This is Not About Music.

Go ahead. Point to the indoor ice-skating rinks. Lavish praise upon the successful Olympic bid. Dry hump the glittering puddles of architectural vomit that Riken Yamamoto has sprinkled throughout our fair town.

For most of the post-adolescent, fist-pumping contingent of Beijing‘s expat community (in whose meticulously coifed ranks I stand coolly detached. In expensive pants.), the proof of China’s development lay not in these things, but in the fact that the Yeah Yeah Yeahs recently saw fit to grace the stage of the Modern Sky Music Festival in Haidian Park.

You open a factory and call your self a patriot. I stand in the drizzle and mud and pissing cold wet for Karen O’s gravelly, nonsensical lyrics and call myself a patriotard. This, I think, as a crowd of drunk Frenchmen start tribal-dancing between sets, is economic progress.  The Frenchmen pull out a harmonica, and I die a little. On the inside.

Let’s get one thing straight, you and I. I am not a music writer. In point of fact, I’m so sick of listening to the “inside scoop” of the Beijing underground rock scene that I spend my weekends wishing I was born a gay man with a penchant for Abba and a crush on Justin Timberlake.

 “To the pillory with your ‘indie rock music’!” I would lisp at the top of my lungs. “I’ve got DJ Mickey Zhang, and I can see his man-nipples through his spandex Tee!”

But no. The good lord cursed me with a heart that is thrilled by nothing less than grinding guitar chords and drummers with hair in their face. When you go out for Tsing Taos and peanuts, you get to listen to your friends bitch about fake Communism, mandatory employee Karaoke nights and ‘this one time, at English camp’. Not my friends. No. Oh no.

Dr. Chocolate: Hey, big news, I hear Hang on the Box is playing this weekend. …HAHAHA, just kidding.

Joe Gway: Actually, they’ve got a new album coming out on Pedantic Post-Neo-China Records next month – you gonna to review it?

Me: Hey, check out that chick’s butt. Look. Guys, look. It’s all low in the middle and bulgy on the sides. It’s like, the Olympic Stadium of butts.

Dr. Chocoloate: Like this city needs another Hang on the Box review. I was going to review the Hedgehog gig, but I couldn’t make up enough words to describe their music. Hey, Empty Floor, if I say, “soft thrashing pre-grunge fuzz pop”, do you think “Hedgehog”?

DJ Empty Floor: Hold on, I’m figuring out how to insert Joy Division, Band of Horses or Rebuilding the Right of Statues into this conversation. Otherwise, I’m boycotting.

Me: I need another drink. Guys. I will flash my tits for anyone who will buy me a drink. Anyone. Guys. Guys? 

Joe Gway: Boycotting what?

DJ Empty Floor: This conversation. This conversation, which is about Joy Division and Band of Horses.

Dr. Chocolate: No it’s not.

DJ Empty Floor: It is now.

Me: ARG!

Dr. Chocolate: I thought “ARG!” was coming out on Mike Pettis’ new label next year? You know the bassist is actually Iggy Pop’s grandfather’s ayi’s sister’s grand-nephew?

Me: I hate you.

And you thought China had no scene.