Hong Kong Ham

Saturday night was one of my favourite music outings in Hong Kong. It was my second visit to the Cattle Depot artists village in To Kwa Wan. Four great local indie bands were playing. Well, two great ones and two average-good ones. Oliver and The Pancakes fell into the latter category. My Little Airport and The Yours were definitely in the former.

I took photos of both the last two bands, but they didn’t turn out as good as the one above, which is a shot of the old apartment buildings that overlook the depot. My friends and I had bought some beers from across the road ($7 a can!) and drank them merrily inside the premises. I later pushed my way up to the front of the crowd by the outdoor stage and tried to (drunkenly) inject some energy into the motionless onlookers (Hongkongers can appear so outwardly dispassionate) by occasionally screaming like a girl and generally whooping and hollering. It didn’t work.

One line in particular from My Little Airport got me cheering: the male singer, in an ode to a female singer from a Beijing band he has a crush on, cooed: “I have to sing sha la la la la / Because I don’t sing Putonghua”. Too cute.

The Yours are fast becoming one of Hong Kong’s best bands. The two lynchpins — Jack and Nick — are now consummate performers, brimming with punky attitude. Buckets of cool, and a ‘Fuck you, I’m going to keep playing this music even if you won’t dance’ style. It’s an audacious brand of class that most Hong Kong bands are too timid to touch. They’re doing their own thing and one day soon the audience is going to grow up and like it. A lot.