Thanks to kabukiboy who pointed us to the mp3 and site on the ricecooker forum board, we have today an introduction of sorts to the history of rock music in China. Please do not expect anything raw, crusty, punk rock etc. This is a bunch of songs of the early pioneers, mostly slow rock and one rather thrashy power metal. We’ll get to the more cutting edge and uncommercial stuff soon enough!

note: this is all lifted from the website: rockinchina.com. I decided to stream this directly from ricecooker since the original source is too big and heavy, this makes the original stream choppy. By the way there’s a download link down there, so you can have a better listen with bigger bitrate.

Featured Artists:

Overload | Cui Jian | Tang Dynasty | Black Panther

Accompanying Notes:

Today’s show (the very first of Rock in China) focusses around the historical roots of Chinese rock music.

First song of the show is Overload with their song “1999″ of their first record “Overload”. Formed in 1992, the band grew famouse instantly as being China’s first thrash metal band with their even more popular and famous singer Gao Qi.

However as rock started in the 80s in China, the man behind it all is called Cui Jian, born 1961. With more than 6 albums in Mainland China and various other countries his most famous song “I have nothing” not only became the hymn of new generation, but also transferred as an idiom into Simplified spoken Chinese. As he performed the song in 1986 everything changed: China became rock!

One of the bands that formed afterwards had been Tang Dynasty, the very first Chinese metal band, that combined both traditional Chinese music and rock / heavy guitar music.

With songs such as “A dream returns to Tang Dynasty” they combine elements of one of China’s most influentual dynasties with the reality of today. Shortly after 1989 the band split, yet came together in a different line-up. Still playing today, they had been recently featured in issue 18 of the Painkiller Heavy Music Magazine.

Last band of the show is called Black Panther, the band that also once Dou Wei belonged to. Playing soft rock and love songs with guitar music, they pushed a whole generation into the new era of music and started with other bands the Pop Rock genre in China. Numerous of their songs are playing in China’s KTV rooms with scenes of ’80s and ’70s landscape videos. A must to listen to, a must to have heard at least once.

Please leave your comments at the rockinchina.com/forum/

For more information about the specific bands, please check out rockinchina.com/chaile.org wiki database

More importantly go to rockinchina.com

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