Guaili / 怪力 are definitely one of my favorite bands in Beijing. I am secretly obsessed with their lead singer Wen Jun who throws her angular, almost skeletal body around stage during performances all while chain smoking cigarettes and rocking out an incredibly powerful voice. This September they went on a 14-city “Hell Tour” around China in support of their first album, Flight of Delusion, which they released with Maybe Mars. I have listened to it a few times and even though it might not be as wild as their performances in dive bars around the city, there are definitely some gems. You can purchase the CD at the usual suspects around Beijing including D-22 and most music stores around Guloudong Dajie. Hopefully there will be a way to purchase it online soon.

P.K. 14, Carsick Cars, and Xiao He – three of Beijing’s preeminent underground musical acts – toured the United States for the first time in November of 2009 under the auspices of the Maybe Mars Chinese Underground Showcase. It was easily one of the most successful international tours pulled off by Chinese performers to date as they drew large, enthusiastic audiences up and down the east coast. Proving themselves more than just a novelty act, these musicians upped the ante and expectations for new music out of China which now incubates fresh, independent, and frequently irreverent voices in a country renowned for creative conformity and saccharine Cantonese pop. Even though it is too early to tell what may come of the innovative strides made by these musicians, there is no doubt that they will continue to break ground within Beijing’s nascent artistic landscape, helping to push the boundaries of an already expanding realm of independent thought and musical expression in China. I was lucky enough to be embedded with the bands throughout the tour.

Joyside’s riotous, eight-year run of booze-driven concerts and five album releases came to an end in October of 2009 after a tour across Germany and Austria with Carsick Cars in support. Easily one of the most influential underground bands in China, they consistently flaunted their outright disdain for social mores and popular opinion through their bacchanalian performances and rebellious personal demeanor. High expectations were met in Berlin, Frankfurt, and Vienna and then topped with a massive concert at the Haus der Kunst in Munich. I luckily got to tag along. Although fans mourn the loss of Joyside, most are thankful that something as uninhibited and wild as Joyside lasted so long in the first place.

“why the fuck am i loyal to you / we don’t wanna be your victim of greed
sick of you, no future for us / how many people die in famine”

The Changsha concert was the sixth in Demerit’s Bastards of the Nation Tour, and they powered through a set of gutter punk decked out in tattered t-shirts, AK-47 bullet belts and bondage pants. Responding in kind, the crowd at 4698 Bar tore around the room in an act of mayhem rarely realized outside the smoky confines of underground music clubs across China. Meanwhile, across town on the former grounds of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Committee in Changsha, stood one of the most famous statues of Mao in China. With his steel arm raised to the sky, the Great Helmsman beckoned the recently founded republic into a new era. Little did he know that only thirty years after his death another wave of rebellious youth, sporting towering mohawks instead of Mao caps, would be decrying his egalitarian fantasy.

While punk in China might be old news, young hardcore bands like Demerit are breathing new life into the scene with incisive lyrics in songs like “Fight Your Apathy” and their latest album’s namesake “Bastards of the Nation.” Both call for an end to political cronyism and lambaste the mindless consumer frenzy gripping China’s youth. Touring outside of government controlled media channels, Demerit brings a nonconformist message to China’s disaffected masses. They play for the downtrodden and those still mired in poverty despite an infusion of rampant, free-market policies into the CCP’s quasi-socialist economics. Rabble-rousing within a muted population largely resigned to government control is an uphill struggle, but Demerit is on a campaign against passivity and compliance.

“send me to work, send me to war / send me to waste my life for you
hate for you, no future for us / we are just bastards of the nation”

The Bastards of the Nation Tour became an important medium for communication when Demerit’s lyrics were censored from their album liner notes earlier this year. All of the music publishing houses in China are state owned and refused to condone such incendiary material, especially leading up to the Olympics. In the end, Demerit could only publish them in English. This awkward concession limited Demerit’s access to new audiences and forced them to take their message to limited-communication Internet forums and directly to the people on tour. There is not much else they could do. While telling an authoritarian government to fuck off certainly bolsters your status in the punk world, China is still a place where voices are silenced daily. Demerit might not have garnered enough momentum for an outright crackdown, but the CCP continues to slowly gag deviant voices amongst the masses. Demerit could easily be muzzled if one piqued official decided to veto their privilege to release new CDs or perform concerts.

Touring in China is by no means a joyride. Long train journeys at odd hours, shabby lodging, and a constant diet of noodles and beer are some of the highlights. Getting paid concert by concert also makes things tight. Still, Demerit prides itself on interacting directly with their fans whether it is a concert for eight in a backwater provincial dive or a few hundred in a music-crazy urban center. Luckily there is a growing network of underground bars and clubs in Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Xian, Wuhan, Guangzhou and Chengdu that promote alternative music in the face of an increasingly pop-dominated market. The 4698 Bar back in Changsha recently became another mainstay for traveling bands and is managed by a group of tattooed entrepreneurs who play in their own punk outfit Last Choice. This nascent tour circuit is turning heads both domestically and internationally and will hopefully provide an established framework for up and coming bands to find audiences in a country renowned for its draconian media control.

“so fuck your pretty thoughts / we don’t care about your perfect plans
so fuck your pretty thoughts / we still have rebel attitude”

The network of clubs also weaves through some of the most intensely developed urban centers in the world. Cities pop up almost overnight across China’s interior. Touted as an “economic miracle,” this vision of modernity spreading throughout China lines select pockets richly, but continues to leave a great number of people out on the curb – grappling with a population of 1.4 billion is no easy feat. Migrant workers from the countryside, the true force behind China’s construction boom, usually can’t afford a residence in municipalities built with their own hands. Demerit thrives off the growing dissatisfaction of people passed over in China’s newfangled Great Leap Forward. Concert goers lose themselves in music that transcends the shallow nationalism that so often defers legitimate criticism of the CCP. Demerit’s hard-hitting punk is one of the most explosive fissures in China’s music underground and will continue to resonate for some time to come.

In an almost anachronistic throwback, Demerit opens their new album with the end of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech dubbed over a rousing drum line: “I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.” While Martin Luther King’s mission to end segregation and bigotry is seemingly disconnected from the travails of modern China, Demerit’s intent is clear. They want to stand for suppressed voices of a new generation who grew up with little future prospects and no hope to bridge the ever widening gap between the rich and the poor in China. This isn’t the fringe of China, either. Hundreds of millions of Chinese still live largely agrarian existences and will continue to go unspoken for well into this new century. China is sweltering in the heat of oppression and Demerit, at the very least, continues to vent some it at every concert.

All lyrics taken from the song Bastards of the Nation.