This summer, with the popularity of "Summer of the Band", the issue of music creators' income, which has long plagued the music industry, has once again attracted public attention and stimulated widespread discussion. From physical piracy in the era of tapes and CDs to illegal downloads in the Internet age, how to guarantee the income of music creators and whether talented people can live a decent life with their talents is a problem that cannot be ignored for the audience of "Summer of the Band".
Take a gram
（funk）
The eye-catching Click #15乐队坦言自己去年一年, earning only 1,000 yuan from the band, and a similar situation seems to plague Not only The Click #15这样的新乐队. New Pants, which released their first album in 1998, has been making new titles for two decades and has been a loyal fan. But what we see in the show is that lead singer Peng Lei, in order to save an intermediary fee, wears a suit to apply for a job at the chain home; the wife of the keyboardist Pang Kuan has to put a crib because the child was born, throwing away his tape collection for decades. When asked who might win against the Mirror Band, Peng Lei counted the number of children of the members of the two bands, and then lamented that "it is really not cheap to raise a child now."
The new pants band showed its financial situation in the show, and even let a friend who had not been in contact with the boss of Modern Sky, Shen Lihui, transfer him 10,000 yuan on WeChat and let him transfer it to Peng Lei. "They're not easy," the friend lamented. However, in a later interview, Shen Lihui said that bands like New Pants and Pain Admiration are "masters with tens of millions" of annual income.
In an interview with us, Pang Kuan joked that "if you earn tens of millions, you will lie at home and rest for a while." But it is undeniable that this summer's music variety show has greatly improved the situation of the participating bands, and also made the original relatively quiet rock and roll circle glow with a long-lost vitality. After the show, many bands came up in traffic, their popularity increased, and their income became considerable. Even, many fans feel that rock music is finally about to be "revived".
However, we are still not sure whether this change can be sustained, pay attention to the new pants, see not only the music, but also the development and changes of Chinese society behind it and the epitome of the development of many Chinese bands. In China, does playing with a band make money? How does the band survive? We can find some clues in the new book "Life Is Hot Because of You" by Peng Lei and Pang Kuan, the core members of the new pants band. In 2003, the new pants released the third album "We Are Automatic", which sold well, but in addition to facing a large number of pirated copies, the royalty income of each CD was only three or four cents, while at that time it cost thirty or forty yuan to buy a mouth tape, and it cost 100,000 yuan to make a popular singer to shoot a MV. Peng Lei admitted that he made money by helping people shoot MVs, while Pang Kuan made money by doing design, and both of them "did not point to royalties to life".
This is just one detail in "Life Is Hot Because of You." In fact, this book by Peng Lei and Pang Kuan reviewing the development of the band and their respective lives for more than 20 years from their respective perspectives can not only let us know more about the new pants band, but also see the changes in Chinese rock, pop culture and even Chinese society in the past two decades: the craft art school they went to was upgraded from secondary school to university, the venue where the band performed changed from a discotheque, a nightclub, and a workers' club to a current live house, and the band members are now full of Chinese students when they tour the United States. Domestic goods have changed from no one to the current trend, and the boom of contemporary art has come and gone...
Previously, Peng Lei had told a lot about the band's past in his autobiographical comic "North Sea Monster"; now this "Life Is Hot Because of You" gives us a chance to understand the story behind the development of the band from Pang Kuan's perspective. On November 14th, "Life Is Hot Because of You" held a new book launch at CITIC Bookstore Qihao. Before the press conference, the Beijing News reporter interviewed Pang Kuan.
"Life Is Hot Because of You", by Peng Lei and Pang Kuan, boji tianjuan | Yazhong Culture | Democracy and Construction Press, November 2019
Kou Huaiyu, a special correspondent of the Beijing News
New Pants Band, which released their first album as early as 1998, has been making new works for two decades, but their influence has not been until this summer with the hit "Summer of the Band" to a wider audience. Peng Lei, the lead singer of the New Pants Band, said the opposite in the show, said the opposite, sincerely shook the clever "small glasses", and attracted the attention of countless people for a time. The Weibo fans of the New Pants Band not only reached the million expected by Peng Lei at the beginning of the show, but also Peng Lei was on the hot search several times, and "want to be blacklisted by Peng Lei" once became a buzzword.
Pang Kuan and Peng Lei met in middle school, and the name of their original band— the shape master of the metal workshop — came from a Bauhaus album that Pang Kuan read. Pang Kuan has opened a shop in Nanluoguxiang, selling his favorite domestic products and retro-style goods developed and designed by himself. In terms of artistic creation, he also has a different number of paths from Peng Lei.
Compared with Peng Lei, Pang Kuan is a silent existence in "Summer of the Band". Although he led "Erebadi" is impressive, and even regarded by some as the most impactful stage performance in "Summer of the Band", Pang Kuan rarely speaks out, whether on the show or in the few interviews that the new pants gave after the show hit. However, Pang Kuan not only designed the covers of all the albums of the New Pants Band over the years, but also many of the famous songs of the New Pants, such as "Dragon Tiger Man Dan", were also created by Pang Kuan. The history of the New Pants band can be traced back to the "Metal Workshop Master" band formed by Pang Kuan and Peng Lei, whose name was pang Kuan's view from a Bauhaus album. Pang Kuan is a witness and participant in the band New Pants, Chinese rock and Chinese pop culture.
I miss the atmosphere of the eighties,
That kind of unhurried state
Beijing News: When you talk about the cover and MV of the 2006 album "Dragon Tiger Ren Dan" in your new book, the front door still retains the feeling of Beijing in the 1980s. I wonder what it was like for you to be in Beijing in the 1980s, and why do you regret that Beijing can't find a place to feel like it was in the 1980s?
Pang Kuan: My love for the 1980s is mainly from the aesthetic level. Including the buildings, the streets, the industrial products of that time— because I studied design — it was mainly influenced by the aesthetics of that time. It's particularly minimalistic. Because many of the buildings in Beijing at that time, such as the military museum and the Beijing Exhibition Hall, were built with the assistance of the former Soviet Union, and the aesthetic and design system of the former Soviet Union was influenced by the German Bauhaus. You see many towers in Beijing are square, and behind them are the design concept of the Bauhaus. These aesthetic things particularly appealed to me.
Military Museum
Beijing wasn't as crowded as it is now, it was quite quiet, and you could have time on the streets and enjoy that feeling; it wasn't as busy and fast-paced as it is now. I miss the atmosphere of that time, the state of not hurrying.
Beijing News: When you write in your new book about the 1980s, everyone "played blindly" together, and even watched for a long time around the TV that could not receive the program and could only receive the pictures of the nearby neighbors playing game consoles. The eighties seemed like a mixture of scarcity and abundance.
Pang Kuan: Beijing may not be the same as other cities at that time, because it was the capital, and it could access some Western, avant-garde things. But not to give it to you completely, but sometimes it will give you a little, and after a while it will give you a little more, which means that we are in a state of semi-starvation. So at that time, I cherished every cultural information I got.
In 2008, the band New Pants filmed "Dragon Tiger Man Dan" at the front door. From left: Peng Lei, Liu Bao, Pang Kuan.
Beijing News: Is there any information you got in this semi-starved state that you are more impressed with?
Pang Kuan: For example, in the film "Break dance" made in 1984, after the end of China, young people stopped fighting and went to the streets to break dance. But breaking dancing requires a lot of lines, like thunderbolt gloves, Converse shoes, but you can't buy these things in China at that time. But if you want to break dance you have to have that kind of body, so you're in a lot of a hurry, thinking about where to buy these things, collect these things.
Stills from BreakDancing (1984). Lines such as Converse shoes and thunderbolt gloves were difficult to obtain in Beijing at the time.
Beijing News: So where can I buy it?
Pang Kuan: There is no land to buy. So at that time, many small lepers and hooligans on the street dressed particularly interestingly. He may be wearing a pair of thunderbolt gloves, but the pants are made of suit material, and then a pair of cloth shoes. Because he can only find these. This is an interesting phenomenon.
Beijing News: The book mentions that you do design, Peng Lei shoots MV, so you both have income, but Liu Bao and Shang Xiao have no income, I don't know how they live their lives? There is also Wu Qingchen, who seems to have been wandering blindly for many years. How did everyone live at that time?
Wu Qingchen starred in films such as "North Sea Monster" (2006) and Panda Milk Candy (2007) directed by Peng Lei, and is known as the "Underground Movie Emperor".
Pang Kuan smiled and repeated the phrase "blind and wandering", and Wu Qingchen, who was sitting across from him, took over the conversation and said, "I have a job, I have been working for 13 years!" ”
"13 years is very late."
"You said before yes, before it was, what kind of shift, the work is ... Nothing really developed. If you're going to make money with your eyes closed, you don't have to go to work. ”
"But I heard you say in Bad Guy FM that you often played with Peng Lei in order to rub rice."
"Yes, at that time, he made money, opened a toy store, made money, and then he could eat some stir-fried vegetables."
Pang Kuan heard this and was happy: "Haha, stir-fry!" ”
Beijing News: Last year, Peng Lei mentioned at the "North Sea Monsters" new book sharing meeting that in order to shoot the MV of "She is Automatic", it took a lot of effort, shooting for half a year, eating Xinjiang small restaurants every day, eating to vomit. The new pants gave me a wonderful feeling, as if I was rich and poor; on the one hand, I could do something I liked, and on the other hand, I seemed to be very poor. I wonder what impression you have when you think back to your life at that time?
Pang Kuan: We are all local, and if we don't have food, we can go home. But if we were in another city, we might not be so lucky, and when we didn't have food, we would definitely have to think about finding a job first and solving the problem of food and clothing first. We couldn't hold on any longer and went home.
Pop music is actually harder
Beijing News: Peng Lei once said that he hopes that the works of the new pants can be left behind, rather than just have traffic. But several of the new pants' hit songs in recent years have been created in accordance with a certain pattern on the basis of studying "earth shake", which you call "walking the heart" songs. Is this kind of song out of calculation not easy to leave? Do you have such troubles when you are creating?
Pang Kuan: I think the work can be as long as it is real. I think it's important to express what you're thinking in your heart and express it truthfully. Traditional pop music may not really survive, because those things that may be more industrialized, the past has passed. But things like "Life Is Hot Because of You" and "People Without Culture Are Not Sad" are indeed Peng Lei's real thoughts. (Note: People without culture are not sad" is "People without ideals are not sad.") Peng Lei once mentioned that it seems not good to directly say that people are "uncultured", so although the lyrics sing "people without culture are not sad", the title of the song is set as "People without ideals are not sad". However, "Uncultured People Are Not Sad" is still a common name used by band members when talking about the song. ）
Beijing News: In an issue of Bad Guy FM before "Summer of the Band", Peng Lei once said, whose heart does the heart song take? Whoever takes away whose heart is tragic. At that time, he felt that the people around him were the most miserable, so he wrote "The Boy Who Played the Guitar" based on him. However, this song was called a failure by Peng Lei. Does this failure reflect the difficulties encountered when the new pants move from self-expression and self-exploration to telling other people's stories?
Pang Kuan: We actually tell the stories of our friends all the time, including our own stories. The song "The Boy Who Played the Guitar" was a roaring song that Peng Lei listened to Zuo Xiaozu at that time, and he said that I would also write one of these songs, but after writing it, he found that he was not that kind of person, so this was not a real thing, that is, a failed work.
Ding Taisheng, who started first to pull Hei Penglei, is the prototype of "The Boy Who Plays the Guitar". "The Boy Who Plays the Guitar" is regarded as a failure by Peng Lei.
Beijing News: You mentioned in the book that many rock veterans' first albums are particularly good, because that is their accumulation for many years, and their feelings are particularly rich. I don't know if for the new pants, the songs that turn to the heart in the later period are because there is not so much content that they want to express?
Pang Kuan: The songs on our previous albums were too avant-garde, so we were equivalent to recycling. Today's young people are much better, and the young people before them still can't digest our electronic, new wave works.
New Pants' 2011 album SEX DRUGS INTERNET. The album's songs were frequently cold when performed in China, which made Peng Lei and Pang Kuan reflect on whether they were too advanced, and the band turned to the exploration of heart-wandering songs.
Beijing News: Your previous MVs, such as "Dragon tiger man Dan", are particularly funny; but it seems that the later MVs are not so funny. Peng Lei once said that it was because in the past, the MV was played by everyone, but then someone told you that this would not be a big deal, so did you make a deliberate change?
Pang Kuan: That time has passed, and we have had enough of playing. Genres like "People Without Culture Aren't Sad" and "Life Is Hot Because of You" are things we haven't touched on before, and they're interesting, but they're actually harder — pop music is actually harder. "Dragon Tiger Ren Dan" is a conceptual work, how to play, but if you want to rise to a commodity, you need to have a production process, this kind of thing is much more difficult than doing those conceptual things, especially test your musical ability, literary ability - that is, the ability to write lyrics. This shift is actually a challenge and a rise for us.
Beijing News: When you say "more difficult", do you mean that you need to accurately grasp the psychology of the audience?
Pang Kuan: First you have to have a real emotion, and then how to transform this real emotion into music and lyrics. This requires the usual accumulation, and it depends on whether you are really talented. It's very testing.
Beijing News: Speaking of real emotions, there is a voice that believes that the new pants are all Beijingers, just like you mentioned, life is not so miserable, there is a way out. How is it real to sing those songs?
Pang Kuan: For example, Peng Lei's singing "People Without Culture Are Not Sad" is also a real thing for him, and this real thing is still happening around us, such as the old bookworm bookstore is about to close. So these things are real.
The old bookworm bookstore, which has been operating in Beijing for 14 years, announced on November 5 that it would close its doors.
The core values of literature and art are the future and retro
Beijing News: Why did you use the image of a robot to paint the subject of twenty-four filial pieties?
Pang Kuan: What are the core values of literature and art? The core values of literature and art are actually the future and retro. If both elements exist in your work, it will hold true. Robots are the stuff of the future, and I expressed it in a retro form.
Pang Kuan, "Twenty-Four Filial Pieties - Lying On Ice and Seeking Carp", Ink on Paper, 60x60cm, 2016. Image source: Star space
Beijing News: So the story of the Twenty-Four Filial Pieties itself has no special significance for you, but only represents the "past"?
Pang Kuan: Yes, it just represents something more retro, something particularly Chinese. I chose twenty-four filial pieties, but in fact, it can also be "Water Margin" or "Dream of the Red Chamber".
Beijing News: On the 20th anniversary of the new pants (2017), there was an art retrospective exhibition. I heard that this exhibition took a lot of effort to complete, why was it so difficult at that time?
Pang Kuan: Because an exhibition has to have a process of execution, this process requires human and material resources. So who would do that for you? You don't have traffic, where's your value? What direct benefits can hosting such an exhibition bring to the people who do it? So a lot of questions are involved. Like this year, we didn't speak up, but there are also a lot of institutions that take the initiative to come and want to do our exhibition, because he sees your value and we have traffic. At that time, including the modern sky, no one cared, they thought you were doing this, they were eager to say let's not do it, take a good rest.
Pang Kuan's works on display at the 2017 exhibition "China's New Wave - 20 Years of New Pants" exhibition site. On the left wall hangs the "Twenty-Four Filial Pieties" series, and on the right is the robot walking tractorSki invented by Pang Kuan (right) and the two-room and one hall (left). Image source: Star space
We and Shen Lihui fell in love and killed each other
Beijing News: Speaking of modern sky, Peng Lei complained on Weibo that Shen Lihui did not give money, saying that Shen Lihui refused to pay the copyright income of your songs played online on the grounds that you had no traffic; later you went to "Summer of the Band", there was traffic, go to Shen Lihui, he still did not give you money. But I see that in this book, I still show a certain degree of understanding of Shen Lihui. I wonder what the relationship between you and Shen Lihui is?
Pang Kuan: It's a little bit of love and killing. And the point you just said, there is actually a time difference. Because we are not a school (Note: Peng Lei, Pang Kuan and Shen Lihui are all from the Beijing Municipal Arts and Crafts School), he is a few years older than us, he is a senior, and we are brothers. He always thinks that we are all from a school, what can you do with these pieces of material? He always thinks that we are all the same, maybe you are not as good as me, where can you go?
Then after "Summer of the Band", instead of taking the first place, he went to talk to him after taking the first place, but he didn't pay much attention to the show before, he didn't know the influence of the show and what it meant for us to get the first place, so there was a time difference. When we went to talk to him, he still looked at us with the same eyes as before.
But in fact, the traffic came up, and later found more brands and commercial performances, and he could also see it. He found, hey, it turns out that these pieces of material are really GOOD.
On the 20th of this month, Peng Lei's Weibo forwarded the BMW advertisement he took.
Beijing News: Someone watched "The Summer of the Band" and transferred 10,000 yuan to Shen Lihui, saying that Peng Lei was too miserable and asked him to transfer the money to Peng Lei. But later Shen Lihui himself said in an interview that like new pants and pain are the masters of "tens of millions" of annual income. I don't know what the new pants are in now?
Pang Kuan: I think Shen Lihui is bragging about it, because I still have to pay taxes, there are many complicated and messy processes, if there are tens of millions, I will not perform, today's event I will not come, it is good to lie at home for a while.
Beijing News: After "The Summer of the Band", Peng Lei complained on Weibo that there were too many performances and too tired. I wonder how you feel?
Pang Kuan: Now is a period when intellectual property rights are valued, you don't have to go to the performance at all, lie at home, and rely on the intellectual property income of your previous works. You can create at home, paint, or write songs. But it's particularly busy now, so there's no time to think. Because writing a song definitely has to sit down, think about it, think about it, and there's no time for that.
Pang Kuan, who loved the aesthetics of the 1980s, once ran a small shop selling domestic goods and supplies in Nanluoguxiang, "Bye bye Disco", and in some media discussions, this small shop triggered the first round of national tide.
Beijing News: Is this "no time" situation related to family life? Because we know you have two sons. Some artists feel that family life is the enemy of creation, but what does it look like to you?
Pang Kuan: That's for sure, it's for sure. For artists, it is best not to get married and not to have children, because the family does particularly affect a person's creation. There are a lot of particularly trivial things in family life, you are making up something here, and the other side says that you have to pick up the child, and you are interrupted. Once the train of thought is broken, when it comes back, it will not be connected. And there are a lot of times like this, one moment for you to pick up the child, one moment to cook, one moment to clean the dishes, endless this kind of thing.
Beijing News: But you still chose to get married, have children, and step into family life. This is...?
Pang Kuan: Smallholder awareness. [Laughs]
Beijing News: Or is it that when artistic creation has reached a certain stage, you will also feel that family life is worth living, and family is also a part of life?
Pang Kuan: Two-sidedness, it depends on how to adjust it. You actually enjoy the warmth of the family, such as some hope brought to you by children, but at the same time there is a particularly annoying side, so it is necessary to coordinate these well. This takes a process, it takes time.
Beijing News: So at that time, did you take the initiative to get married?
Pang Kuan: It is not active, it is that the two sides feel that the play is almost over, the building is almost the same, and it should be stabilized.
Beijing News: Finally, I would like to ask about your relationship with Peng Lei. Many people, especially those who know the new pants through "The Summer of the Band", may think of Peng Lei when they talk about the new pants, but in fact, not only can the history of the new pants be traced back to the band you and Peng Lei formed in middle school, but you also designed the covers of all the albums of the new pants and participated in a lot of music creation of the new pants. Do you feel uncomfortable with the fact that Peng Lei seems to be synonymous with the new pants?
Pang Kuan: Sometimes the band is like a person, Peng Lei is the soul of this person, I may be the appearance of this person or some organ, but a person cannot have two souls, and having two souls is schizophrenic. Peng Lei's talent is enough to be the soul of this person.
Written by 丨寇淮禹
Editor丨 Walk away Li Yongbo
Proofreading 丨 Zhai Yongjun