f*cked up

I'm aware that my last posting was a little ahem.."effiminate" so i'll try to reassert my masculinity with this next post.

Saturday night I went to a place called Logo bar to watch Canadian punk band "F*cked up". I've seen them play in England one or two occaisions and never really been that impressed but it was only £4 to get in and had nothing better to do on the saturday evening so thought why not. Also I'd heard that the bar was quite cool and was meant to be a decent live venue. The only thing that i thought was a bit off was that the night was being promoted by group called STD - so they stamped STD on everybodies hands as you came in. I'm not sure if the chinese would understand how funny this is.

The first thing I noticed ws just how small the area for music was. The stage was the size of a toilet cubical, the bar was about 2 feet away from that and the area for the crowd to watch was probably about 15 yards long. It was literally smaller than my front room at home. Having seen F*cked up before I knew that this was going to generate quite a good atmosphere.

I turned up at 9pm as the clun opened at 8.30pm. It said on the flyer starts at 10pm but I thought that that meant F*cked up started at 10pm. In the end the first band came on about 10.30pm, and F*cked up didn't start till 1am. Still there was carlsberrg draft on tap and big steiners were 30yuan (£3) so i had 4/5 of those to get me in the mood. I met a nice chinese girl who spoke good english at the bar, she was waiting for her friends who had gone to a pop concert before coming here (contrast) so we kept each other company. Helpfully she looked after my glasses when ever i fancied going for a dance.

The line up was completed by two chinese bands - one called "The Mofos" who specialised in playing Ramones covers - which was quite good fun- and then a kind of hardcore/emo band called The Rogue Transmission - who were actually pretty decent to listen to. I'd heard some of their stuff when they were sound testing and wasn't impressed but they were really good for the actual show. I didn't get to see any Chinese bands last time I was here, but I did manage to buy a few cds so it was good to actually see some chinese punk in the flesh.

By the time the headliners came on the room was completely jam packed full. Mixed between local indie kids and expats. There were a few mentalists but it was all good fun. F*cked up are fronted by this massive fat skin head, who is quite good fun to watch. He often made his way into the crowd and was joining in with all the dancing. Whilst I went thinking I wouldn't like the music, i knew that he would put on a good show, and in the end I was quite impressed. Definitely worth the £4 it cost to get in - in england it would have 4 or 5 times that to go and see them.

The chinese people I were with had gone home by the time the main band started so I kept my glasses in my pocket for safety. By the time 4 songs had gone I checked my pockets and both lenses had come out. The lenses were in my pocket but the frames are pretty bent. After this I couldn're really be bothered staying for the rest of the songs. I was knackered and quite swetty so got a taxi home to listen to the football results and to watch the arenal v tottenham game.

Doing his part to improve the reputation of westerners in shanghai

All in all a good night - I was knackered and quite drunk when I got home and not sure how I managed to get up for 7.30am to go and play football.