Sodahai (Updated x2)

2 years ago I was watching MTV with my roommate in Guangzhou instead of doing my Chinese homework, and a song with an intriguing but not unconventional piano prelude began playing. I didn’t pay much attention to it — that was until the singer opened his mouth and I heard a voice that startled me right out of any misconceptions that this was an ordinary video clip. The singer was Wu Qing Feng (吴青蜂), the song was Unparalelled Beauty (无与论比的美丽) and the band was Sodagreen (苏打绿). 2 years on this six-member indie band from Taiwan is still my favourite music group from anywhere in the world, and last night I saw them live for the first time.

Feverish

Sodagreen publicity photo for the new album. From left: pianist and viola player Ah Gong, singer-songwriter Qing Feng, bass guitarist Xin Yi, acoustic guitarist Ah Fu, drummer-songwriter Xiao Wei and electric guitarist and general pin-up boy Jia Kai

Fever (夏/狂热), Sodagreen’s fifth full-length studio album and the second from their “Vivaldi Project” (where the band has been travelling to different cities around the world to write and record a new album inspired by each of the four seasons) was released last month. The summer-based album was mostly written and completely recorded in London, and the influence of Brit-rock is definitely there, particularly when compared to previous albums. My impression after listening to Fever for the first time was that its sound was more derivative and predictable than usual, but there were still enough quirks and unusual shifts into darker-sounding territory in there that, ultimately, it could only be a Sodagreen album. And considering the rather flat release that was Daylight of Spring (春。日光), as far as I’m concerned it’s a return to form.

Wigging Out

Sodagreen’s 2009 Shanghai Daylight Fever Concert (2009苏打绿日光狂热上海演唱会) was being held at the Shanghai Grand Stage and didn’t start until 7.30pm, which gave me plenty of time to meet up in the city with Merry, who has been blogging about Sodagreen since before I’d even heard of them, and is officially the band’s premier English-language commentator (how do I know this? Well, she’s friends with two of the band members on Facebook, and they requested her). Halloween is coming up, and this year Merry intends to dress up as Qing Feng, a feat which currently requires a green wig (see the photo above). Thankfully I’d just read an article in That’s Shanghai about a wig shop on Yunnan Zhong Lu (which turned out not to be on Yunnan Zhong Lu), and we managed to find a suitable fluoro green wig that promises to be an excellent Qing Feng ‘do after some trimming.

As 7.30 loomed closer, we hopped on the metro and got out virtually in front of the Grand Stage, whose forecourt had become a mini-Sodagreen market full of scalpers, green glowstick vendors and sellers of everything from Sodagreen mugs to Qing Feng make up compacts (we both got a mug). Unfortunately our glowsticks were confiscated somewhere between the ticket inspectors and the sniffer dog, but by the time the concert started it became obvious that most sodafans had successfully smuggled in theirs.

Both Merry and I had the same class of tickets but were seated in different sections, though after the people sitting beside Merry decamped to find better seats I came over and joined her, now with a central, if a little far back, view of the stage. Before the concert started we coaxed a man sitting in front of us to take our picture (or should I say his wife coaxed him with an elbow jab).

In our semi-Qing Feng attire: Merry (sodahair) and me (redundant waistcoat)

The Shanghai Grand Stage (上海大舞台) is not a huge venue and it wasn’t filled to capacity on the night, but I have a feeling that even with a quarter of the people that turned up, the connection between the band and its fans would have more than made up for the empty seats.

It's My Sea of Glowsticks

The Concert

The lights went off, Vivaldi was piped through the speakers, and after an expectant pause each of the band members was raised seamlessly from behind the stage, with Qing Feng sporting a pink wig and antlers that, even if I hadn’t seen him in them before, probably wouldn’t have surprised me. They opened the concert with 融雪之前 (Before the Snow Melts), which is my favourite track from Daylight of Spring, and followed with 交響夢 (Symphonic Dreams), a song that always makes me think of the sappy climaxes to all the heart-warming USian movies I’ve ever seen. As usual though even the tracks I’m not as fond of I still enjoy live, and anyway, the next song was 这天 (This Day), the song that made me into a Sodagreen fan. I knew enough of the lyrics to fake-sing my way through the song with everybody else, but what made it annoying was that they had subtitles for the lyrics only every third or fourth line (and none for the rest of the concert). Merry tells me that Mayday (五月天) usually have the lyrics to their songs displayed on the screens so the fans can sing along, and this is something I hope Sodagreen adopts in future.

The next song on the bill was 蝉想 (The Sound that Remains), probably my favourite track from Fever, and then the audience was treated to a poppy dance version of both 飞鱼 (Flying Fish) and 日光 (Daylight), which finished with a longish instrumental interval, allowing the band to disappear behind the stage again in small puffs of confetti while four dancers of indeterminate style regaled the audience.

When the band re-appeared again Qing Feng was wearing a white suit and tophat that made him look like a miniature Taiwanese circus ringleader, and a cartoonish TV screen with the band’s name illuminated was slowly lowered down and later served as the venue’s third giant screen. Qing Feng used the interval in between songs to introduce/tease his band members, and paid particular attentions to the brass trio the band brought with them from Taiwan. Qing Feng proceeded to ask everybody how they’d spent yesterday in Shanghai, and not even the guileless answer of “stayed in my room” could escape Qing Feng’s cheeky wit and flair for double entendres.

SodaTV

The next two performances were covers of songs I didn’t know but Merry thought had a kind of 70s feel. The newly appeared screen was also put to hilarious effect when a purported love triangle between Jia Kai and two girls (Xiao Wei and Ah Fu in drag) was revealed to the world in faux documentary-style, though Jia Kai was later given the opportunity to show his feminine side by dressing up as Xiao Wei’s Ah Fu’s [thanks, double *e*!] “girlfriend”, “Lady Lulu”, and tittering when he obviously couldn’t think of anything else to say to the camera. The truth is I couldn’t follow a lot of the dialogue and still found it funny, and it was a refreshing break from some of the more intense brackets of songs.

The next track was another older song of a more Teresa Teng (邓丽君) ilk that was an obvious crowd pleaser, then the band finally reverted to their own material with 无眠 (No Sleep), Sodagreen’s first song in Taiwanese. I don’t pretend to know anything about the language, but neither Merry nor I were willing to vouch for the accuracy of Qing Feng’s pronunciation. It’s a very poignant song though, and a nice thing to have, six albums and five singles into the band’s career.

Next was 嬉戲之後 (After Playing) from Daylight of Spring, which was then followed by another cover I didn’t know. Somewhere around here there was further costume change, and I was pleased to see Qing Feng in his waistcoat, which at least made me feel like I didn’t bring my own to China for nothing. One of my other favourite tracks from Fever, 包围 (Surrounding) was next, and despite its unusually long instrumental introduction, I’ve really grown to like it after repeated listens to the album on my iPod, and it was even better live.

Continuing the new album sequence was 他夏了夏天 (Summer Summer), which is a great summery track, followed by 彼得与狼 (Peter and a Wolf), which was when Ah Gong finally downed his viola and got up to dance. You can’t be a real sodafan without at least getting some kind of kick out of Ah Gong’s hilarious dance moves (and the more unpractised the better), and this song might as well have been written for him to show his stuff. Who knows? It probably was.

Then came the musical highlight of the night for me: 小宇宙 (Little Universe), one of my five favourite Sodagreen songs (three of which I’m happy to report were performed, with 城市 and 游乐 missing the cut). But there was something about Little Universe that finally made me let go: I jumped up and down, yelled the chorus with everyone else and got a kick out of the requisite audience la-ing in the last verse that I’ve always enjoyed listening to on the live Taipei Arena version.

Little Universe was followed by Little Love Song (小情歌), which everybody seems to love except me (not that I don’t not like it, I just don’t think it’s their best song), which was followed by 近未来 (Near Future), the last track of the new album.

The second last song of the main concert was 频率 (Frequency), Merry’s ringtone, and I was pleased to see the band is still playing the live version where Qing Feng sings extraordinarily high at the end, and though I didn’t think it was possible, even higher on the night. The concert was rounded off, aptly enough, by Fever (狂热), the eponymous track of the new album and my ringtone. And though I genuinely do like the song, and I can see why it’s their leading single, I’ve always found the chorus a little disappointing after such a promising opening verse. I don’t know, I just feel like it doesn’t pack quite enough punch. Not that I was thinking about this during the show, which ended in a great burst of confetti and glowstick pumping.

Of course, this was a Sodagreen concert, so that wasn’t the end. After a longish period of blackness in which we all chanted “苏打绿” erratically (Merry gave “Sodagreen” a try but we both agreed it didn’t quite work), the band reappeared in comfy-looking t-shirts for the encore. Qing Feng also used the slight break in momentum to give a short speech, and revealed he was actually a bit under the weather (as is everyone it seems, and I had noticed him looking a bit listless on the big screens at the start of the concert). He also brought out his sheet of Academy Award-style thank yous, and told the crowd that if we listened quietly enough he’d sing more encores (ah, the boy is priceless).

Unfortunately I’ve forgotten what the first encore actually was, and I can’t read my notes (which had become a bit scrawled by then), so someone with a better journalistic sense will have to step in here. The next encore though was the instantly recognisable 蓝眼睛 (Blue Eyes), which Qing Feng originally sang as a duet with Angela Zhang (张韶涵), though he usually does an admirable solo job during live shows.

In the same pop princess vein, the next song was 带我走 (Take Me Away), which I admit I’d never heard of until Merry told me it was originally a Qing Feng composition for Rainie Yang (杨丞琳). As soon as I knew that I made sure to get my fill of Qing Feng’s version because it was clearly a power ballad, and if the incredibly painful Taiwanese drama that was Devil Beside You (惡魔在身邊) has taught me anything, it’s that Rainie Yang cannot sing. Sure enough, I listened to her version of Take Me Away this morning, and I’m afraid it really was a mailed-in vocal performance compared with Qing Feng’s much more heartfelt and powerful rendition — I really believed he wanted to be taken somewhere. Apparently some fangirls behind us did too, because in the next pause between songs they called out “青蜂, 带我走!” (“Qing Feng, take me with you!”)

Another kick I got out of the night was appearing on the big screens briefly during an audience scan, no doubt thanks to Merry’s conspicuously green wig and the fact that we were wide-eyed 外国人 (foreigners).

Ah Gong looks on as Qing Feng gives his all during an encore

The rest of the encores were 爱人动物 (Lover-Animal), 陪我歌唱 (Sing With Me, during which Merry and I sat down to rest our weary bones) and 相信 (I Believe), possibly my least favourite Sodagreen song of all time, though I will no doubt be labeled as a heretic for admitting it. There had been some discussion about which song to end on (with Qing Feng measuring the crowd’s approval by how loud we shouted), and 是我的海 (It’s My Sea) won narrowly after Merry and I gave up shouting 城市 (City). But It’s My Sea is one of those songs that just blows me away every time I listen to it, and hearing it live was the only time I was tempted to cry during the whole concert. It wasn’t the 9-minute masterpiece of the Taipei Arena version, but I thought it was the perfect way to end the concert.

Apparently Qing Feng didn’t think so though, confessing he wanted to finish on a more optimistic note (at least I think that’s what he said…), and so Qing Feng’s melodica appeared, and the band rounded off the three-hour show with 早点回家 (Return Home Early), a song which I’m sure every expat can identify with. It also has a strange habit of popping up on TV whenever I remember I should be emailing someone back home.

The song ended, Qing Feng thanked us sodafans repeatedly for our support, and told everyone to stay safe and “go home early”. Merry姐姐 took this to heart and helped me find a taxi outside the venue still crowded by vendors hoping to tempt us with unauthorised souvenirs.

The Driver

For the first time since I’ve been in Shanghai my taxi driver on the way back to the apartment wanted to talk. He was curious as to what kind of event everyone had just been at, and then he began complaining about his killer work rotation — 6am to 2am the next day, though cab drivers get every second day to rest. I asked him some other questions about his work, but he clearly didn’t understand me and kept saying “对” (“right”). Not that I’m any less guilty of the same thing when someone says something I don’t understand but figure they want me to agree with them.

Epiphanies

I got home at a quarter past eleven and decided the best way to well and truly knock myself out was to read a couple chapters of Michele Roberts’ Daughters of the House. It didn’t work, of course, I was too high off the night and suddenly had a clearer idea of what I wanted out of my life. Merry has brilliant Chinese, and if there’s ever anything that spurs you on in learning a language in the long haul, it’s seeing other people from the same linguistic background as you succeed, because then you see there’s a good chance you might too.

I realised yesterday that it’s been a year since I last learnt Mandarin formally (in fact it’s been a year since I’ve been in a classroom), and while I still don’t intend to impulse-sign up for any language courses while I’m in China, I also know that’s no excuse to just keep drifting along adding one or two new words to a vocabulary list every day. It’s a good habit, but it’s not enough, and the next time I see Sodagreen live I am determined to be able to truly understand what they are saying, and not have taxi drivers let me down with a merciful “right”, but actually answer my questions on the way home through a brilliant and terrifying city.

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Update: After a cursory glance at Sodazine 6 today I realised all the songs on Fever do have official English titles, so I’ve made the corrections in the post. For the record I did manage to guess the names of two of the songs, but I still don’t have the official English names of any of the songs from Daylight of Spring, so if anyone has Sodazine 5 handy maybe they throw us some answers in the comments. Otherwise it’ll have to wait until I get back to Australia in February.

Update the Second: Merry has managed to track down the names of the songs Sodagreen covered during the concert in her complementary concert report. Check it out!

Editorial note: it seems only the first four Sodagreen albums have official English track titles so far, so the rest of the song name translations are credited to Merry, the Chinese Music Blog, or me. I’ve tried to be factually accurate in this post, but ultimately I was a bit too excited to record everything, so if you spot a mistake feel free to correct me in the comments :)

+Image credit for the publicity photo.