In his previous life, Liang Liang and his band also performed in Harbin, although that was in 2001.
That period was the heyday of Harbin rock music, and the Magic Rhythm Music Festival was held for five consecutive years, with two to three thousand audience members at each performance.
He knew exactly who the important figures in Harbin's rock scene were.
Sitting opposite Liang Liang was a middle-aged man in his forties with long hair.
This person is Wei Fengju, and he was among the first people in Harbin to play rock music.
It's no exaggeration to call him the founder of Harbin rock.
In terms of playing rock music, he started many years earlier than Liang Liang.
He seems to have started getting into rock music in the mid-to-late 1980s, when he was already in his thirties.
Ten years ago, Wei Fengju was the guitarist for the Harbin Sun Island Orchestra, but later switched to bass.
In this respect, he is the same as Liang Liang.
After being exposed to rock music, he became fascinated with it and gradually embarked on the path of rock music.
"Well, to put it simply, Harbin doesn't have any dedicated rock bands right now. Don't laugh at me, but a few years ago when rock music first started appearing in Harbin, due to the lack of full scores, the bands played rather haphazardly. They played different pieces separately, without any real chemistry, like a complete mess. I searched all over Hainan for sheet music and brought it back to Harbin. I remember bringing back about four hundred full scores and simplified scores, including both rock and other pieces. This greatly improved the playing level of the bands in Harbin."
When Wei Fengju said this, there was an undisguised pride in his eyes.
What is the current environment for rock music in Harbin?
"It seems like there haven't been any changes this year, but there is one thing I find quite interesting: many newly rich people have appeared in Harbin's nightclubs, music restaurants, and dance halls. They spend lavishly, and top singers are getting more than 200 yuan a day for their performances. I think this is a good phenomenon and I hope it will drive the development of rock music."
The presence of wealthy patrons naturally stimulates the entertainment industry, a situation Liang Liang experienced firsthand two years ago.
However, these factors can only provide temporary stimulation, not lasting impact.
The decline of rock and roll in the previous life was due to many factors. The withdrawal of record companies such as Rolling Stones and Earth, which initially supported rock bands, was tantamount to cutting off the lifeline of rock and roll.
Another issue is that the rock bands themselves are not up to par, getting into all sorts of messy things, and venturing into areas they shouldn't have.
If you want rock music to be supported by government departments, you have to make changes yourself. Do you expect the country to change for you?
Don't be clueless about what you're supposed to do!
Liang Liang is making this kind of change, although it will also be met with a lot of criticism.
It's possible that some people will say he's a mouthpiece for the government, or a proponent of revolutionary rock and roll.
He might even be labeled with terms like "lackey" or "lackey."
“I don’t think your Blue Shark band is playing rock, or rather, not pure rock,” a local youth in the audience questioned the Blue Shark band.
"Oh! Why do you say we're not pure rock?" Liang Liang asked with a smile.
At this time last year, when someone asked about the nature of the Blue Shark band, Liang Liang would deny that the Blue Shark band belonged to the rock band category.
However, after the Hong Kong Coliseum concert, he stopped mentioning the concept that Blue Shark was not a rock band, and instead admitted that Blue Shark was indeed a rock band.
After his Hong Kong Coliseum concert, he realized that the Chinese music scene should not be dominated by Hong Kong and Taiwan pop songs that specifically depict love and romance.
The small joys promoted by a certain island should absolutely not become the mainstream values of karaoke bars.
This is a brainwashing tactic, or more simply, cultural infiltration.
If a person is immersed in a narrow worldview of "you love me, I love him, and he loves you" every day, their IQ will definitely decline.
With this understanding, it is natural to resist the intrusion of popular songs.
To resist this cultural infiltration, relying on folk songs and bel canto is like hoping for a windfall.
Looking across the country, only rock music can carry this banner.
Liang Liang does not consider himself a standard-bearer in resisting this cultural infiltration, but he openly admits that rock music has also contributed to this resistance.
"Rock music should have a rock spirit and cannot succumb to pop music. Your songs have too many pop music elements."
"Young man! What you said may have a point, but some things are not fixed in meaning. People cannot stick to the rules and must be flexible. Like the rock and roll spirit you just asked about, may I ask: what is the rock and roll spirit?"
Liang Liang's question left the young man speechless for a long time.
"Can't quite put it into words, can you? Rock and roll is just a term, or rather, a genre of music. It's not that profound! It doesn't have any spirit. Having long hair, holding a guitar, and making a metal gesture doesn't necessarily make you sophisticated. There are plenty of people who play rock and roll but also smoke marijuana or play with fruit juice. Is that the spirit of rock and roll? Isn't that garbage? Don't look at what foreigners sing or how they sing. Although they invented rock and roll, don't think they are saints. In my eyes, many of the bands you consider classics are actually worse than garbage in terms of character and conduct."
The scum in the foreign rock scene could go on for a month and still not be finished. They're all things that only beasts would do. What kind of rock spirit is that?
Rock and roll itself was created by dark-skinned Americans; what good spirit can you expect from them?
Bullshit!
"Don't worry about the spirit of rock and roll, and don't think that I'm inferior just because I don't criticize the darkness in society. Why not try to discover and praise the shining things in society! Listen to me, if you keep staring at the dark things, your heart will be full of darkness. If you go to find those shining things, your heart will be full of sunshine over time."
If you spend all your time searching for garbage dumps and trash, who else but you will get depression?
Liang Liang didn't really care whether the few people in the Harbin rock music scene present would listen to him; it was unrealistic to expect them to change their minds with just a few words.
Sometimes you have to force them to change their mindset.
For example, Liang Liang was very selective when choosing songs for the band he was selecting for the event. If he couldn't find any wholesome and uplifting songs, he would only choose some neutral songs that were neither left nor right.
The Harbin performance will be held on September 1st at the Eighth District Stadium.
This stadium, whose history dates back to the 1930s, was the largest stadium in Harbin at the time.
It was renovated in the 1970s, and the stands are all made of wood, which can accommodate more than 24,000 spectators.
A week before the performance, advertisements bombarded newspapers, magazines, and television, and on the day of the performance, the stadium was packed.
This shows that rock music has a strong mass base in Harbin.
What Liang Liang didn't know was that Xu Wei's album had already been released in Lianwan City on the morning of September 1st.
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