I am sick of all the genre bands in Beijing. I don’t need to hear someone’s take on the Blues with Chinese characteristics or Chinese Punk. Or ska, or “folk music” or whatever.
When you go see those bands, you’re not really listening anyway. What you’re doing is using them as a conduit to whatever the best band in a given genre is. The highest praise for one of the genre bands is something like, “Those guys are great, they sound like Oasis or the Skatalites or XXX.” There’s nothing organic about the experience at all. You might as well be drinking gin and listening to your iPod.
I’m not interested in hearing a rehashed version of the music I already like. Good music is about having something to say, not being authentic to some kind of cannon or form. The cannon is there to be learned, assimilated and then destroyed by something new. Fuck the cannon and fuck your heroes. If you can’t, then you’ll just be a pale imitation of what you like.
It’s time for musicians in Beijing to burn the fucking history books and the how-to manuals. It’s time to throw out the music that inspired you.