IT’S OVER 🙂

There is a huge grin on my face as I realise I can now justify unlimited introvert nights at home. 40/58 nights out must be a life-record for me. I stopped ordering alcohol at some point – one drink a night adds up over so many nights. I learned so much about Shanghai, about music, and about myself that I feel like I could write a whole book but instead I’ll summarise it into an article that people may actually read. After all who cares about what I learned because just like my life, wherever I go and whatever I do, everything always comes back to music. 

True, Tried, and Tested

Yuyintang, Cotton Club, Inferno, House of Blues & Jazz, Live Bar, Harley’s Underground, JZ Latino, Office Live Music Bar, Wooden Box Cafe: Verified and agreed upon for being awesome by all magazines in Shanghai. I second this. 

Unique

Movie Coffee: Just a chill spot for a date, or just to tune out. Tiny place in Fahuazhan road. There is also a movie playing with subtitles in English and Chinese, as well as nice snacks. Living room feel. 

Waima Road: Right next to the Bund, is this awesome, less crowded but equally cool road with many restaurants and opportunities to be close to the river without all the touristy noise. Even more cool is that sometimes some musicians will set up with the river and skyline as the backdrop. Perfect.

Karma: First impression is “this place is too small for any significant rockage to happen”. Then some dudes cramp together in a little space in the corner which is about 1/8th of the total space in the venue and proceed to blow your mind with the lead singer looking nothing like but sounding exactly like Bob Marley. Music on Thursdays only!

Tipsy Fiddler: Good for those who like drinking and music. It’s a pub. The music was decent but don’t think I can give it a fair assessment as it’s the last place I went to and was exhausted. I guess the music is good but it seems no one else is there for the music, which has been my pet peeve throughout this project. 

China Style

M-Box, TZ Livehouse, Full House, Somewhere, August Livehouse, Xianwaizhiyin Bar, Listen Livehouse: Quality varies greatly in these places as they tend to let amateurs try out their stuff but have had amazing nights at M-Box and August Livehouse. Unfortunately, it seems that whether the band is epic or not, eventually the local spots always degenerate into Cantonese Karaoke hour. While I appreciate the need to have audience participation, I wish they knew that there was one audience member who would stay the whole night to see them kill it without wanting any of the spotlight. Best one is August Livehouse because the band kills it, and you get to walk through this chillaxed street in Pudong. 

Lanqinhui Music Bar: Don’t recommend this place to anyone but I loved it. It’s new and kind of junky and grimy but not even grimy in the way that Harley’s is forced to look grimy as its appeal. It’s actually grimy and the owners are just drunk, dancing and so happy to own a music bar and the musicians aren’t great but love music and are just going for it. I can’t recommend this to anyone but it was my favourite place because there were no pretensions and the joy and passion for music was super authentic. Smoke everywhere, dark, and hard to find. This is my favourite place on the list – I wish I could live here.  

5 THINGS I LEARNED

1) Some people agree to hang out for music, and then proceed to talk about their new cat, and all kinds of other unimportant things. If I wanted to fill my brain with information irrelevant to me , I’d rather stay home on youtube. 

2) Sometimes Music Bar on a map can mean some shadyassed-competelyunrelatedtomusic-shit in reality. Sorry Sandie, Dan, Yixin, Nev, Wu – Overall I’d say you guys are right. Looking up a place on Baidu, or Dianping, or calling ahead and verifying, WILL save time and money. However, for every 6 fails, you do find something like Listen Livehouse or Lanqinhui Music Bar when you go off-road so while I wouldn’t invest this much time on “off-roading” ever again, I’m glad I did. 

3) 3 other people is my absolute limit for hanging out. As soon as the total people number gets to five, it doesn’t matter how epic the night could be,  the “Can I leave now??” instinct starts kicking in. 

4) If you don’t order alcohol, your drink WILL come in a bright-pink, knotted straw. Just letting you know what happens when you get juice or coffee. The hack is to order tea – you’ll enjoy the look on people’s face when you do that too. It says “Wait, you came here to get tea, really?” and my look responds to say “Don’t put it on the menu if you don’t mean it”. 

5) Yea sometimes you may be like “ooooh Shanghai, so much music” but music is just music, and I love  85% of it as long as its authentic self-expression and not someone trying to be what they are not.

Alright, I’m going to be at home for many nights now. Thanks for reading if you made it this far. Lived that Dream 🙂

Dhruv