Day Four - 2007 Peace and Love Wuhan Modern Music Festival
We had to get up at 8 am to make it to sound check for the afternoon music festival at 9 am, which was way across town. Still a little drunk from the night before, I was able to wake up a bit earlier than the rest of our group. I turned on the television and was extremely pleased to find Lord of the Rings III on. I took this as a good omen as the movie is both rad and bitchin'. Much like our band.

The promoter behind the "2007 Peace and Love Wuhan Modern Music Festival" was a guy called Axe Hu, who is a translator in Wuhan but also manages rock bands, puts on shows and plays music. It was a two day event that showcased Rock, Indie and Punk on the first day and Metal bands on the second. Wuhan, I guess, is like most Chinese cities where Metal outnumbers all genres 2 to 1. All in all, there were over 22 bands over the two days. We were scheduled as part of the first 11. I guess Hu was footing the entire bill himself to ensure its success, hoping to make the festival a yearly fixture in Wuhan in the coming years. This day was to be the most intense of our little trip because we had headlined a show the previous night, had to get to this festival show early in the morning and then had to go all the way back across town to open for Chengdu band Proximity Butterfly. We had mixed expectations of the show we were about to play. We had managed to get onto the bill just before coming to Wuhan and there was a lot of crazy talk associated with the thing that made it hard to predict what it would be like. For one, they wanted all 11 bands they had booked to be there for sound check from 8 am to 10 am. I'm not too sure why they thought they could pull this off but that's what they were shooting for. Also, they were making a documentary of the thing and broadcasting it live on the radio. It sounded like a big deal that could go horribly wrong.

We arrived at 10 am after taking another hour-long taxi through the sleepy, tree-lined lanes of Wuhan. Wuhan gets a pretty bad rap for being a boring town, but from what little we saw of it, I think most of our group appreciated the more laid back and natural feel of the city, coming from the vast, concrete, towering madness of Shanghai.

Our cab emerged out of a shaded lane and we stopped in front of a large gutted factory. Stepping inside the space, I realized that this was the most typical "factory" building I'd ever been in. The rectangular space was four 40 foot walls with massive windows occupying the highest ten feet of each. The entire area was about 400 feet by 100 feet. Actually, I don't know. Maybe bigger. I'm not good with dimensions. Look at the pictures. It was massive. In the middle they had a large elevated seating area especially designed for bands to sit in. As we filed in, feeling important with our special laminated band backstage passes, they were still setting up the stage equipment. It was 10 am and no band had sound checked yet.

Thankfully, they let us go on first. We plucked our guitars nervously and waited as five or six stage hands buzzed around us plugging stuff in. The sound check, as it usually proves to be during these large-scale events, was pointless. We hurried through a couple of our numbers and the levels were all off. At times my piano was too loud and at times you could not hear it at all. Devin had particular difficulties with the drum set, which was both "a ridiculous piece of shit" and "the worst kit he'd ever played on." The key, though, for these things is just to give the sound guy a look at what instruments you play and hope he can fix all the levels within the first 30 seconds or your first song when you're actually live.

Jordan was unusually upbeat and unflappable and after we mangled through a couple of our numbers. He looked up and smiled: "Fuck it. It's good. Let's go."

The other 10 bands — all 10 had shown up — hurried through their sound checks. Due to it being already two hours behind schedule, no single band got the sound check they needed. At around 12, the place was filling up and the first band came on the stage. We were scheduled to play fourth to give us time to get back across town to play our evening show with Proximity Butterfly. We staked out our corner in the "bands section" and nervously waited our turn to go on. Amongst us were all the other bands. Some of the bands looked Punk, some looked Pop, some looked Garage, some looked Emo and there were even five guys with bongos and classical guitars dressed in Hawaiian shirts. They ended up playing first and were some kind of traditional music that had Spanish overtones. They had hot girlfriends with them. When the bassist came back up to the band section, I could see he had a Miserable Faith sticker on the back of his guitar. I then knew what kind of band he really wanted to be in. Each band was allowed to play 4 songs. After the first band (the bongo guys) was a male-female duo that played laptop rock. The singer had an airy Feist thing going on. After them, was a student band that played harder rock. They also did a Muse cover. Someone had told us that we weren't allowed to play covers because the concert was being taped and the producers didn't want to incur any copyright lawsuits. I guess they didn't tell these guys. Anyway, while they were on, we were led down to the "band waiting area." They had a special sort of pathway for the bands to make their entrance and exit from the stage. Carrying all our gear and getting lead around was very Spinal Tap.

As we waited at the right of the stage, Jordan dropped his distortion pedal on the ground. He plugged it in to test to see if it worked and of course it didn't. Looking like he was about to panic, he shot a glance at me and Devin but we just shrugged. This was a pretty big deal. Most of our songs make pretty liberal use of the distortion pedal. I turned my head away and thought of the songs we could play that don't have the pedal.

"See if you can borrow one from someone. Someone here has to have one."

Jordan and our Chinese handler guy (at least he acted like our handler, leading us around for the entire afternoon) ran off to find a plug or a pedal as the Muse band was wrapping up their set. Devin was already on stage getting the drummer from the previous band to lend him various elements of his drum kit. Jordan came back with a relieved look on his face. Apparently it was just a problem with his plug. He had found another plug and we were about to go on.

I remember walking up on the stage and being met with loud cheers lots of flashing bulbs. As in, as if they already knew who we were and we coming to see us. I winced thinking, oh god are you ever in for disappointment. The stage was massive though and I remember feeling very far away from Devin and Jordan. As I plugged the bass in, I was thankful for having consumed as many beers as I did before getting on (Coors Light no less). The entire floor area was packed and looking up into the seating I could see everyone standing at the front. There must have been around five hundred people, the most we've ever played to (this number has escalated to around one thousand in subsequent anecdotal retellings).

As we launched into the first number, our nerves subsided and we were comfortable again. It usually only takes a little while to get into step with what you want to do. We only played four songs but the crowd was amazing. They cheered everything we did. If Jordan would turn on or off the distortion, they would cheer. If Devin played a drum fill they cheered. If Jordan changed his singing they cheered. It was the most positive reception we've ever received. Not because of anything we did in particular, it was just that the crowd was there to have a good time and look for the good in what they were seeing instead of focusing on the stuff that didn't quite work.

One of the things that didn't work, of course, was the distortion pedal. By the end of the set, the stage hand was on his hands and knees holding the plug into the pedal and Jordan was stepping over him to tap it on and off.

I'll remember a couple major things from the show: the crowd reaction when Jordan started singing like Tom Waits, the 6-year-old kid who got on stage at the start and stayed on the entire time (I don't know why) and the very end when the lead singer of Wuhan folk legends Defys leapt on stage and started banging on the keyboard with me. Oh and some girl asked us to sign autographs. Wassup.

Kings of Wuhan that we were, we went back to the bar to open for Chengdu's Proximity Butterfly for our evening set. We totally fucked it up. Played like shite. Ah well. They were really nice guys (and gal) though (sort of Prog Rock a la Mars Volta). They're coming to Shanghai for the Dino Beach Rock Festival and it'll be good to see them again.

Read Part One - Bar 77 (Nanjing)
Read Part Two - Vox Bar (Wuhan)

-Morgan Short


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