Good song dedicated to your department [headline entertainment jun] special author, see the in-depth interpretation of entertainment hotspots, look for the entertainment jun!
"I don't want to be the next magic rock and red star", this is Shen Lihui's obsession when he founded Modern Sky.
He felt that these record companies held the band and the singers too high, and they were all too idealistic.
At that time, Magic Rock Records could spend NT$2 million on the records of the Tang Dynasty Band. In order to praise Zheng Jun, Red Star Production Company invested more than 1 million yuan in the production and publicity of his first record "Naked", and also opened a precedent for mainland singers to "run around the street".
To tell another interesting paragraph, when He Yong broke up with Dadi Records, he carried two axes and single-handedly "smashed the Yellow Dragon", and threw the axe on the boss's desk: Solve it, don't understand it.
When it comes to the word "idealism", it seems to be a glittering label attached to the first generation of Chinese rock people, and because it is too idealistic, it makes Chinese rock have a later gap.
At the same time, Shen Lihui also joked that "I don't particularly like these capitalists, I am particularly realistic." People who have lived through the idealistic era agree that music should be alive, and commercialization will tarnish the purity of music.
Fate is a very wonderful thing, screwed Shen Lihui founded the modern sky, hard to hang a mouthful of "fairy gas", experienced the rock low tide of lingering, and finally out of a "modern" characteristic of the road, grew into a giant in the recording industry.
With no reference, he could only feel the stones to cross the river. The so-called "crossing the river by feeling the stones" is nothing more than to make the modern sky live and live longer.
Therefore, the "face of the city servant businessman" and the "banner of idealism" always alternated on him.
This point, perhaps Peng Lei of the New Pants Band will not admit it at all, because in his eyes, Shen Lihui is really "too picky", and there is no hint of idealism that should look like it.
In the well-known "Summer of the Band" program, Peng Lei diss boss Shen Lihui more than once: I have never seen such a person!
He told a very vivid example: the band went on the show and wanted to pay for a string master, but Shen Lihui just didn't sign it.
This is only a small microcosm of Shen Lihui's various "door-slamming" behaviors. To tell the truth, Shen Lihui really slammed the door to the point where people couldn't stand it.
Of course, this is just our intuitive feeling, as to why Shen Lihui is so "cut", I think anyone who has experienced hunger and hunger and came from a hard life can understand: he is really "poor" and afraid.
Many people do not understand why our parents and grandparents will treat good days as hard days, and they do not know how to enjoy them at all, because they really know the taste of hunger.
Shen Lihui's "door-slamming" is a typical example of this kind of good life as a hard life. Of course, it is normal for him to be spat on by Peng Lei, who "owes his mouth".
According to media reports, Modern Sky, which was founded in 1997, did not start to make a profit until 2008, which we cannot verify, but the early Modern Sky was indeed struggling.
Even now that it has grown and developed, Modern Sky still adheres to the concept of "band staff, employee band", and the stage is a star band admired by thousands of people, and it is also a miscellaneous staff when returning to the company.
For example, Pang Kuan of the new pants is still the designer of the company, good at playing with various retro synthesizers, which should be known as the terrier.
When Shen Lihui founded Modern Sky, he just wanted not to be like the "fallen" magic rock and red star, but he specified that he did not think that he would encounter so many obstacles in the future, but fortunately he stepped on them one by one.
The road is destined to be bumpy and extraordinary.
In 1988, Shen Lihui, who studied in high school in his "special" forty years, then chose to study at the Academy of Fine Arts, where poetry was read by Surrealism, albums were read by Leonardo da Vinci and Dali, and the lyrics were experimental, and personal yearning and pursuit of art could not be restrained.
Compared to today, 1988 was like a laboratory simulation.
For the young people of that era, they were at the forefront of the times. They began wearing slipper-style sneakers, paired with a denim fashion, with long hair, carrying a large tape recorder, and playing rock and roll that even they couldn't understand.
Soon, Shen Lihui found a group of like-minded friends, idly collecting all rock information and looking for band performances.
After many years, Shen Lihui can still clearly remember that he met a band in a dilapidated rehearsal hall, which looked quite stylish, and later others told him that this was a new band called Tang Dynasty.
Due to watching too many band performances and lackluster, Shen Lihui decided to form a band of his own and publish a record, so the "sober band" was born. They began to appear frequently at underground parties in Beijing.
In that era when heavy metal was popular, the sober band's distinctive dress and unruly music brought more confusion to the audience.
Rock and roll requires anger, but in the work of the sober band, people don't see anger, not even ideals. Only the honest attitude towards life and the fresh vitality in young people.
In 1991, Shen Lihui graduated from college, and he had only one idea: to make his band a record. To tell the truth, Shen Lihui at that time was a practitioner of complete idealism.
The first step to realizing this ideal is what people never imagined - opening a printing plant. Very pragmatic, right? Art students who don't want to engage in music are not good printing plant directors, and it takes money to make records, and the fastest way to make money is to do business.
Finally, Shen Lihui saved enough money in 1997 to start his own record company: Modern Sky.
The establishment of Modern Sky is also very simple, the whole company only Has a sober band with Shen Lihui as the lead singer.
Later, Shen Lihui contacted his college classmates and signed the company's first band, called the "Shape Master of the Metal Workshop".
The band was happy and felt they had finally waited for the opportunity to release a record, but when people asked which company to sign, the band members answered ironically: a printing company.
This band is the band that Shen Lihui later called "walking through all the history of the modern sky" and fell in love with him, and it is also the predecessor of the new pants band that shined in the summer of 2019.
After signing new pants and supermarkets one after another, Shen Lihui quickly made three albums for 3 musicians, namely "New Pants", "Looks" and the sober band's own "Superb!? 》。
He thought he could play a big role in the mainland record market, but he did not think that he would soon be eaten by his ideals.
In 1999, Shen Lihui entered the publishing industry with his ideal blueprint and founded Modern Sky Magazine, but readers did not buy it and returned it one after another. And this is only the beginning of the darkest hour.
With the turn of the millennium and the internet era, physical record companies suffered the onslaught of digital music: pirated music was available everywhere on the Internet, and music became the cheapest commodity.
It was the most difficult time for modern sky, the company only had two or three people to support, Shen Lihui had to sell the 4 suites purchased on the outskirts of Beijing for the company's development. But the money is still a drop in the bucket compared to the company's debt.
After such a difficult day, as the founder of the company, he was responsible for everyone, so he had to "cut the door".
Shen Lihui and his modern sky, which was on the verge of closure several times, "helped" countless powerful mainland musicians. In 2001, the Trojan band signed to Modern Sky, why would Shen Lihui choose such a small band?
He explained in a later interview, "A small band like Trojan Horse, we invested less money in the first record, and after the release of the record, we found that the market feedback was good, and their performances were slowly watched." Starting with bands like the Trojans, I started to care about how many people like them could pay for tickets. ”
There is a well-known "iron law" in writing circles: a thousand iron fans can feed a writer. Whoever has 1,000 die-hard fans can live gracefully in this world.
For the band at that time, it was also such a truth. Shen Lihui believes that if a band can take down a hundred people present, it means that people will watch your next performance, and this band will have a play.
Around 2005, the operation of Modern Sky had been mired in the quagmire, and Shen Lihui had to break free from his ideal world and return to reality: how to keep the company alive?
At that time, record companies cooperated with major mobile phone manufacturers to sell music use rights and make color ringtones. I have to admit that this is an effective means of saving the company.
Since 2006, modern sky's economic situation has improved significantly. Ordinary people will tend to be conservative after being resurrected on the verge of bankruptcy, but Unlike Shen Lihui, he is still performing the performance art of life.
In 2007, Modern Sky opened the music festival mode, and the first Modern Sky Music Festival, which ate crabs for the first time, unsurprisingly lost money, but gained word of mouth. Immediately after, the 2008 Modern Sky Music Festival began to make a profit.
By 2009, Shen Lihui had created a younger and more up-to-date music festival brand, which was the "Strawberry Music Festival".
Why strawberries, not bananas, not apples? "Because the word strawberry sounds ambiguous and sexy", saying it so sullenly should be Shen Lihui's original words.
The spark of the stars has already burned. In the decade that followed, a variety of music festivals, large and small, were in full swing in the mainland. The Strawberry Music Festival, hosted by Modern Sky, has been far ahead with its distinct brand positioning and unparalleled resource advantages.
As for the "struggle" between strawberry and midi in the word of mouth of the two music festivals for many years, it is more like the "wrestling" between the two local record companies of Rolling Stone and Flying Saucer when the Taiwanese music scene was at its peak, and you chased after me and competed benignly to jointly push the music world to a prosperous era.
Pain Yang, Mr. Turtle, Maggie Cheung, Wan Qing, Xie Tianxiao, Song Dongye, Ma Wei, Yao Thirteen, Chen Guanxi, Zuo Xiaozu, etc., these familiar bands and musicians are all guests of the Strawberry Music Festival.
In 2020, a sudden epidemic caught everyone off guard.
In the days when everyone is closed behind closed doors, Modern Sky has joined hands with today's headlines and watermelon videos at the right time to move its strawberry music festival exclusively online, so that everyone can frantically release dopamine at home.
"House strawberry" is frequent, not only the original strawberry music festival high-quality music content, but also the musician's "homemade", raiding Peng Lei's bedroom, enjoying TT's gourmet cooking, listening to Dawenxi football commentary...
"Thousands of people together in the clouds, ten thousand people together in the music festival". From this point of view, we have to admire the rise of the modern sky, Shen Lihui not only judges the situation, he does "play".
People come and go, stop and go. Over the years, the band and Modern Sky have also staged many love-hate scenes.
For example, the Houhai Shark Band, signed with Modern Sky in 2006, terminated its contract in 2018, during which it released 3 albums, and in October 2019, Shen Lihui said that he would re-sign with the Sharks.
The only constant among the many variables is that the modern sky is getting better and better.
Many people may not know that in addition to the well-known bands and independent musicians, Modern Sky also has several labels focusing on different music markets and styles: Bad Head, M_DSK, Modern Sky Kids, Modern Sky UK, and the newly established "White Cat Laundry", which covers different music cultures such as rock, folk, hip hop, electronics and so on.
The reason why Modern Sky can develop from a small record company to a giant in the music industry is inseparable from Shen Lihui's ideal and business thinking mode.
Shen Lihui succeeded, and few people would ask him about his original persistence and obsession. For example, the game of ideals and reality, the contest between the original intention and capital.
These are no longer important, because Shen Lihui and his modern sky have become "a well" on the acres and three points of the Chinese music scene, nourishing a large piece of soil.
Some people describe Shen Lihui as such: dissatisfied with the real world, so they built the world on their own. This surreal world is the modern sky, and it is more than just the modern sky.
This article is written by the author as a special author of "Headline Entertainment Jun", today's headlines, see more entertainment depth good article ~