Caution!

Yamaha has recalled 20,000 pianos due to a problem with the pedal sticking. This causes pianists to play faster than they normally would, resulting in a number of accidentals with several near misses reported in the carpal tunnel.

The sticky pedal also makes it harder to come to a full stop at the end of a piece, which makes it risky for audiences and professional reputations alike.

Despite many accidentals, there have fortunately been no reported deafs. Currently sales are flat and analysts are waiting to see if current volumes will be sustained or dampened.

Experts suggest that Yamaha's response will be the key.

Criticism of the company has been sharp, and Congress is planning hearings to find out when Yamaha first learned about the treble.

April Fools!

Maybe Mars bands at SXSW!!

Maybe Mars dispatched the cream of its crop to the one of the most famous music festival in the world, SXSW (South by Southwest). Its troops include PK14, Carsick Cars, White, Xiao He, AV Okubo, and Snapline. They played from March 11 to March 20th in Austin, Texas, pulling off successful shows. In fact SPIN magazine named PK14 one of 50 bands to watch, and a reporter from the Washington Post named Carsick Cars as his favorite band of all of SXSW. (Also, an interview with White). The bands have now disembarked on a "Chinese Invasion Tour" of the West Coast. Kudos to China Music Radar for tracking down the bands!

Here are some footages of their performances at SXSW:

Carsick Cars:

AV Okubo:

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On a (somewhat) unrelated note, here's some commentary by Ziyo frontwomen Helen on the Chinese rock scene:

Crock Weekly 6: Snapline

With a challenge to "dance again on life's snapline," Snapline burst out of the chaos of the Chinese rock scene with their first album "Party is Over, Porno Star." While other bands fed on the decaying bodice of Britpop, the band "danced" on the Snapline of avant garde music and combined a unique mixture of colorless but urgent vocal, funky bassline, and eccentric guitar riffs with a steady pulse from the drum machine and a skillful use of mixer into a powerful marijuana of industrial rock. The messages uttered by the cold voice (and its artificial echoes) describe morbid tales of urban discontent. For example, in "Single Beat" the narrator has tied up someone, who is desperately asking for release; he refuses and rather "watches [the] bleeding." Perhaps this song embodies an enmity toward authority by taking its own point of view in its restricting, as if with a "rope," the people's freedoms and watching them "bleed" out their rebel spirit. But probably more so this song attempts to break free of the repression of expression -- the psychological and the social phenomenon more than the political oppression -- associated with the new generations of materialistic youngsters. In order to test the boundaries of feeling and conscience, the narrator tortures somebody else; he waits to see if the "trembling" and "bleeding" of the victim invoke anything in him. The vocal starts calm and lax, paralleling the initial repression. Then it grows louder and louder, perhaps trying to artificially create the sense of urgency and terror that should permeate the situation. But "it never happened." The sound then becomes hallucinogenic as an echo along with a backup of the vocal is added and the guitar moves up an octave and a background noise is introduced. The song then ends somewhat abruptly in middle of a pattern, and the repression seems to have triumphed.

Likewise in other songs, Snapline explores the boundary between feeling and unfeeling. The same theme appeared at the center of psychedelic rock in the late 1960s on the foreground of the Vietnam War, luxurious, careless spending, the wide inequity between classes and races, and internal suspicion in the US. Sound familiar, doesn't it? China has now one of the highest gaps between the rich and the poor. Huge patches of land used for subsistence scatter throughout the country surrounding "beacons" of urbanization and cosmopolitan culture, which has increasingly centralized around "making money to make luxury." The "establishment" -- the oligarchical government, the "military-industrial" complex that swallows money at a rate second only to that of the US, the overwhelming "moneymaking" culture, and the "mindless pleasure" that is Chinese pop -- stifles the political, social, and psychological freedoms of the new generation. While 40 years ago in the US the counterculture movement upheaved the entire system, we now have the Chinese rock movement, headed by the likes of Snapline, simmering with steam under the surface -- the surface will soon crack with heat, and then the wakeup call is due!

Let the "Holy Comments" feed us!

Crock Weekly 5

In the face of the economic meltdown, the Sino-US relationship seems to have deteriorated despite Obama's visit to China last year. At the center of the controversy are the China's artificial depreciation of the renminbi, US's sale of arms to Taiwan, and the Sino-Tibet-US triangle. Beneath the surface, however, may lie the US's jealousy and agitation at China's robust growth and China's feeling of entitlement to its "Peaceful Rise" -- a feeling probably similar to how USSR felt during the Great Depression.

But as politics threatens the system of Chimerica, music attempts to tie it together with the rest of the world. Modern Sky, one of the largest Indie music labels in China, undertook and finished the herculean effort, Sing for China album with the tagline "Fight AIDS with art." The album comprises of numerous artists around the world including the famous Yoko Ono, American electronic duo Ratatat, Australian indie pop band I Heart Hiroshima, Japanese "Pajama-Pop" act Lullatone, British band Fonda 500, and of course the Chinese bands under the Modern Sky banner, among many others. The album is gigantic, spanning 44 tracks and 3 hours of listening, mirroring the international care toward the welfare of the AIDS-ravaged Chinese orphans and the increasingly cosmopolitan culture of China.

Here is a small selection of pieces from the album.

Crock Weekly 4

Today we'll look at the band Twisted Machine, originally formed by Wang Xiao Ou as lead singer, Li Pei as guitarist, Yang Lei as bassist, and Xi Ye as drummer. The band claims heavy influence from the American Nu Metal group Rage Against the Machines, hence its name. It started out as a nu metal band with a very hip-hop-like vocal, a bass-focused metal accompaniment, and lyrics of blunt attacks on social customs - not unlike RAtM itself - with their debuting album Twisted Machine.

Soon, however, the lead singer left, and a new one, Liang Liang, was recruited. This move pushed the band toward a heavier sound and slowly onto the edge of metalcore -- though it still kept its nu-metal roots -- with the next album Return to the Underground.

In their next work Being appeared a piece that surprised everyone: an alternative metal piece, :Mirror," that starts calm but culminates into the spilling of feelings. The theme suddenly turned introspective as the band ponders the value of Being, ambivalently longing for the past but also looking toward the future.

Their most recent album XXX, released just around the turn of year 2009 into 2010, returned to their more heavy sounds.

Over the years, TM has evolved into one of China's most famous rock bands. Its sound continues to attract more and more followers in Asia and garner support and momentum to the Chinese Rock Movement.

Crock Weekly 3

Today we'll listen to 3 pieces, "Goodbye," "Do You Wanna Feel," and "Cherish," by the band The New Perfume. The band has a pretty prominent Britpop style, both musically and lyrically as they yearn for the past.

The bandmates are actually very good students in college, but they still consider themselves on a path to become musicians and nothing else. This illustrates that Chinese rock in its origin is really elitist even though its message is universal. (In general Chinese rock artists consider themselves a tier higher than the pop artists, whose works are often described as "mindless pleasure")