Reporter | Liu Yanqiu
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<h3>rechristen</h3>
It's a game and the game is always brutal. In the 7th issue of iQiyi's "Summer of the Band" "Goddess Joining Competition", the tour group and Zhou Jieqiong cooperated to perform "Weekend Toys". After this game, they became the last place on the field.
The song is the urban surf style that the tour group likes, and they also designed a cheerleading session, and the lead singer Kong Yicia wore a pink suit and danced with Zhou Jieqiong with an uncoordinated limb. In the eyes of his friends, Kong Yicia is an introverted person, "I didn't expect to see his self-indulgent performance on this stage," one of his friends told me.
But the performance, which wanted to "break out of the safe zone," received two very different reviews. Vice China editor-in-chief Liu Yangzi questioned the tour group's performances as a band creation. Da Zhang Wei liked this performance, and he also knew why the score was so low, "I think this is a pop song, teachers must listen to the attitude."
One afternoon in July, on the first working day after the recording, talking about the experience of the competition, Kong Yicia said that he had learned a lot from his experience. On the one hand, the program team assigned tasks to each band in a short period of time, and needed to come up with works quickly, which was a high pressure that the band had not experienced before. On the other hand, making music with the state of the game will have a very different mentality, and they have learned what methods to use to win the game during the game. But he also wondered, does this really make sense? Is this really the music we want to present?
"Maybe you can win a game at the moment, but others will feel your sincerity through this work." If you're not sincere, there's no point in winning that game. ”
Two months before receiving the invitation to "Summer of the Band", the lead singer of the band changed his name from Kong Yang to Kong Yicia. "Kong Yang is like a larva waiting for feathering yesterday, I sealed him today," Kong Yicia explained on Weibo about the name change. It was September 2018.
The impetus for the name change came from the fact that the band has been tepid for 14 years since its establishment, but the 35-year-old lead singer is not ready to accept his ordinariness for the time being, he wants to change his life. Kong Yicia believes that there will be some connection between a person's name and his growth trajectory.
"Anyone who changes his name is not for others, but because he has requirements for himself, so that he can do better." Kong Yicia explained softly word by word.
After that, the tour group received an offer to record "Summer of the Band". This is the first time they have participated in a variety show with a competition nature. In the first round of the 10-band qualifying round, the tour group performed the work "The Song of the Dead", which immediately came out with a high number of votes of 148 votes.
But "The Song Of The Lost" was not their first choice, and keyboardist Wei Wei even felt that the song was "too safe". He once ridiculed "The Song of the Dead", "The lyrics are plain and ordinary, the melody is popular and boring, and it cannot be on the list and cannot be on the Spring Festival Gala."
In the end, "The Song of the Dead" was chosen because of its special significance. You may not have noticed that on the day of the performance, Wei Wei pointed upwards during the interlude. He used this small gesture to express a kind of nostalgia - three of the four members of the tour group were from Liuzhou, Guangxi, and in the more than ten years of leaving their hometowns, the elderly in Liuzhou passed away one after another. They wanted to use the song to tell their families, "These kids are very angry and not fooled."
In any case, for the 14-year-old tour group, participating in "Summer of the Band" is an important thing. As they wrote on Weibo, they sang a lot of music festivals and sang a lot of livehouses, but this "Lost Song" didn't have much of a chance to be sung to a lot of people in front of the screen.
<h3>Not a question worth mentioning</h3>
On this day when the temperature in Beijing was close to 40 degrees, I met the tour group at the Laifu Clay Studio. When the taxi passed, the driver stopped at the Songyuli Market near the west gate of Beigong University and then lost his way. I imagined that the studio with the western name should be in at least a residential building, but the reality seemed a little more crude — turning in from a place on the side of the road with no obvious entrance in sight, the first small bungalow they saw was the place where they worked and rehearsed after operating independently in 2014.
The half-open bronze doors are printed with the English "THE LIFE JOURNEY" of Rifle glue clay, the interior walls are painted bright yellow, and the limited floor space has been filled by several large suitcases. Further inside was the rehearsal room, where we sat and talked when a fly flew in front of me from time to time.
Since "Summer of the Band" began to brush the screen in my circle of friends, the middle-aged narrative of the band's suffering has also emerged, and in this variety show, the rock musicians who had previously hovered outside the public's attention presented a chicken feather in their lives.
Kong Yicia didn't know what a midlife crisis was, he just felt that people would encounter some bottlenecks or psychological problems at every stage. He appreciates the state of some people around him, feeling that they have entered what ordinary people call middle age, but they are also actively seeking change, "the kind of change that makes themselves comfortable, rather than going with the flow."
Overall, the difficulties faced by the tour group are no different from those of you and me in the ups and downs of the city, and even the longings and disillusionments are no different. These problems can be specific to the house, the traffic, the children's schooling..." In fact, it is a kind of problem that is not worth mentioning, except that we can express the bitterness in the form of music, but it seems that more people cannot find an outlet for release. ”
In most cases, the tour group chooses to fill the world's regrets with music. In the latest album "Sense +", in addition to the two songs of "The End of the Day" and "Machine without Instruction Manual" describing the state of life in Beijing, the tour group presents more unrealistic romance and fantasy. "We wanted to use a bigger space to accommodate things, so we created a greater sense of space by changing the timbre of the drums and weakening the tone of the guitar." Kong Yicia explained the musical concept of this album in this way.
The arrangement was done over ten days in Phuket. During that time, Wei Wei would make breakfast for everyone, recording from the afternoon until late at night, after which they would gather by the pool to watch the stars and chat. Play music, drink a little wine, sometimes when someone puts a song in particular, they will raise a glass and look at the stars in the sky. The stars are particularly transparent, and the pool reflects the starry sky, Kong Yicia recalled, "the so-called sense of space comes from this combination of heaven, earth and people."
At least on this album, they don't want to be too directly connected to their current lives. They avoid the conflicts and pains of the present, and want to convey the "beautiful things that may happen in the future." The tour group seemed to return to the early impression of them, the melody of the band with water vapor.
<h3>Teenagers with walls</h3>
The story of the tour group still has to start with a few Liuzhou teenagers.
Liuzhou is an important industrial town in Guangxi, the sky is always gray, in the summer heavy rain, often water. Years later, they wrote a poem for their hometown, "Liujiang", which read, "There are water ghosts in the river at night, and there are children's madness on the dock."
Kong Yicia's parents bought him pianos and electronic keyboards since he was a child. In the summer vacation of junior high school, Kong Yicia began to try to write songs with his cousin Wei Wei at home, once the family amplifier was broken, they were worried about changing the megaphone, just in the introduction of friends to meet the current guitarist Huang Zijun.
Zijun still remembers that Kong Yicia sang the Flower Band's "Still" in a tone with a Liuzhou accent. "In that era, if you want to cover Hua'er's songs, you must also sing like Zhang Wei", Zijun listened to Kong Yicia's accent and thought that these brothers were crazy.
In Kong Yicia's eyes, the Zijun family has a rehearsal room that is 5 times larger than The Rifle Glue, and has everything - drums, speakers, amplifiers, and a computer that can access the Internet. He and Wei Wei often went to Zijun's house to play, and several boys were idle together, introducing each other's favorite music, and then they invited Zijun to join, write songs and rehearse together.
The sixteen-year-old didn't think he had much musical talent, but he felt that he could use only a few chords to express what he wanted to say through the melody. Usually rehearsed together, everyone will have some unexpected notes in the process of practice, and slowly the earliest creation will be formed. At that time, there were no mobile phones and other equipment, so they had to wash off the original tapes and record their voices with a tape recorder.
Teenagers are not ignorant of the taste of sorrow.
Adolescence seemed naturally imbued with the forces of resistance to the world, and they listened to Pink Floyd's album The Wall of Mystery, an autobiographical album that documented the injustices they received at school as children. Kong Yicia, who is full of resistance to restraint and discipline, also tries to use music as an outlet to relieve his inner discomfort. Their first collective song was called "Sleep," which was slowly developed by several people through a small riff after rehearsing until it was dark.
The band that had the biggest impact on them was beatles. "The songs they write, the way they make music, their innovations in music technology, and their outfits, their looks, the words they say, all have a deep and far-reaching impact on us." Wei Wei almost blurted out. Out of admiration for the Beatles, they also named their band The Shadows at one point, writing the song "My Shadow" with four chords.
In domestic bands, they like sobriety and new pants. The rock circle of that era was almost all heavy metal bands like the Tang Dynasty and the Black Panther, and suddenly there was a wave of bands with clear singing voices and novel arrangements, which surprised the Liuzhou teenagers and quickly classified themselves and them as "an era". They read Modern Sky magazine every day to learn how these bands are creating and thinking, and a magazine can often turn bad.
This air influence later made them sign a label founded by Shen Lihui, the lead singer of the sober band, modern sky without much hesitation.
<h3>Between romance and reality</h3>
In 2005, Wei Wei had plans to study music in Beijing, so he asked Kong Yicia if he wanted to go to Beijing together. The two brothers contacted each family with a batch of demos made at that time to see if any company was willing to sign a contract. They visited a lot of record companies and pretended to be food deliveries and mixed into modern sky. They handed the sample to Shen Lihui, the founder of Modern Sky, and after Shen Lihui listened to it, he thought the music was very interesting, so they left their contact information. "At that time, I went to chat with Shen Lihui, and two children came in, saying that they were from Liuzhou, Guangxi, and when I listened, I thought this was the Chinese Beatles." Wang Shuo, the bad guy's FM manager, later recalled.
This year, Kong Yicia, Wei Wei and Huang Zijun came to Beijing from Liuzhou. But when the teenagers of Liuzhou entered a big city with different customs and customs, they soon encountered the initial confusion. They just wanted to make a record, but it took three years for the record to be released. Most of the works on the first album, "Rifle Glue Clay", were created during the Liuzhou period, and compared with most rock bands in Beijing at that time, their temperament was also a bit out of place.
"At that time, there was no small fresh style, and everyone thought it was something, which was particularly weak," Wei recalled, adding that at that time, the bands in Beijing were basically only new pants and convenience stores that could accept them, and they signed the same company, and they often performed with tour groups like their little brothers.
The addition of drummer Xu Biao is an important thing. In the expression of Kong Yicia, "Southerners are more gentle, and after knowing Xu Biao, they began to add a lot of tough temperament." ”
In 2007, the tour group tried at least five drummers, none of which were perfectly matched. After the release of its first record in 2008, the tour group began a nationwide tour, with Xu Biao as the drummer on the tour. They feel that although Xu Biao, a Beijinger, has a different accent and cultural background, he is very compatible in personality.
The tour was a month and a half, going around many cities, and true friendships were built during that time. On their first tour, they were particularly curious about everything, sleeping almost 4 to 5 hours a day, eating and drinking together at other times, and discussing things and getting to know each other after the show. After the tour, Xu Biao officially joined the tour group as a drummer.
Changes in life circumstances affect the subject matter and style of the tour group. When I first arrived in Beijing, I lived in a small villa built by local farmers in Shibalidian, with three rooms and a living room, 1,000 yuan a month. The first two albums carry the color of youth, after the north drift, the ups and downs of life, interpersonal changes began to add a heavy taste to their music.
The most emblematic of their musical style shift is the 2013 album So I Stopped Singing. At the beginning of 2013, member Xiao P proposed that he wanted to leave the team to return to his hometown in Liuzhou, and the reason given was that he could not see hope by making music, and he wanted to be an ordinary person with a serious job and a normal income.
There are entanglements, there are reluctance, emotions are complicated, after a short period of depression, they decided to use a new album to record the changes in their lives - the popularity of "So I No Longer Sing" is written about Xiao P leaving the team, "Little Dragon Man" depicts Zijun's feelings after having a child, "Bye Bye" expresses the sudden explosion of real estate after the Olympic Games, and the confusion they face when they live a rental life.
They regained their strength from the music and came out of the first trough. In Kong Yicia's view, "So I Stop Singing" marks their transformation from a big boy who is bent on playing music to a man who needs to bear the weight of life.
Eight years after coming to Beijing, four people in their mid-30s began to realize that they could no longer be as obstinate as before, and that they had to balance life and music. "For example, if we only have three hours of rehearsal today, then we will first prepare at home, come to the rehearsal room and cover the basic things, and then add our own ideas after establishing a common chord and structure, and a work will be completed quickly." They began to believe that stability and experience helped in their creation, and they also had to improve the efficiency of their work.
Three years later, a second crisis came. In 2014, they and their agent closed the night to found the Rifle Glue Studio, began to develop independently, the contradictions caused by work problems accumulated over time, and in 2016, they were in a chaotic period for a whole year.
At the beginning of this year, the tour group launched a national theater tour, and the attendance rate of a performance can reach more than 60% when the attendance is good, and even less than half of the performance is not even half, and the invitation to perform is reduced, and they don't even know whether the band should exist or not. By the end of the year, only Kong Yicia and Xu Biao were still insisting.
The turning point came in the Spring Festival of 2017, when Wei Wei called and proposed to make another album. Several people reconvened in Beijing and recorded the current mood state, which is the album "Forever Will Be There". Re-writing songs, in rehearsal after rehearsal, they found the joy of making music that they had not seen for a long time.
The balance was broken and restored. Tour groups never seem to be afraid of bad emotions, and they have a magical ability to transform. "A lot of the songs on our first album sounded utopian, but in fact what we experienced was particularly dark, and it was in discouragement that we translated that note. Those good things are fantasies, but there is nothing. Kong Yicia said.
The changes are burned in their music. Change doesn't matter if it's good or bad, it just happens. But if you ask Wei Wei which period of creation he prefers, he will tell you very directly whether he prefers the songs he has written before.
"The songs written at that time were very realistic, and now many of the bands around you will also affect you, and you don't throw something as if it's not addictive." If the band isn't dry, the people below aren't hi, which confuses him.
If the competition factor is not taken into account at all, "Island" is the song they most want to sing on this stage, which is their collective favorite work. This song with an oceanic atmosphere is also the most representative of the musical aesthetic of the tour group.
"But 'The Song of the Dead' is also quite good, it is a window to know the tour group", they know that staying in this show as much as possible can make everyone willing to know them first. In Kong Yicia's view, the competition will be broadcast in more than a dozen episodes, but the band will have many live performances in the future, first enter an equal communication environment, build a bridge, everyone has exchanges, and may call in the second step.
Now, the tour group feels more confident. Can sing serious songs, can sing happy songs, can also adapt to entertainment variety shows, they can calmly accept these characteristics of their own.
On the stage of "Summer of the Band", they realized a lot of choreography ideas that had never been realized before. They want to be able to perform in more places, and they also want to do more performances.
One of their most memorable performances was the Strawberry Music Festival in 2013. After a few years of training, it was hard to mix to the second stage with lights, and everyone was very happy. But before Singing "So I Stop Singing," the lights on the stage suddenly went out. Kong Yicia was singing with his eyes closed, not knowing what was happening, when he opened his eyes, he saw a sea of stars under the stage, and the audience turned on the flashlight of their mobile phones and swayed with the rhythm of the music. "Particularly unreal, but it's right here. Together with Little P, we truly experienced one of the most fantastic shows. ”
It always has to be emotionally stimulating to write something great. Participating in "Summer of the Band" may be a new source of inspiration for the tour group. They say they plan to do another album this year, maybe 15 songs, maybe only 8 songs.
"I don't create for the sake of creating, I now have an energy in my body that needs to be released in music," Kong yicia said.