REPTILE AND RETARD TOURED CHINA AND SENT US SOME PHOTOS
26.07.2010
In April 2010 Danish duo Reptile and Retard went to China on the longest tour a Danish band has ever been on in the massive country, playing everywhere from tiny punk venues to proper stages. After this long, half-nightmarish trip, riddled with police interference, sleeping on floors, eating suspicious-looking food and long days spent in a tiny van on sketchy highways–balanced out by lots of running around naked, swinging from ceilings, drinking pijos (Chinese for beer), turning crowds into moshpits and partying with Chinese rockers–they were appointed one of the top five live acts in all of China. (We tried to Google the accuracy of that last statement but failed to get any hits. Then again, combining Google and China is probably a bad idea at the moment.)
Anyhoo, Reptile and Retard sent us a bunch of nice-looking pictures from their trip and shared a few China-tour anecdotes with us.
Whether we were going to China or not was in the hands of Eyjafjallajökull and the ash cloud it spawned in the European airspace. We waited at the airport for 10 hours and were close to going back home, when the sky miraculously cleared up. Call it destiny or not, but all air traffic had been cancelled for two weeks prior to our departure, and the airspace closed again the following day, but by then we were long gone.
During the World Expo in Shanghai the police closed down random bars and clubs to demonstrate their power. We performed at a trashy punk-venue called Yu Yin Tang and, expectedly, the police turned up to close down the place, finding it too rowdy. We were a bit scared the moment they walked in but, as a reflex, our singer, Mads, just kept going. The crowd followed him and it ended up being one of our best shows, there was so much energy in the air. The cops eventually left.
When we played the Zebra Festival in Chengdu, Mads began to climb the stage scaffolding. Just as he was about to dive in to the 10,000-people crowd, an army of armed Chinese soldiers showed up, ready to force him back onto the stage.
Mads was constantly offered drugs, much to the other crew members’ confusion. After a few days we asked why people chose to approach him with drugs, and no one else. A friendly but insisting drug dealer explained that both Jim Morrison and Bob Dylan are still current influences in China, being a closed country with little access to new music. Because of Mads’ wild hair they figured he was down with all the 70s stuff.
Words by Kristoffer Dahy Ernst
Photos by Rasmus Weng Karlsen
