Summer in the band and the critics on the second floor

▌Guo Xiaohan

  In March 2020, as a music critic, I was invited to participate in the recording of the second season of "Summer of the Band" and became a "professional music fan" sitting on the second floor.

  After getting the sign of "Music Critic Guo Xiaohan", I felt a bit emotional: I studied journalism when I was in college. At that time, in the youth rebellious period, because I heard more slurs, I contributed to the rock magazine "Popular Songs."

Throughout my adolescence, I used to read music review articles in magazines to find more music information, listen to more music, and find more friends... For more than ten years, I have been a music journalist, performance agency, record planning, etc. Music companies, performance spaces...I have done almost every industry and category related to independent music...In a blink of an eye, I sit on the second floor and become a "music critic".

Back then, the music critic’s article was one of the small keys that led me to the music field. Today, I am also honored that I can still hold the music critic’s label to talk to all the audience and all the music on stage. Fans watched "Le Xia" in the stands together.

  Sitting on the "second floor", in a special form, I watched all my favorite band performances in the summer of 2020. The top lighting, stage and sound configuration of the "Summer of the Band" show were all used in the livehouse before. It is incomparable at a general music festival. The feeling on the scene is like playing a movie backwards, and the time that I grew up with these bands is back clearly.

  The Chinese rock scene is changing. One generation goes away with the curtain call of the old era, and another generation walks to the front of the stage with the footsteps of the new era.

It took nearly thirty years for rock music in China to go from a teenager to an adult.

In the 1980s, Cui Jian was born. In the early 1990s, the recording industry gave birth to mainstream rock music represented by the Black Panther, Tang Dynasty and Magic Rock. From the 1990s to the early 21st century, he played in Midi Music School, Shucun, and Huo. The new generation of North Floating bands active in the camp and various bars, from the punk era, the boring army, the howling club to the "Beijing New Voice" represented by "The Catcher", "New Pants" and "Underground Babies", Carsick Cars, Snapline, Houhai big sharks, hedgehogs, and the up-and-coming "Beijing Super New Sound"... After 2008, Chinese rock music festivals have blossomed everywhere, band tours have become a routine, and the tide of commercialization is coming...

  "Many things have passed for many years before you know what this means." said Yang Haisong, the lead singer of pk14.

In my opinion, the talents of those musicians, keen perception, precise expression, expressing the complexity of human nature, trance, uncertain places, planting seeds in the void and blooming flowers, is the essence of music. Where.

  It took me a long time to sort out the development of the band, the mutual projection of the works, the era and the social atmosphere, recall the wonderful performance scenes and the precious memories that have always been shining in our minds, and explain these bands I have liked. , Their story.

I have always believed that what music critics can do is to connect the bridges and bonds between musicians and music fans, so that good music can resonate with more right people.

  Music is not only a melody, a few lyrics, but also a short period of time sealed.

It contains all the senses, and at the right time and field, it will be played out at a certain moment in your life.

Those times with music are my most fulfilling times.

  In 2020, we experienced a long winter. Because of the epidemic, we stayed at home for a long time, and could not go to the rock music scene or party with friends.

Staying at home, what I miss most is those unforgettable moments at music festivals, those unforgettable nights with enthusiasm, sweat and beer in the live house, and the streets and lanes that we crossed at midnight are the youth and blood that we once burned. And dream...

  So, I picked up the pen and went to the depths of my memory to look back at the time that was lit by rock music, and what made it.

These bands that we once liked, their growth, memories, works, interweaving with the times, and adhesion with individuals, have all been stacked together to form a hard thing, growing in our body, influencing and shaping Our character.

  All these sorting, narrations and feelings have now been recorded in words and turned into this "Born to Rock".

In the past six months, I have written the stories of 13 rock bands objectively and in detail.

It can also be said that it was written in the first half of a lifetime, because every impulse to write is in the life that was influenced and changed by rock music in the past.

Most of these 13 bands were founded around the 21st century. They have completely different musical styles and aesthetic tastes, some are punk, some are psychedelic, some are British, some are heavy metal... I want to elaborate on these which I like. The band and their story, because there is also a story of my own growth.

I am not just a bystander or visitor, but a participant who experiences with them.

In these stories I have written, I can see their brilliance and legend, free and easy and persistent; I can also see the pain and struggle, retreat and hesitation, and it is precisely this combination of contradictions and complexity that they are vivid. And cuteness shows the truth and sincerity of rock and roll.

  They were born to rock and roll, and vice versa-rock is their life, their life.

As Zhang Fan, the principal of Midi Music School, said: “Rock and roll is the awakening of unwillingness to mediocrity, the power to face life, and the courage to take the initiative to change life.” In the long period of life, rock music still brings us strength, enlightenment and companionship.

In a certain sense, I am also using "writing" to engage in rock and roll and devote myself to my rock life.