Catshanghai

Denmark’s Mais Uma have been performing some shows at Shanghai’s JZ Club (46 Fuxing Xi Lu) since April 13th, which ends tomorrow night (April 29th). The video above shows Mais Uma at JZ last night performing Tao Feliz (So Happy). The song is taken from their excellent album ‘Caminho Do Norte’.
We have not been [...]

Shanghai is renowned for its jazz scene in clubs like Cottons, JZ and elegant hotel foyers.
Jazz can be amazing when masters like John Coltrane take you on a journey to new places of creativity and emotion, but much of the jazz songs you hear in this city are standards designed to keep the bosses [...]

Shanghaiist told me that Spli-t is casting a vote for performers to appear at the Shanghai Yue Festival it is promoting in October. Here is a list of the performers I can choose from:
Counting Crows, Smashing Pumpkins, !!!, Foo Fighters, 范晓萱 (Bo Bo Mavis), Rihanna, REM, Kanye West, Ben Harper, The Verve, Mastodon, The Strokes, [...]

Everybody is writing reviews of the past year so I will join in too. 2007 has been a great year for us, although it has not been without struggle and frustration. I have just been scanning this year’s blog posts as a prompt for the some of the highlights, which I will summarise below:
Personal Stuff
We [...]

Photo of Banana Monkey from their show at 4-Live by YangDan
Banana Monkey sneaked in a live gig at the Logo Bar (Xingfu Lu) on Saturday night.
I like Banana Monkey’s sense of fun and raw rock and roll energy. To the unitiated, BM play garage punk rock not a million miles away from MC5 or Guitar [...]

Coffee shop managers in Shanghai have terrible taste in music. Worse still, they insist on inflicting it on their paying customers. Is it a secret tactic to torture the patrons into leaving the establishment as soon as possible in order to free up valuable seating for the next aural torture victims?
I’ve had enough. It’s [...]

The Go! Team played an energetic set at Shanghai’s Absolute House on Saturday night to a rapturous crowd of mainly international twenty somethings. I too should have left the venue in an ecstatic mood, but it passed over me like a boring daydream.
There should be a lot to like about The Go! Team. They [...]

The melodies are direct, memorable, and inseparable from the interlocking harmonies that are weaved around them. My Two Toms carries the traditions of the most memorable music; the complexity found deep within the drone of the Appalachian Mountains, the spiraling melodies of Northumberland pipe tunes, a simple song that stands well the test of time [...]

We never thought we would ever see The Slits appear on a poster promoting a Shanghai event, but that day has arrived thanks to 88 New Wave who have been quietly putting on offbeat punk parties at Cs Bar. We like their eclectic and open take on punk, enjoying everything from Gang of Four to [...]

Oh No! The Subs are playing in Shanghai while I am attending a conference in Singapore. If you haven’t heard them, The Subs are China’s MC5. They even have bad clothes and massive Afros. Their post punk has lots of fun,sweat and vigour. Last spring, they played a show at Harley’s Bar last full of [...]