At the 2008 Golden Melody Awards ceremony, there was an interesting scene.
The host introduced Zhou Huajian to the scene, saying that his performance was "the real big brother level of the Chinese music scene".
But as soon as Zhou Huajian took office, he immediately clarified: "I don't dare to be a big brother."
"For many years, my daughter-in-law has become a wife, and I still have a big brother above me."
Therefore, Zhou Huajian invited his eldest brother, Li Zongsheng.
Li Zongsheng appeared with a smile, and the audience stood up in greeting, and the applause was thunderous. But Old Li didn't have a few minutes of scenery, because the real protagonist was not him, but Luo Dayou!
Many people grew up listening to Li Zongsheng's songs, and Li Zongsheng said: He grew up listening to Luo Dayou's songs. Li Zongsheng and Zhou Huajian, who followed Luo Dayou upside down, were willing to be "little brothers".
A party gathered three big names in the music industry on the same stage, and the audience thought that the organizers were working hard for the ratings.
As everyone knows, the three big brothers on the stage planned an unprecedented "big event" in the music world. On July 25, 2008, a band called "Vertical Line" came out.
The "cake" that runs through the line is painted very large. On the one hand, it is to "make money", on the other hand, to save the music scene. At that time, the singing world was in a downturn and the rivers were declining, and a strong trend was urgently needed to bring fresh air to the dull singular music scene.
As everyone knows, this "limited group" that is expected by the music scene has a lot of scenery at the beginning and how awkward it is at the end.
At the beginning of 2009, the longitudinal line composed of Luo Dayou, Li Zongsheng, Zhou Huajian and Zhang Zhenyue staged a golden song skewer at the CCTV Spring Festival Gala.
Don't look at the age of the four people adding up to hundreds of years old, but they formed a team that year, high-spirited and did not lose to young people, saying that it was time for them to go out of the mountains to "save" the Chinese music scene.
From the perspective of commercial achievements, the "vertical line" is undoubtedly successful, and the revenue of the concert alone reached NT$464 million (about 100 million yuan), which made the performers who were still worried about their "cheap and old" unexpectedly made a lot of money.
But because of the "one year" of the group, as soon as this time arrives, the performance of the vertical line will be determined by the coffin.
Looking back now, are they really achieving "revitalization of the music scene", or are they fishing for gold and playing tickets?
In fact, the longitudinal line begins with a beautiful scenery and ends with a mess. Halfway through the trip, everyone on the team had a tired look on their faces. Hidden behind the glossy ticket numbers is their unspeakable "heartache."
I wanted to run after half a year of teaming
That year, the longitudinal line tour recorded 900 million, and behind the figure of an average of more than 20 million per person, it was also the result of four men with an average age of 47.5 years running all over the world in a year.
When the longitudinal line returned to the end of the little dome, Li Zongsheng was full of emotions, lamenting that this year's journey, flying more than 200,000 kilometers, it felt good to go home!
Then on "Kangxi Is Coming", the host still thought that the longitudinal line was still unfinished, and asked Zhou Huajian: "Do you regret that it was only set for one year at the beginning?" ”
Zhou Huajian spat bitterly: "Tired to regret, a year is too long!" ”
If they hadn't signed a bunch of performance contracts, they might have disbanded halfway through.
Zhou Huajian was so tired that he wanted to "run away" there were traces to follow.
During the frequent recording of variety shows in the vertical line, he suffered from physical discomfort. Zhou Huajian, who is usually lively and talkative, looks like a man, sings hard, which makes fans feel painful.
But it is reasonable to say that the world belongs to young people, and the youngest Zhang Zhenyue did not expect to be bitter.
According to Zhang Zhenyue's recollection, 50 performances a year, almost every day on the transportation, the physical strength has been squeezed out!
Therefore, just as the fans of the vertical line are reluctant to ask for Anke, the idol himself is anxious to turn around and say goodbye, saying that "dissolution is liberation."
Surprisingly, the oldest Luo Dayou did not show too much physical distress.
When the vertical line is facing dissolution, he is more concerned about what to do if he is "unemployed"?
After all, today's Chinese music scene has stopped singing "Zhi Hu Ren Ye" and has changed to "Hum Hum Ha Hey".
In fact, this is not Luo Dayou's worries, because his "career crisis" has indeed come very quickly.
In 2017, Luo Dayou sang at the Little Dome.
Imagine that when the longitudinal line tour was carried out that year, the audience gathered together, but when it came to Luo Dayou's personal concert, it was a little bit of stars and delayed the opening.
It turns out that with the appeal of the godfather Luo Dayou, he can no longer support a concert of the Little Dome.
Gathered Zhang Yu, Lin Junjie, Tao Zhe, Xin Xiaoqi, Dai Penny, Li Quan and other singers pressed the line, it is difficult to escape the actual "ticket sales plus free tickets before 65% of the tickets are issued".
Superstars together can't write a song
The "wolf" of the longitudinal line is manifested in physical strength, after all, the years are not spared.
Their "embarrassment" is also reflected in the speed of updates to their works.
So much so that they shouted out the slogan of "making music", like "a blank check that cannot be cashed".
At first, the outside world was indeed very optimistic about the vertical line, and the four of them together released 70 solo albums, published nearly 600 works, and most of them were Chinese classics.
Unexpectedly, the ideal wheel hit the reality iceberg, and four talented creators got together and could not produce a work at first.
During the Spring Festival Gala, the longitudinal line is supposed to sing a new song. But due to internal discussions, the four spent a month writing only one poem, Outlaws.
Because it was not in line with the atmosphere of the Spring Festival Gala, it was later renamed "Departure".
Zhou Huajian's agent complained about this, watching the vertical line discuss the creation is to suffer!
Don't let the four people in front of the stands praise each other, be kind, talk about work in private, and have their own opinions/do not give in to each other.
And Zhou Huajian, as the music director of the band, is an old and good man, and no one's opinion is vetoed.
In the end, "who shouts louder" to decide who to listen to, the degree of chaos in the background, I think it is a mess, making people physically and mentally exhausted!
Of course, in the longitudinal line plan, at the end of 2009, which was planned to end the tour, an album composed entirely of new songs was released.
The album ended up out.
Let's not talk about the song effects, see how the big guys make the album, and sigh that they are really tossed!
Because the longitudinal line has been running the tour, living a life of eating box lunches and sleeping in the hotel, it has no treatment of the golden recording studio.
Zhou Huajian broke the news that they were recording the sound of the quilt in the hotel.
The quilt is not soundproof enough, so let the hotel waiter find a mattress, barely use the mattress to set up space around, and then cover the top with a quilt.
In this way, several chinese music superstars, relying on a few mattresses that fell from the ashes of the hotel, barely completed their demo recording.
So the new song is out, how is the market reacting?
In addition to the main "Outlaw", everyone is more impressed by the vertical line, or those classic old songs.
Like Luo Dayou's "Childhood" and "Love Song 1990", Li Zongsheng's "Mortal Song", "When Love Has Become a Thing of the Past", Zhou Huajian's "Friend" and "Flower Heart", Zhang Zhenyue's "The First Experience of Love", "Goodbye" and so on.
This was questioned at the time, believing that a band was singing the members' own famous songs, which was obviously "eating the old book".
At that time, everyone was still thinking of Wu Bai and Zhao Chuan joining the vertical line, which was very interesting.
But when the fan's wish reached me, the other party's face was written with rejection.
Wu Bai said euphemistically, saying that he did not fit with the idea of vertical line, and that his own China blue band was better:
"We've been in existence for 17 years, not just a few months of play, and we can play with our eyes closed."
Zhao Chuan's response was more direct, and when asked "which of the vertical lines developed the best", Zhao Chuan said after a moment of silence: "None."
Zhao Chuan also criticized the longitudinal line for the "lack of innovation in works", except for Zhang Zhenyue's new works, others are basically paused.
The vertical line could not save the Rolling Stones
Of course, Zhao Chuan said this prematurely.
Li Zongsheng handed over his middle-aged masterpiece on Christmas 2009.
Don't look at his happiness or not, one will fool around and say that the team name should be called "Nanbao Maru", and the other will joke that he wants to write "a man is not a woman's harbor".
As a result, this "Song to Myself", Li's tone is still the same, but there are more new philosophies of his age.
The following year, "Song for Yourself" won Jay Chou's "Superman Can't Fly" with a one-vote advantage and won the Golden Melody Award for Best Song of the Year.
However, from this point of view, relying only on Li Zongsheng's song, the original intention of "saving the city of works" through the longitudinal line has not yet been realized.
And not only can't save the music market, but even the Rolling Stones are in a difficult situation.
The formation of the longitudinal line this time exposes more "the wolf of the decline of the Rolling Stones".
According to the official version, the establishment of the longitudinal line is a red wine match originating from the rolling stone boss Duan Zhongtan.
It sounds full of emotions and returns to the heyday of Chinese music.
The ideal filter can be broken, and the reality is that "the Rolling Stones can't go back to his heyday."
With the rise of the Internet in the millennium, the physical recording industry collapsed, and the Rolling Stones became a victim of the environment.
At the same time, its internal singers have fled, which has caused him great injury.
Chen Shuhua and Zhao Chuan, who were the two major sales guarantees of that year.
The former retired early due to his personal circumstances and did not ask about the world. The latter's sales declined and was ruthlessly abandoned by the company's top management.
There are also many Rolling Stone singers, but due to various reasons such as improper management of the Rolling Stones, they choose to leave after the contract expires.
Looking back, the Rolling Stones in their heyday were shining and rich.
That year, Zhang Guorong made a comeback to the music scene and defected to the Rolling Stones.
Rolling Stones took out a blank check and asked him to fill in the numbers he wanted, saying that no matter how much he wrote, the Rolling Stones would satisfy him.
Zhang Guorong signed it, but the number column only wrote two words, love.
Years later, the Rolling Stones held a concert for its anniversary, which on the surface looked like a love and righteousness reunion, but the actual environment was greatly different.
On the one hand, Zhao Chuan, who broke away from the Rolling Stones, sighed in front of the media, thinking that he would die in the Rolling Stones, but as a result, he was sentimental, and his future was not valued by the other party.
On the other hand, Duan Zhongtan, the founder of the Rolling Stones, is also complaining about the troubles of making music, saying that the Rolling Stones are now signing singers, only one-tenth of that year.
And he himself has been exploring for many years, losing money, and struggling to move forward in exploration.
If the out-of-the-mountain of the longitudinal line in that year is regarded as a middle-aged man's act of making a living and fishing for gold in the post-wave era, the degree of embarrassment will inevitably increase by a few points.
These four people were sweating profusely, their backs were sore, and the so-called freshness of the band had long been experienced.
In the end, let the "recently more annoying" old section solve the economic worries and pay off the debts owed by the failure of investment, it turns out that this is the reality behind the contradiction?
But even so, the success of the single brand of the vertical line is still a drop in the bucket for the future of the Rolling Stones, and it can only be saved for a while.
Now that many years have passed, many fans have asked when the longitudinal line will return to the music scene.
Because even if they are "fishing for gold" and looking at the great music scene, there is no singer like them who "fishes for artistry".