Throughout the afternoon, Old Wolf and Little Ke recorded a song together — the second live recording between the two after 21 years, the last time in 1997 when "The Long Lost Thing" was recorded, with Little Ke playing the piano and Old Wolf singing. The buddies and world changes in the lyrics are like the road of life. Music accompanies them through their youth, ushering in the prosperity of the world, there have been lows, and even a line of life, and now to the age of knowing the destiny of heaven, they are free and calm in the face of a rapidly changing era, moving forward steadily, the original intention of music has not changed, and the youthful mood is still there.
"Grandson, are you okay?" Have all the cows you blown have been realized..." The old wolf put his hands in the pockets of his jeans, the soles of his feet beat, his body completely followed the rhythm of the music, and the expression of Xiao Ke on the other side was more immersed in it, and he would slightly close his eyes when he sang to the emotional place.
This recording is Xiao Ke's new record "50-year-old carnival" in the "Hair Little Child", which is a very Beijing song, like two good buddies who have not seen each other for many years after middle age, a nickname that makes people instantly recall the past.
As representatives of campus folk songs and pop music in the 1990s, Old Wolf and Xiao Ke changed from white-clad teenagers to middle-aged uncles with gray hair. They sang songs about youth, past, and love, and happiness was as easy to come by as ever, and music was enough.
Old Wolf and Xiao Ke got acquainted with Gao Xiaosong, and the first time they met was in Xiao Ke's house, in the old alley, nearly ten square meters of huts, in addition to beds, all of which were music equipment, and a large number of musicians at that time had mixed here. The two have known each other for more than twenty years, have been music for half a lifetime, and when asked what music means to them, they invariably give the same answer - "play".
The difference is that the old wolf has been playing for more than twenty years, and he is still singing in the vicissitudes of the year, while Xiao Ke has played almost all the things about music.
The old wolf is 50 years old, Xiao Ke is almost 50 years old, and he has crossed the era and the century. They continue to move forward in the way they think is right, with the youthful spirit left to them by idealism, but the experience also makes them more peaceful in the face of youth and the changes in the world.
Old Wolf: Calm down, let it go
In 1994, the old wolf entered the public eye with campus folk songs such as "You at the Same Table" and "Brother Sleeping on My Top Bunk", and more than twenty years later, he was still the vicissitudes of his voice and long hair, but there was a little more white in his hair, and there was "less desire" in his voice.
On November 27, 2018, the old wolf came to the Xiao Ke Theater by appointment to record "Give Hair To the Little Child" with Xiao Ke and the band, he strode into the theater, took out the thermos cup, threw his backpack to the side of the stage, and stood in the corner of the theater, the other corner was Xiao Ke, and the musicians were scattered on the stage.
As soon as the old wolf opened his mouth, it was the voice that had accompanied the youth of several generations, and his body swayed slightly with the accompaniment at any time--everyone could see that he was the most relaxed when singing.
The word Sun Tzu in this song is very brainwashed, and the son in The Beijing dialect reads the thief sound, and the sound of the child is the contemptuous title of the little in the original Beijing hutongs, and only those who are really worthy of being called brothers dare to take it out and lose each other. At the end of the recording, the old wolf was still not finished, and everyone was happy to see it, and was asked what the name of the song he had just recorded was, "Called Grandson!" He opened his mouth and laughed.
There is no doubt that this song also evokes memories of his youth.
Old Wolf grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, in his words, when young people did not have as many fun things as now, life was boring, guitars and pop songs that had just been brought into the country became a new thing among young people, and the atmosphere of "stubble" was born.
In the era of material scarcity, young people copied lyrics by hand, passed them on by word of mouth, and gathered in groups of three or five in "strongholds" such as Bayi Lake (now Yuyuantan), Zhongshan Park, Summer Palace, and Xizhimen Bridge, with guitars to compete in piano skills and singing, "Stubble Qin" is one of the more "fierce" sports, "compare with each other, who loses, they will smash the piano." ”
Old Wolf Middle School often went under the Xizhimen Bridge, which was only a two-way overpass at that time, and they rode together to the tavern under the bridge after school to drink some beer. Most of the young people under the bridge, everyone plays the guitar and sings, sometimes stubble the piano, "smashing the piano is a more extreme situation, smashing the piano is likely to start." The old wolf always ridiculed himself, most of the time he just squeezed to see the hilarity, and when someone was bold together, he also went to stubble the piano, "I basically win by quantity, that is, although I play the piano more smellily, I can sing a few more songs, and overwhelm the opponent in number." ”
The truth is not as simple as singing – under the impetus of hormones, high-minded young people often fight fiercely in order to compete for a certain territory than to sing. At a time when there was no phone or the Internet, "singing was a bit social, and everyone sang in large part to attract girls." The old wolf confessed that in the small forest of Bayi Lake in the summer, everyone "likes to take the girl to sing."
At the university, the old wolf went to Beijing Union University in the southern suburbs, and the singing place was transferred to the girls' dormitory. At that time, as long as there was someone in the girls' dormitory, they could go in, carry the song books of Luo Dayou, Li Zongsheng, Qi Qin and other big names, carry a guitar, and sing all afternoon.
In the era of material scarcity, the only few albums listened back and forth, a large book of local copy lyrics, and music was precious because of its rarity, satisfying a gap in the spiritual pursuit of teenagers.
The old wolf, who often sang in the girls' dormitory, met Gao Xiaosong of Tsinghua University through the introduction of friends, and then joined the rock band "Bronze" as the lead singer and began to "play music", from 1989 to 1991, "Bronze" wandered in various underground concert performances.
But the old wolf never wanted to be a singer, "it was all a coincidence." He recalled that the singers in that era were basically people who had undergone professional music study and training, and "like me, they were college graduates, basically dared to dream or not."
In 1991, Old Wolf graduated, as an ordinary college student, he found a job as an engineer in an industrial automation control company step by step, he was easy to be satisfied, and his enthusiasm for work was very high at the beginning. Checking the data, repeatedly compiling, designing products, "is some creative work", with the maturity of the product, it has become a repetitive work of constantly debugging the product, "later it is basically to weld the circuit board and then debug the instrument, I think it is not interesting."
Two years later, they recorded a sample of the campus folk song in The Land Records, tired of his job, the old wolf moved the idea of going to the record company to find a job, "thinking about whether there is a chance to do a corporate publicity", he talked to the producer at the time, Huang Xiaomao, the other party agreed, turned around and took out a singer contract, "I didn't expect to enter the industry like this, and I went down like this for a lifetime." Looking back, the old wolf always felt that he was too lucky, and he was happy.
The story that follows is well known. In 1994, he sang "You at the Same Table", "Brother Sleeping on My Top Bunk" and "Lover of a Wandering Singer" in "Campus Folk Song 1", and in 1995, he took "You at the Same Table" to the Spring Festival Gala, which opened the era of campus folk songs.
Really being a singer, but not all fun. The old wolf has received countless attention and praise in a short period of time, but in the face of the full line of interviews, he said repetitive words, "taste the same as chewing wax", and even "felt that the body was hollowed out", and the tedium of the previous work returned. The perfect image wrapped up by the fans' imagination has lost a lot of joy in life as an ordinary person, which makes him feel "not interesting".
Of course, there are also fun places to be a singer, and the old wolf once again recalled the recording during the day, "Like today, and when we rehearsed before, everyone discussed how to arrange a song in a relaxed state, and then slowly presented it, and finally achieved the effect they wanted, I thought it was very funny." ”
Live performances can also bring him enough pleasure. "Live performances are so magical that you can create an atmosphere or lead an aura by working with a band. A lot of subtle things, such as bending or lengthening a little bit in a certain place, have different tastes, and little by little subtle things accumulate into a feeling, which is particularly refreshing. ”
Compared with the freedom of the band to perform, exposure to the mass media makes the old wolf uncomfortable. "I don't like people to comment on me, and I don't like people to pay attention to me, whether it's good or bad." As Xiao Ke commented on "sensitivity", he also did not shy away from saying: "It is because I care about what others say, so I don't like to be concerned." ”
Due to personality, the old wolf gradually faded out of the public eye until he appeared on the stage of "Singer" in 2016 - if he appeared in the public eye as a criterion, he was silent for more than a decade.
But Old Wolf has always maintained his interaction with the band and has never left the music circle. In various places such as music festivals and friends' concerts, he performs calmly and leisurely, occasionally interviews, and he is more keen to mention songs that are not well known to the public. In his system of discourse, musicians are called "musicians."
Old Wolf once recommended Wan Xiaoli to Lu Zhongqiang of March Records, when Lu proposed to work with him and was rejected, on the grounds that "I can't be his boss, I can only be his buddy." But old wolf has recently added a new identity, since July 2018, as the director of Maitian Music, a label of Taihe Music Group.
This seems to be a big change compared to his past style, but after the old wolf explained it, it reasonably fits his style. He expressed his trust in Xu Yi, CEO of Taihe Music, who was pragmatic and methodical to help him reduce the pressure, plus he always wanted to make his favorite musicians and music genres, and when it came to this, the old wolf used the word "ambition" for the only time, "I also have a little ambition to make music."
As for the management problem, they are more directly working with small teams of musicians to further provide distribution and promotion channels that the other side lacks, "and I don't need to manage them, just help." ”
The only entanglement came from the reason of the "old wolf", he "didn't want to go to work", but Xu Yi immediately reassured him, did not have to sit in the office from nine to five, the work was mainly in front of musicians, everything was logical.
When asked what music means to him, the old wolf gave a simple and straightforward answer - "play", in addition to music, he also has a lot of work, all related to "play". As early as 2003, he participated in the filming of the "Journey to Africa" program, climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, in 2014 he performed 10 "Stable Happiness" musicals at the invitation of Xiao Ke, in November 2018 he just went to the Wuzhen Theater Festival, in June, he went to Japan with his friends Dogzi and Tang Danian to shoot the documentary "Sanwei Line" with the search for Dazaiji's life trajectory, and in December he went to Antarctica to shoot a travel program.
Looking back at his choices along the way, the old wolf calmed down, "I am very casual, let it go, I am not the kind of person who is particularly active in doing things." When asked what I've wanted to do since I was a kid, "Play! The word popped out with his hearty laugh, "If only I could play for a lifetime." ”
In an interview, the old wolf once said that today is completely different from the era in which he grew up, in the past everyone worshipped Haizi and Gu Cheng, and now the idol of young people is Ma Yun. But this is not a criticism, he attributed it to the general trend of the times, "We did not see money in that era, so we liked some particularly idealistic things, and now college students have to face the real problem of survival as soon as they graduate." ”
For the times, he has his own way of understanding, so "not too confused", "I try to hide from the confusion, this is the consistent style." He derided himself as a "scoundrel."
The old wolf has been an old wolf for more than twenty years, and has felt that it is slowly out of touch with the times, for example, he has no ability to chase the vibrato that everyone is playing, and he is not very receptive to new internet language, he reflects that he has become impatient, wasted too much time on receiving and browsing spam messages, "kidnapped by mobile phones, a day of confusion has passed", he chose to take the initiative to increase the opportunity to contact the outside world, go to live house to see more performances, and play with more young people.
What age brings to him is more helpless than fear, and helplessness is more obvious from physical experience. The enjoyment of playing football in his twenties is no longer the enjoyment of playing football, and the partner who played the band together has died three times due to illness in the past two years, and his body is no longer alive, and he values the tranquility of life rather than the waves.
Gao Xiaosong said that "the old wolf is not a person who has not been changed by the times", the old wolf feels that it is exaggerated, and the old wolf as a singer only represents a small part of him. As for the biggest change for him, it was to have children, but he was never willing to mention about the family, about the bigger part of the change.
The old wolf felt that he was lucky enough to gain far more than he lost. "I'm not too confused or asking, but I don't understand what to do. Even if I am confused in my heart, I don't have to think about solving it, I don't have much time to think about it, just let it go. ”
He glanced at his mobile phone, and at 8 o'clock in the evening, he hurriedly stood up and said goodbye: "Oh, I have to leave, or the child will sleep." ”
Xiao Ke: Everyone grows up, and I grow up slowly
Xiao Ke seemed to have unlimited energy.
Speaking of the most important things in recent years, he did not hesitate to answer "musicals". Xiao Ke Theater is located in the 798 art district, small, 200 seats, next to a small room is his recording studio, his studio is across the road in the office building, home is a ten-minute drive away.
Near 7:20 p.m., Xiao Ke ended the interview and hurried to the theater opposite. At 7:30, Xiao Ke, who changed his suit, appeared on the stage of "Steady Happiness", facing an almost full audience, he and the young actors acted and sang together, and his role was the middle age of the protagonist, almost throughout the whole scene, and the whole performance lasted until 10 o'clock.
Ko has been in the musical theater industry since 2007 and initially thought it was just fun. What really made him like this line of work was the extension of the musical's creation. In one study, he wrote about a demolition section: a person returns to the place where he once lived, but finds that it is being demolished. "You're not just demolishing the house, it's all my memories", thinking about it, Xiao Ke realized, "This kind of emotion can't be written in pop songs for a lifetime", and his angle of creating music suddenly opened up a broader vision, "surviving the addiction", so the musical was done for more than ten years.
All the plays and music in the theater are original, and the creation is always anxious for the creators. By 2017, the theater had eight musicals and two plays, and could rotate 270 plays a year, and Xiao Ke was finally solid.
But "creation is always difficult" and needs to be constantly upgraded. Writing musicals is different from writing songs, and Xiao Ke tries to get out of his comfort zone and into the lives of others to find inspiration. In the view of Wang Dezhi, deputy director of the theater, Xiao Ke is a sponge, willing to absorb things and people from the outside world, and never holds a completely rejected attitude to look at it.
For the road of music, Xiao Ke said that he did not choose, and his original intention has always been there.
Since the theme song "Homecoming" in 1995, Xiao Ke has created countless popular songs with high popularity, including "Carry Love to the End", "Want to Sing Me to You", "Because of Love", etc., and the most national "Welcome to Beijing" in 2008.
He was always in awe and curious about music. In addition to creating music, he has been a singer, run a record company, run a music copyright protection, run a music school, run a theater, write musicals, and recently pondered the development of music copyright-related mini programs, and even "moved the evil idea of making movies", although he has run away for half a lifetime, but always around the music life, "he is more focused than me, and he is too mixed with me." The old wolf so teased.
"I'm going to do music-related things in my life." Around 1985, Xiao Ke, who was in middle school, was writing homework while listening to the tape recorder, when the international radio was broadcasting the top 10 songs on the 1984 US country music chart, a song "To All The Girls I Loved Before" completely disturbed his heart, "At that time, everyone thought it was a rogue song, but it was crazy when you listened to it, it was so good, it was like the psychological shock of suddenly seeing a big girl standing in front of you. At that time, I decided that I would do something related to this kind of music in my life. ”
At that time, Xiao Ke was thirteen or fourteen years old.
Traditional education will think that if you practice the piano, you must play Mozart and Chopin, but Xiao Ke often wears a quilt on the door to soundproof, and begins to play European and American pop music, immersed in his own music world.
The road to music is not as smooth as imagined, and professional music studies usually need to be admitted to the Central Conservatory of Music Affiliated Middle School at the beginning of Xiaosheng, and then read the Central Conservatory of Music or go abroad for further study, but Xiao Ke's first step is to step on the empty. At the beginning of Xiaosheng, he fell behind by a difference and could only be an ordinary middle school student, but because of that time, he also made up his mind, "I am a thief who does not die."
Compared with his classmates who studied at the professional conservatory, he became a "big flag" in the ordinary middle school - every year he won three or two awards for the school in the piano competition, so he won the opportunity to guarantee the music department of the Capital Normal University, and the road of music continued.
In college, Xiao Ke fell in love with jazz, joined a jazz band to perform outside, and after graduation, he went to a middle school to work as a music teacher according to a contract, teaching classes during the day and continuing to play the band at night. School and bar were compared to "the difference between heaven and hell", as a teacher to always pay attention to talk and behave, for fear of affecting children, and entering the band at night is "black smoke miasma", without scruples to do whatever he wants, Xiao Ke's heart can not bear this feeling of division, decided to quit work, began to "professional" at home to tinker with music.
In 1996, Xiao Ke released his first self-titled album and also became a campus folk singer, but he soon found that "being a singer is a terrible thing", "Singer is not just a profession, it is a way of life, you have to be particularly disciplined, you have to get used to being arranged for a busy life, accustomed to showing your face", Xiao Ke, who grew up in the alley, was particularly casual, used to taking to the street in the summer with big pants on the toe, and he attributed the old wolf and himself to "people who are not good at showing their unnatural side in front of people". Since then, we have reduced our "appearances" and are only engaged in creation.
Xiao Ke's music creation went smoothly. Until a serious traffic accident in the middle of the night of April 2003, he was in a coma for 44 days, and his family even received a critical illness notice. At this point, his "martial arts were half destroyed", after all, his body was twisted a little, and it was almost impossible to return to the original.
He squeezed his right hand in the right hand - a bone in the palm of his hand was broken, affecting the activity of the three fingers, he could not write the Arabic numeral 8, because "bending can not come", playing the piano is naturally affected; the strength is not as good as before, can not sing the original high note, and even because of the problem of physical coordination, the sense of rhythm is not as accurate as before.
Looking back, Xiao Ke instead thanked the disaster. In his words, when people are in high places, they are easy to see everything, if they don't look around, they will blindly go to the bottom, when he is "crazy" to "others tell me whose song is particularly good, I listen to an ear is considered modest." And the car accident made him "step on the air, directly from the highest point to the bottom", and when he opened his eyes again, the body told him to start over, and when the work stopped, he began to carefully examine everything around him, and also recognized himself, "This is worth it."
Xiao Ke, who had started again, slowed down and was more relaxed. He began to experiment with more creative possibilities and break through himself in the process.
In 2007, he wanted to do a musical, but he didn't understand it at all, and the director of the drama "How Much Love Can Come" came to him, hoping that he would sing the work "Do You Say I'm Easy" in the play, and Xiao Ke, who was struggling to write a drama, proposed to play one of the roles, even if only one line.
The director gave him a "dismount": the only male actor in this play is the male number one. This is another big problem for Xiao Ke, because he said that he has always had communication barriers, and he can't say a word when he sees a strange girl, but if he admits it, it is not Xiao Ke. "Okay, here we go." There were only 7 days from the next stubble to the official performance. On the first day of rehearsal, Xiao Ke arrived early, but he stood outside the rehearsal room and did psychological construction and did not dare to go in. He picked the hardest scene in the first day, thinking that "it will be easy as long as you take the hardest others"—it is a scene of picking up a girl and throwing her on the couch and rape.
From 2 p.m. to 10 p.m., Xiao Ke did not dare to look up at the actress opposite. It wasn't until the director said it that he finally felt himself stepping out of his comfort zone and opening the window of the play.
The story of the protagonist in "Stable Happiness" is exactly the growth that Xiao Ke's generation has experienced. "In the 90s of the last century, the highest ideal of many college students was to go around the world with a guitar, and at the end of the 90s, they suddenly found that they needed travel expenses to get food, but they had no money in their pockets, and making money meant being beaten back to reality, and all ideals degenerated into a particularly old-fashioned reality."
The total number of people in Xiao Ke Theater is no more than 30, all the script writing is done by Xiao Ke and deputy director Wang Dezhi, the music is Xiao Ke's original, and the design of stage, props and lighting is conceived by the two people. The youngest actor in the theater is only 23 years old, but Xiao Ke mingles with them, drinks and plays together, and even does things that hide the actor's things and play pranks.
He does not agree to divide generations according to the generations of "post-90s" and "post-80s", everyone has walked through youth, and the different environments and education they show are different. Recalling his past, Xiao Ke believes that the 1980s was the most idealistic era, when it was the early days of reform and opening up, the ideology exploded, people were full of ideals for the future, and the ideals at that time were particularly romantic, which was "nothing" in the present.
In contrast, "We didn't have much desire at that time, and now young people want it even more." No one can accumulate much wealth in their twenties, and now everyone often sees those who have already got it, and the values of the world tell young people to be realistic. ”
At that time, his ideal was freedom, "and he couldn't say what freedom was, that is, he wanted to live a different life every day." It was not until 2009, when Xiao Ke's first child was born, that "when you have a child, you have to face reality, and the annual tuition and childcare fees are nailed down", and he began to have real problems.
The first musical in 2007 took 4 years to recover the cost, and Xiao Ke began to realize in 2010 that "no matter what the ideal, as long as it begins to involve trading, it is a business, and long-term losses cannot make things continue." He found someone to do a financial analysis, and found that the money was spent on the cost of repeatedly readjusting the stage stage choreography and so on between the A theater to the B theater and then the C theater, and the construction of his own theater was immediately put on the agenda.
In order to save money, from finding sites, construction to design, he is personally involved. He decided to find a casual worker for the project himself, he inquired about the price of reinforced concrete, figured out the detailed price of materials and labor, traditional theater needs strict acoustic design to amplify the sound, Xiao Ke read books on his own, musical theater and drama are different, actors must wear wheat to sing, they want not to sound reinforcement, but to absorb sound. "Because you are poor, you are forced to think about change."
The fiasco of starting a record company without cost awareness in his early years, coupled with the later management of theaters and companies, gave him a different view of business. Before 2000, Xiao Ke met a businessman who would say "Ya is a businessman", which is basically equivalent to no longer paying attention to each other in his bones, and now, "businessman" is no longer a "bad word", after seeing a company that only makes products and is not listed, Xiao Ke is more admired.
He still has his own insistence and is not coerced by business. Three or four years ago, the film and television industry prevailed in the concept of IP, there are always people who shake him to make movies, after all, "because of love", "stable happiness" these names are considered big IP, "I also understand, even if I don't know anything, find a particularly knowledgeable executive director and team, it can still be", but "this is so cold, I myself will not".
In addition to creating and rehearsing, drinking alcohol is also a big event in theater life. During the performance season, every Monday and Tuesday are closed, and after the rest of the work, Xiao Ke basically shouts to everyone to drink and eat, "This link seems to be not doing business, in fact, you will see everyone's inner world from the liquor bureau, everything they care about and are depressed, how interesting." ”
"When I meet someone who doesn't care or doesn't want to talk, I don't say a word." He also talked about his daily games with a pair of children, and the children called him "the king of games". Then he looked at the young actors sitting next to him, and Xiao Ke said: "When everyone grows up, I will grow up slowly." ”
Producer + Editor = Wan Dong
Photography + post-production = Guo Hang
Makeup and hair = Li Xiaotian Interview + Wen = bean rice
Special Thanks = Ko Theater
Thanks = Si Si Si + Wang Dezhi