The Greatest Rock 'n Roll Band in the World -- if you're a white Euro-American type in your late 40s or older.

  Censored and priced so that only the party elites' middle-aged children, Chuppies (Chinese Yuppies) and Expats  could afford it, the Rolling Stones did Shanghai last night. In 1966, at 15, the AXE had seats at the back of the Syracuse War Memorial but at stage height and directly in front of center stage as the Stones did their US tour in support of Aftermath. I literally had no idea what the first song was until I caught some of Jagger's harmonica by accident, doing "Not Fade Away"-- the screaming volume was insane. In those days, the stage performance had some more accurate resemblance to the records; Brian Jones was still kind of playing lead guitar and Bill Wyman was doing the bass. Charlie was good, Keith was amazing, and Jagger was...Jagger. This was before all that devil stuff, the tongue that he wraps around his head. Pure rock and roll -- and amazing.

Well, they skipped China last time because of SARS and they skipped some songs because of censorship. I suspect he didn't do the Chicken Strut in homage to Avian Flu. The censored list oddly enough didn't include Street-Fighting Man; however, the crowd wouldn't have noticed. As I've said, Chinese pop is pretty horrible to western ears; I suspect the Stones would have been pretty horrid to most of the Chinese. Chinese music does not have a back beat, nor a lot of feedback. Synthesizers and overdone strings with superlush chromatic scales and voices singing like lisping Jennifer Warnes and Bill Melodious doing Time of My Life a beat and a half slow. Still, I gotta suspect that this expression of the Zeitgeist is probably real -- China is 40 years behind us. And, it was about 40 years ago that I heard them play live for the first time. 

In a way, it's more of a shame that I didn't get to China this time. I could have gotten tickets and taken some of my TAs and peers. That would make up for making me listen to karaoke of "Country Roads..."

Comments

[Neil Shakespeare]

lol! "Chuppies"! Great word! And what the fuck is it with Asians and John Denver?

[Crusader AXE of the Lost Causes]

Squeaky voice...lack of content so translation isn't hard...pale skin,blonde hair and blue eyes. As they said about me because of mine, "Very Hollywood..."

[Comandante Agí]

Didn't the communist party have them change the song title to Sympathy for Chairman Mao?

[Crusader AXE of the Lost Causes]

Probably not. I have read that half the school children in China have never heard of the old bastard -- Mao,not the devil or Jagger.

[Fred]

Hey, I work in Syracuse. It's a small world after all. We're all connected, New York telephone...

[Crusader AXE of the Lost Causes]

I'd love to work in Syracuse. Except for the weather and the depressing local economy, and the taxes, and the absurd state government and the Chiefs and...well, I guess that's enough.

Hey, out here in the Shire of Ectopia, they have been known to put salmon on pizza. Without warning. "Take me home..."

[Fred]

Ahhh, come on now, the weather's not that bad...