fungal horse rides on.......


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March 5th 2008
Published: March 5th 2008
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the first stage of our tour of china as a laowai band.....

well, it has certainly been a very long time between blogs. what have i done with that time?

the answer is, not a lot, spot. i've been mostly staying in kunming, in the flat of the quebec redneck bluegrass project boys, most of whom are currently on tour in india. we've been eating good food, smoking, drinking, and watching shitty dvds. getting new tattoos, piercings, playing music, partying. experiencing all kinds of strange weather - beautiful and sunny one day, half a foot of snow on the ground the next. actually, the snow was a very weird thing. it started hailing one night and then suddenly there was a white blanket over everything. kt had arrived by this point, so she, mickey, didier (the only quebec guy still around), moni (didier's girlfriend), and nicole (jp's girlfriend, who was also staying at the flat), went out to play in the snow. having already gone to bed, i decided to stay put, and was content to look at the snow from my window. it was still there in the morning, so i took some photos.

but, things are changing! kt arrived two weeks ago, and fungal horse had its glorious reunion, with some new tunes and a quick tour of some of our favourite spots in china (as well as a few new places too) planned, before heading back to hong kong for the last leg of my trip.

the tour was kicked off with the weirdest gig any of us had ever played (and coming from people who play in a junk percussion band with crazy costumes and who worked at a theme park in hong kong for three months, that's pretty weird). sam, the british owner of the speakeasy, a great bar here in kunming, told us he could get us a gig for some chinese businessmen, and we'd be paid 400 kuai each (about $65 AU, but it goes a long way here!). the only specifications we had were that the band was to be entirely made of laowai (foreigners). ok, we thought, that should be ok. oh yeah, and we should have as many people in the band as possible. it turned out that sam was a percussionist (and reminded us eerily of our friend ken, of junkadelic fame), so he joined us, as well as another percussionist, his friend er-hong (probably spelt wrong), who wasn't foreign, but we thought we could get away with it.

the night of the gig came, and we rocked up to the apartment building where we'd done the soundcheck that wasn't a soundcheck two nights before. things were looking quite different - heaps of people, a red carpet leading to a stage, an archway made from balloons, and excitement in the air. quite weird, so far.

the first thing to go wrong was that there were only two mic stands. oh well, we thought. mickey doesn't really need a mic, he won't be singing in this. then there was no D.I. for those non-musicians out there, a D.I. is short for direct input, and is a little box that connects to the mixing desk, that you plug your guitar into. it's much better than simply plugging into the mixing desk, as usually this is too far away from the stage for the guitar lead to reach, and you can get a better sound.
in this case, the mixing desk was much too far away for mick's guitar to be plugged into it - unless he played offstage. at this point, we were starting to think that maybe they weren't really used to hiring bands. two more microphones were produced, and after some huddling around, it was decided that these would be held by "microphone gimps" (as i like to call them), for our percussionists. we would play offstage, where we could see mick. hmmm, not ideal, and slightly ridiculous, but whatever.
just before we played, the event manager came over and asked could we play some "soft, quiet music? with no singing". we thought it best to just do what we were planning to do, and started with an extended version of dark eyes. during the performance, the event managed grabbed kt's microphone and started moving it onto the stage. dickhead. by this point, we were feeling pretty unimpressed.

after dark eyes, they asked us to stop again for a while. we hoped it was over, but alas, no, we had some more songs to play. this time, we were to play on stage. what about mickey's guitar? another microphone and microphone gimp were produced, and we were shuffled onstage. woohoo! this was getting exciting. or not.
again, just before we played, we were whispered directives from the event manager, who we were rapidly losing patience with. "we want you to sing a song this time. and play something lively".
right, we thought. the pirate song it is. we launched into some "la-la-las", and the audience stood there, mostly looking unimpressed and cold, with a few small children dancing along. for our last song we played meiyou mogu (don't have mushrooms), a lively instrumental tune, and then got offstage as quick as possible. the sound was bad (the too-loud mics got turned up louder, the too-quiet ones got turned down. what the fuck?), and the lights were bright, and everything about the gig was weird, and we wanted to get our 400 kuai and get the fuck out of there.

so we did.


since then, however, we have been to dali. in fact, the very next day we were on an early train to get there, and play two gigs. normally we'd catch a bus to dali, but as mick was completely broke, we decided to get the train, which is roughly half the price. for reasons i will go into, i would strongly recommend that anyone considering the train for financial reasons should be completley strapped for cash, or else shell out the extra for the bus.
we thought we'd paid 45 kuai (10 more than we'd expected), for hard seats. alas, no. we were seated in a sleeper section of the train - there were four beds in our cabin, and the top two were used for luggage, whilst the bottom two were used as seats. each bed had four people squashed onto it. unfortunately for the tall people among us, kt and mick found they could quite sit up straight on the beds, and had to slouch the whole time. there was also a small child, about two years old, alternately crying and laughing and screaming and running around. fun fun fun. luckily, two girls left about halfway through the journey, so we were a little less cramped. we kept ourselves amused by playing games on our ipods and mobile phones until the batteries ran out.
after 7 and a half hours, and then 8 hours, went by, i was getting pretty ansty. we had been told it was an 8-hour ride, maximum.

8 hours, my arse. it took more like 10. we were supposed to be soundchecking at 6:30 or something. i think it was about that time when we got into xiaguan, the new dali city where the train station was. thoroughly fed up with public transport, we opted to take a taxi to the old town, and once there, rushed down renmin lu, taking in familiar sights and smells and sounds (ahhh, the grandma mafia with their "smoke?smoke?ganjahashopiumsmoke? hashahashashahash?")........ until we got to the 50 bowls bar, where we were playing. we'd played there last year, in november, and were looking forward to playing there again. we were greeted by jinjin, the lovely young woman who was now the co-owner of 50 bowls, and spoke decent english. she said "oh, we waited for you for so long!"....... yes, sorry, sorry, put bags down, eat some quick and delicious indian food for dinner, come back, soundcheck, try to chill the fuck out.......
by 9pm, we'd sorted out where we were staying (upstairs at the caffeine club - matt, the belgian owner, had met mick at the dali new years' hot springs party, and then met us again in kunming and said we were welcome to crash there next time we were in dali), and had some beers in our hands, and were getting ready to play. the pub was filling up nicely, and we were well eq'ed in the soundcheck. things looked good.

the gig went well, surprisingly enough. we hadn't really practised much, owing to hangovers and laziness the last few days in kunming, so we were expecting some songs to be a little rusty. all was good, though, and the crowd really got into the music, and were very attentive. after two long sets, finished with an encore of "zombie girlfriend" (always a crowd-pleaser), we were done, and buggered, so we settled in for some drinking and fun.

the next day we ate awesome vegetarian jiaozi (dumplings), and chilled out, mostly...... lazy dali days. the second night was supposed to be more of a jam session, with local musicians invited to bring their instruments and join in. we had a couple of shots of vodka at the daliba vodka bar as preparation before the gig, this time. i felt nicely relaxed after that, and ready to play. we were greeted with free margaritas when we got to 50 bowls, so the set was off to a good start. a lot of the same people turned up, as well as a couple of newcomers, and we plunged into the set with some random reggae jams, and then a few songs from the night before. we handed out instruments to the crowd, and got a melodica player up on stage for one song, but after that the people were content just to listen. by the end of the night there were only five people left - la zhou, the owner, had paid us again (yay! we thought we were only getting paid for one night, but they had a good turnout the second night too. everyone wins!), and disappeared, so there were two of the staff, including jinjin, and another chinese girl called william, as well as two french travellers, who heard the drunken and slightly subdued end of our set.

the night was rounded off with a trip to the bad monkey and a silly laughing drunk stoned game of acronyms that didn't seem to have any particular start or end.

the last day in dali was relaxed, as only dali can be. we hired bikes and rode out to er hai lake, but weren't allowed on the pier without buying boat tickets, so ended up at dragonfly garden gueshouse, chatting to the travellers there.

we're back in kunming now, preparing for the kunming leg of the tour, and the last few days here.
i'm gonna miss dali.

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24th March 2008

wuhan
was a cool show in vox last nite. me liked it (specly first song of second set kicked ass). cum again.

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