Zuo Xiao was born in 1970 to boatmen (in their Jiangsu dialect, the people on board). In 1986, zuo xiao was 16 years old, still called Wu Hongjian, stole a household registration book from his family and went to a certain air force unit in Nanjing to serve as a soldier. In 1990, Zuo Xiao was 20 years old, and at this time he made a decision that affected his life - to make music! So, zuo Xiao, who had just retired, took a guitar, tape recorder and quilt and followed his uncle to Shanghai.
In order to survive, Zuo Xiao started a hawker business. Just started helping people record pop songs, a cassette tape for five dollars. He also often mixed in the bar to sing Luo Dayou's songs. Later, I found that Wen Qingduo of Fudan University directly set up a stall at the back door of the school railway, specializing in selling jokes.
Until May 1993, Zuo Xiao came to Beijing with 600 pieces of disc. Zuo Xiao can do business, mainly because he understands music. Among the Yonago Street resellers, he is the best businessman. Even Dou Wei and Wang Feng were his hardcore customers.
It was also when selling discs and bragging to guests that Zuo Xiao met the artist Zhang Huan, who not only bought a 30 yuan dish, but also dragged Zuo Xiao to live in Beijing's Dashan Villa (now Chaoyang Park). Later, this land became the shining "East Village" art district in the Chinese art circle.
In the same year, Zuo Xiao formed the "NO" band. And this band, along with Flies, Pangu and Tongue, is known as the Four Kings of Chinese Underground Rock.
Poster of the show of the year
It must be mentioned that the Beijing Music School was also established in March of the same year. In 1994, Zuo Xiao produced the first song "No Solution", and the following year, the second song "Six Branches of Flowers" was rejected to a certain extent in the rolling circle because the lyrics were too obscure. The mainstream of the rolling circle at that time was still immersed in the Magic Rock Sanjie + Tang Dynasty.
But that year he and several other artists made a famous move to the Nameless Mountain for a photograph he took — a 1999 venice biennial.
"Adding a Meter to the Nameless Mountain" / Zuo Xiaozu Curse
In 1997, a huge explosion occurred at the Beijing Dongfang Chemical Factory, killing 9 people and injuring 39 people, and direct economic losses of 117 million yuan - Zuo Xiao was treated as a suspect and detained for 20 days, which is still a special case.
The next career of the left small can be divided into three stages:
Early years of exploration: 1998-2005
In the early days, Zuo Xiao's music was always inseparable from historical trauma, political pain, economic turmoil, and soul loss. It was the menstrual pain at the end of the 20th century, and Zuo Xiao shaped a "Kafka" solution in his own limited cognition. However, in the face of nihilism, Zuo Xiaozu's spells failed to truly complete the escape, comfort, let alone calm the soul. So the early works were actually limited, to some extent a relatively narrow experimental object.
The first twist was 2005's I Can't Sit Sadly Next to You, an album that marked the turning point and gradual maturity of Zuo Xiao Music. Similarly, it is also the gradual maturity of the left small self.
In this album, Zuo Xiao put away the previous Zhang Madness, writing in the preface to the publication: "In the short term, I will not use such a life-consuming way to make an album, for such a reason, please do not upload MP3, if you listen to its MP3, you must remember to buy a genuine album." The compressed MP3 itself loses more than 40% of the audio and dynamics than the album, so the sound effect is relative to the album's painstaking quality pursuit, it is at most a small sample, and the sound details of this record are extremely exquisite processing and highly personalized wonderful features can not be heard. After 8 years of brewing, Zuo Xiao Curse was ready to fight a big battle.
Irony Mid-Term: 2006-2008
When "I Can't Sit Sadly Next to You" came out, the fans were furious – what is this thing? The subtext is, you're singing love songs like Black Panther, how do I listen to them later? Zuo Xiao ignored them either. In 2006, Zuo Xiao and Bian Xiaoli married.
If the previous Zuo Xiao was a cold and depressed "bitter ghost", then the Zuo Xiao at this time was a left small who gradually had flesh and blood and was awake. He can be so affectionate in "I Can't Sit Sadly Next to You" that you will "always be in tears"; he can play in "America" so beautiful that you are amazing; but he immediately became the vulgarity of "You Know Which Side the East Is".
You really think of me as an artist? Are you sure you're not a herd of pigs?
Make you reflect on self-examination, I think this is what he can bring to everyone on the surface. Of course, many people don't even understand the surface.
Left Boss Period: 2009-present
Zuo Xiao has become the "sad boss" supported by literary and artistic youth, who are the most fanciful group of people, who are young and have time and energy. When Zuo Xiao sang "For this world, you are a trouble, for me, you are the whole world", the Wenqing people could not hold on to it in an instant.
In the words of Chen Shanni, "Zuo Xiaozu is a performance artist rather than a singer a lot of times, more often I appreciate his attitude, in fact, he is playing pop music, and there are many word games in the lyrics."
Although Zuo Xiao learned how to sensationalize, he also learned how to please the audience. However, he still did not give up his sharpness and irony, Zuo Xiao is still Zuo Xiao, from beginning to end, consistently, facing the nihilistic rogue Zuo Xiao with a knife.
Zuo Xiao is not the proletarian fighter you think he is, nor is he the leader of political opinion that you fantasize about; he is the "left boss" who has stood on the side and barked wildly in this glorious and beautiful gilded country, and now he is gradually left with only a cold-spoken "left boss".
"You're a problem for the world," is true.
Finally, to borrow a sentence from Zuo Xiao in "The Rabies Barking Tomb": Is pain art? I don't believe it.
The original article was published in the China Music Festival Forum