Day two of the 1234 Beach Rock concert was greeted by a gorgeous dose of sun, and intense, relentless wind blowing from the sea. Semi-ideal beach weather, I guess.
There was none of the compelled-to-watch-every-band tugging feeling any more, and sincerely, the concert just started building up early afternoon. Curious to see how a Chinese all-girl band sounded like, Happy Strings was the first band on stage to catch my attention:
Too many pages taken from Dolores O’Riordon’s vocal stylings manual, though.
And then there was Top Floor Circus. A few minutes earlier their performance, I found myself at a stageside cafteria, and witnessed to some of the band members dressing up as monk, Chinese ghost, and some-other clown, phantom hybrids. Though I already was thoroughly impressed by last night’s bands, and slightly disappointed by the morning’s offering, I figured this would at least be a band to photograph.
I was wrong.
Sample a Top Floor Circus show (bad angle, I know):
And some more, where they sing something about, uhm, Filipinos; I’d love to know what the heck it was about (another bad angle):
Then it was the time to be punky again. Angry Jerks’ singer gave off a Joe Strummer vibe, SMZB had a fantastic drummer, et cetera, et cetera:
Joyside was about a minute on stage when rain fell. My companions for two days -Che, Cris, and our charming, newfound friend Olivia- all went for shelter at the venue entrance/exit, and it was a collective decision to cap off the event, and head on over to the nearest bus stop to go home ahead of everyone.
Tired but thoroughly satisfied, we started wondering why the streets and houses on this side of Pudong looked so un-Shanghai. Olivia noted how it looked much like very rural Guangzhou, where her ancestors lived (she’s French, though), while us Filipinos noted how this was eerily similar to the narrow highways of Rizal and Laguna back home.
*More videos here, more photos here.
Go back to Part 1 of At The Shanghai 1234 Beach Rock Concert…