign rock youth? Because it is a place where you can get close to foreign cultures and European and American pop music.
Chinese rock music was actually born under the wave of western modern music and gradually grew up. After the reform and opening up, more and more foreigners began to come to China to work, study and live.
Beijing, as the capital, is home to many foreign embassies and consulates, and these fresh music and culture are catalysts for rock 'n' roll.
For example, in the early 1990s, Maxim's Western Restaurant in Chongwenmen was not only a restaurant, but also a performance scene where underground rock music took root.
▲Maxim Western Restaurant
In addition, Beijing is the center of political culture, where there is a wonderful chemical reaction between the iconic traditional cultural colors and the rebellious rock spirit.
This is probably the charm of Beijing, a city with a thousand faces. There is openness and tolerance, but at the same time there is the same rebellion and innovation as rock and roll, old and new.
Which city do you think is the most rocky?
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[1] Li Meng.In the 1980s, Chinese rock was in Beijing[n].Beijing Chronicle, 2019-05. CHEN Tao. Beijing Space in Chinese Rock Films[j].Institute of Chinese Culture, College of Letters, Chinese Min University, 2015-12-31. [3]1984-2019, 35 summers of Chinese bands[eb/ol].Beijing News fun entertainment.2019-7-15. Ke Yuan. The Aesthetics of Rock and Roll: A Study of Chinese mainland Rock Music[d].Chongqing: Southwest University, 2013-04-20.
This article is the "Jingcai" Beijing urban culture network dissemination
The second column in the event series