The Hairy Wang Band surpassed itself last night at the Shangri-la Hotel! There was another open mic night in the hotel’s F2 bar. This time, we were the only performers, so we had over an hour to do whatever we liked. I have to say, we were a lot better this time compared to the first time. We gelled more. Phil and I didn’t mess up the songs and I was more comfortable playing along with a drummer. Phil and I played some stuff solo and together, and also the guy from whose name our band’s name was derived (Harry Wang) did a few tunes. Harry has a great voice.

Alas, the Hairy Wang band will be down an important member. Phil headed off today: first on his travels and then he’s heading back home for good.

It’s weird sometimes that at the end of something, you always meet some interesting or cool people, and alas it is too late! If you knew them at the beginning, life would have been that bit more interesting. The drummer (who I’d met at the previous open mic night) is unusual among Chinese people. He’s mad into British music. Man, he probably knows more about it than I do! He seemed to know every band we could throw at him.

Later we went to Dave’s bar and sat outside with a few beers and played a few tunes. The drummer dude played guitar too, and he even knew that old nordie classic Teenage Kicks by The Undertones! ‘Twas some craic, I tell ya!

Here’s a pic of last night’s Hairy Wang Band line-up*


Left to right: me (guitar, vocals), Philip (guitar, vocals), Jason (drums) and Harry Wang (guitar, vocals).

* If you live in the Chinese mainland, you probably can’t see that picture, cos our friends in the government have seen fit to block flickr.com. However, you can get around this by installing Firefox (you should be using Firefox anyway) and using the Access Flickr extension.