The Rock/Electro Ratio: Touring Through China Amid the Anti-French Movement
On that time I debuted at Beijing’s D-22 at the apex of a punk rock renaissance …
In case anyone asks, just tell them you’re from Belgium.
That seemed to be the common sentiment amongst our group as we pulled up to Ningbo station on train T793 from Shanghai.
Belgium. “Bǐ-lì-shí.” Third tone. Fourth. Then second. I had been practicing Mandarin on the train ride, using hand gestures to help guide my questionable pronunciation. “Bǐ-lì-shí,” I repeated, cracking open beers and pistachio shells with my international compatriots. This was the first day of our rock and roll tour around China, the maiden voyage. Our delegation, the Rock/Electro Ratio, was predominantly French, which just so happened to be a bit of a security issue at the time.
Belgium was our cover story.
Frogs weren’t safe in China in April 2008. Diplomatic relations between the two nations were poor leading up to the Beijing Games. Carrefours burned across the mainland after pro-Tibet demonstrations at the Olympic torch relay in Paris. A wave of propaganda-driven xenophobia followed, circling the country, and conveniently, ironically, unsurprisingly, I was in the middle of second-tier China with half a dozen Frenchies and a slew of gear.
Moving from the train platform, through the station, and out into the main square, we stuck out exactly like nine conspicuous foreigners carrying guitar cases, synthesizers, and assorted drum hardware around a rapidly developing city might. Locals rushed to badger us with offers for taxis, hotels, and “Fa-Piao. Fa-Piao.” Others just approached to take a look at our foreign pack, staring in awe of this never-before-seen type of riff raff.
With a growing crowd of Chinese cab drivers, vendors, and onlookers surrounding us, a certain defensiveness and playfulness simultaneously set in. “Bǐ-lì-shí. Bǐ-lì-shí,” I repeated under my breath. In the heat of the moment, it was impossible to stave off memories of the last time a Chinese mob surrounded me outside a train station. That experience didn’t turn out so well, with the group literally carrying me into a jail cell in Xi’An on Christmas Eve 2006.
Observing the current scene in Ningbo, it was clear that we needed to hightail it and find our way out of this predicament, immediately.
Just across the way – Juste en Face – Fabien Barbet, drummer for the Rogue Transmission and the de-facto tour manager for this run up China’s eastern seaboard, was already haggling with a pair of van drivers, one of whom even had a flatbed for the guitar cases, negotiating all prices and rides within a few minutes. We then split up into three different factions and headed to the hotel.
In addition to Fabien, the French contingent of the Rock/Electro Ratio consisted of Clement Bouvron, our lead guitarist, Arnaud, an experimental artist who performed under the name Orange Zebre, and One Step Inside, a trio from Lille comprised of Kit, Phil, and Lucas. John Lynch, our London-Irish bassist, Michael Beets, an all-purpose roadie from South Africa, by way of Australia, and I were essentially beards, over emphasizing our native English fluency and pidgin Mandarin to keep the locals off the scent of our French cohorts.
The Belgium story was rather believable, honestly. Phil and Arnaud didn’t speak much English anyway, so there was little chance they’d blow up their own spot, and Kit easily could’ve passed for a beer-making monk. Lucas was a talker though, and he definitely had a bit of that je nais se quois thing going that separates the French from everyone else in the world. So the idea was to get out ahead of it and spoon feed the Belgium story in case we were ever propositioned.
Before the visiting French faction even arrived in China, the Rogue Transmission spent the better part of April in the rehearsal room feverishly writing a handful of new songs for the tour, which would take us to Ningbo, Shanghai, Nanjing, and finally Beijing, where we were set to make our debut at the famed D-22 venue, opening for P.K. 14, a legendary post-punk group at epicenter of China’s current rock and punk explosion.
Almost two months removed from the success of the Get In The Van show, we played a warm up set before heading out on tour, a support slot for Queen Sea Big Shark, one of the biggest bands of the era. No doubt the show was rough around the edges as we sorted out our new arrangements, making a few tweaks to fine tune the live set. However, the makeshift venue – the folks at S.T.D. built a stage and set up a backline in an art gallery – was packed and the atmosphere was inviting, allowing us to work through the new tunes, while also doing a little promo for the ensuing tour.
A week later, we were on the train to Ningbo.
The idea for the Rock/Electro Ratio really began with Fabien, who invited his friends from Lille to China for a few shows. In those days, rock and electronic music weren’t complete strangers with the mashup scene combining the two genres. The S.T.D. party collective was already finding some early success putting bands, DJs, and electronic artists on the same bills, so Fabien figured we could do the same and take the show on the road. Accordingly, we joined forces with One Step Inside and Orange Zebre, whom he knew from his university days.
Sonically, our groups didn’t really match, but that wasn’t really the point. Or was it? We just wanted to play shows. We wanted to tour. We wanted to meet new people and reach new audiences. We wanted to get out there, anywhere, and have fun, so that’s exactly what we did.
Prior to the show, none of us really knew much about Ningbo, a second-tier city about five hours away from Shanghai. This was just days before the opening of the 22-mile-long Hangzhou Bay Bridge, when the only way to travel there was by slow train. It was an ideal location to launch our tour, though. Low key, low pressure, and far removed from the discerning jetset and competitive markets of China’s first-tier cities.
While a group of foreigners wasn't an altogether rare occurrence in Ningbo – plenty of Polo-wearing, blazer-clad business types flocked to the port city during the manufacturing boom – our group was different. We were a site to be seen, an amalgamation of odd and colorful fashion styles from all around the world, with little-to-no cohesion or uniformity. For sure, no one in all of Zhejiang Province had ever encountered such a delegation.
Given the circumstances, it was probably best to just hang out at the hotel until our call time, but we were defiant, strolling through the old town before sound check, acting loud and brash as we meandered the streets in search of alternative looking youths to invite to the show later that evening.
We reserved more of that same bratty, in-your-face energy for the performance, which was well received. Honestly, the audience was just thrilled that any original rock band would perform there. Afterward, we drank well into the night, venturing out to a brand new bar development with the opening band.
The next morning it was straight to the train station, and directly back to Shanghai, where we had our soundcheck at Windows Tembo, a 300-person venue that was pulling good numbers at the time. The manager, Brad Ferguson, offered us a rather generous 80/20 split on the door, and we promoted the hell out of that show. This was still less than eight months into our run as a band, but the Rogue Transmission already had a decent local following. Any time we played, we packed the house, and the show at Windows was no different.
We came, we saw, we conquered. We even experimented with “Mountain of the Cannibal God,” a song and vamp we never ever played again. The party lasted until after the sun came out, and following the Shanghai gig, we had an off day, where I was able to rest and relax in the comfort of my own apartment in Xujiahui. I used the down time to prepare for the next two shows in Nanjing and Beijing.
Congregating at Shanghai Railway Station on April 28, an hour prior to boarding high speed train D424 to Nanjing, our delegation grew by one for the back half of the tour, with Adrian Cortez, a.k.a. DJ Boya, from Texas, joining our crew in the former capital of Sun Yat Sen’s Republic of China. By then, we had given up on the Belgium cover. It just felt unnecessary. Sure, pedestrians would gawk and stare. Maybe they’d approach a little too close for comfort on occasion, but there was little-to-no fear of any aggression, retaliation, or street justice towards the French.
Using the powers of Douban, which was basically like China’s answer to MySpace, and a bit of bilingual savvy, Fabien scored a sweet gig at Castle Bar, an underground lesbian dive where we would go on to play several memorable shows throughout the years. Fabi even convinced local psychobilly outfit Angry Jerks, the most well-known punk band in Nanjing, to open the show. It was a wild, dizzy storm of a night.
The turnout was more than decent for a Monday. Around 70 people paid to check out this third installment of the Rock/Electro Ratio. The vibe inside the subterranean venue was perfect and smokey, hazy trails of light emerging from a combination of LED bulbs, string lights, and assorted neon bar signs.
We didn’t exactly nail every note. There were plenty of flubs throughout the 40-minute set, but the energy was right, and the feeling was tight. Mission Nanjing: Accomplished.
With a day to kill around Nanjing before hopping on overnight train Z6 to Beijing, we visited Zijin Shan (紫金山), where we strolled through the gardens and raced up the steps to Sun’s mausoleum. The fragrant smell of lavender infused a majestic quality into the fresh purple mountain air.
Still high from the show the night before, I essentially floated through the day, all the way to the top bunk of the sleeper train, where I dozed off, recalling how less than a year earlier, in September 2007, I was on a similar train en route to Beijing.
On the previous occasion I was merely a spectator, though, heading to the Beijing Pop Festival and a few shows at Star Live, Mao Livehouse, and D-22. This time, however, I was traveling with my own international delegation, and was on the verge of playing a high-profile club gig.
I crashed hard on the train and woke up fully refreshed, ready to kick Beijing’s teeth in.
While I had only lived in China for less than two years up to this point, I had already spent significant time in Beijing. There was the overnight when I first arrived in August 2006 and the October Golden Week a few months later. I returned to the Capital with my parents in 2007, and then again with my sister. That same year I also saw Nine Inch Nails and Public Enemy perform in Chaoyang Park and spent a few days backstage with Mando Diao, so I had a decent understanding of the city, the districts, the layout, the scene, the vibe, and the magnitude of opening up for P.K. 14 on such a special night.
Arriving first thing in the morning, our crew had become adept at breezing through the chaos of a Chinese train station. We had already done this three times in the last few days, so from the train, it was straight to the taxi line. Loaded into a series of sedans, it was then off to the Peking University International Hostel, where we’d eventually stay every time we returned to play at D-22.
Even before I had a touring unit assembled in China, I imagined playing at the infamous Wudaokou club. There was something big happening in the Capital, and I had seen and heard it with my own eyes and ears. Bands like P.K. 14, Carsick Cars, Snapline, Hedgehog, Joyside, Re-TROS, and Queen Sea Big Shark were gaining real momentum domestically, along with a bit of critical international traction. The energy was palpable, and you could feel the buzz.
From 2007-2009, it seemed as though every major international news organization and publication ran a piece about China’s rock and punk explosion, and at the center of it all was D-22, an unassuming, and likely flammable, narrow dive inside a nondescript strip of restaurants, bars, and shops in the Haidian District.
Founded by Professor Michael Pettis, who has been an influential economic consultant/advisor and academic for close to 20 years at this point, D-22 was meant to be Beijing’s Bowery, for lack of a more simple comparison. Pettis himself had been a promoter and booker in New York’s post-punk heyday, and wanted to share that aesthetic with emerging artists in China.
The plan worked, fast, and by the time we arrived to play at the club’s Second Year Anniversary extravaganza on April 30, 2008, D-22, and the Maybe Mars label that operated out of the second floor office, was in the midst of a cultural zeitgeist.
While Pettis was D-22’s frontman, it was Nevin Domer, the club’s booker, who brought us into fold and handed us the opening gig of a lifetime.
Nevin, an American who had spent years in Korea and had significant ties to bands, venues, and labels across Asia, was one of the unsung heroes of China’s rock and roll renaissance. We hit it off right away in the alley of the original YuYinTang venue in Shanghai years before. He was on the road with Joyside, one of China’s biggest punk bands of the aughts, promoting the first trio of Maybe Mars releases. We bonded over music, clearly.
During the next five years, Nevin and I would run into each other at countless shows and festivals. He would crash at my place in Shanghai on occasion, and we would collaborate a number of times, booking and promoting bands, and later releasing the Fever Machine’s La Chupacabra 7” on his label, Genjing Records.
Nevin knew how to attract talent and throw one hell of a party. He booked as part of the venue’s second anniversary festivities, on a bill with the biggest band on the label’s roster nonetheless. No doubt this was going to be a massive, no enormous, show.
Back at the hostel, I spent the day further recovering from the party in Nanjing, napping, stretching, changing guitar strings, running scales and vocal warmups. I meditated my way through the show over and over again in my mind’s eye, summoning the energy that I would later unleash on the stage.
The pre-show ritual and routine was both peculiar and specific, and by the time we walked into the venue for soundcheck I was completely dialed in, with a perfect handlebar moustache to go along with an impossibly tight pair of American flag jeans that I had picked up on Haight Street in San Francisco years prior.
I was here to play a god damn, motherfuckin’, balls out rock and roll show, and make a statement, which is exactly how it all went down.
Taking the stage just before P.K. 14, we had the audience completely enveloped in our whirlwind of chaos from the opening drum pattern of “Rollin’ the Dice.” All flash, all smash, piss and vinegar, the Rogue Transmission nailed every note that night. Fabi and John were locked in, and Clem was loose and fluid with his strumming. Our elements were coming together and chemically bonding, live, on stage, each member adding an ingredient to the mix. The sonic concoction was then hyper-charged and adrenalized by my energetic antics and boomy vocal delivery.
In what was still just our eighth show as a band, we hit a new gear exactly when it mattered most, in front of a packed house at the hottest club in China. The whole thing was a smashing success, and folks took notice immediately.
Right after we hopped off stage, Matthew Niederhauser, an American photographer, journalist, and artist, pulled me aside and invited me upstairs into D-22’s main office and inner sanctum. Matthew rattled off a few pictures in front of the trademark vermillion wall, one of which was eventually included in his book, Sound Kapital. It remains the leading visual documentation of Beijing’s late-aughts rock and punk explosion.
At the time, I was eager to return to the venue to see P.K. 14, but in retrospect, this quick photoshoot remains one of the most serendipitous encounters of my life. Going with the flow, as it were, had taken me to so many interesting, albeit occasionally sketchy, places in life. This time, curiosity led me to a hidden lair photoshoot with a complete stranger, and the results were published and captured for eternity.
Inclusion in Niederhauser’s book was an important moment for me and the Rogue Transmission. It’s proof that we were there, in the thick of it all with some incredible artists. It was instant validation that our band was a part of something bigger, meaningful, and historic. It’s the ultimate memento from my Beijing debut.
Well after midnight, I was invited to the D-22 office for yet a second time that evening. On this occasion it was Nevin who extended the offer, leading me up to the office, where he and Michael Pettis offered praise for the show, handing over a white envelope containing 2500 RMB (about $320 USD) to split between our three bands. It was about double what we were expecting. We weren’t there for the money anyway. We were there for the action, but the sum would certainly go a long way towards recouping our travel expenses.
I thanked Nevin and Michael for the hospitality, and celebrated the occasion with a shot of Jack. Then I made one final request, that our delegation be allowed to return the following evening for the next night of the D-22 Second Year Anniversary to watch Joyside headline a show with Queen Sea Big Shark, the Scoff, Carsick Cars, Casino Demon, and the Gar opening. It was thee single greatest club show I saw during my seven years in China, and may very well be the absolute apex of the entire Chinese rock wave that briefly captured some international attention.
A day later, after one final afternoon of sightseeing around Beijing and one last overnight train ride (Z5), the Rock/Electro Ratio officially disbanded. The Rogue Transmission would remain in Shanghai and immediately begin preparations for Get In The Van 2. One Step Inside and Orange Zebre returned to France.
Beaming with energy, glowing, radiating, even levitating, I had become the very street walking cheetah that I always aspired to be. In China, of all places, I was living a total paradoxical dream. My band was peaking. We were playing meaningful shows with culturally relevant bands, and we were just five weeks away from another major club gig, this time opening up for Joyside.
There was a catch, however. My visa would be expiring in less than two weeks, and with the Olympics approaching, entry and re-entry through the Hong Kong border was becoming increasingly difficult. But that’s a totally different story, eh?
All D-22 photos courtesy of Matthew Niederhauser