Respawn Entertainment: Days of Glory

Chapter 662: Mr. Bian Erlang’s Big Dream

Of course, Bian Lang had no way of knowing what was happening on the Internet. After he finished his “performance”, he returned to the stage and said directly: “The last song is ‘One Hundred Thousand Hippies’!”

After the song title was announced, the fans in the audience had no time to cheer for being a new song before all the lights on the stage dimmed, not even the one illuminating Bian Lang!

And it was on this dark stage that a song with a hint of electricity began to be heard: "Mr. Bian Erlang, who was in a big dream, opened the window and raised the telescope. What he saw was a burst of thick smoke..."

With the single rhythm guitar accompaniment, it feels a bit monotonous, but this is only relative. Facing Bian Lang who even made fun of his own name, everyone intuitively feels that this song must be extraordinary!
This is indeed the case. After Bian Lang had the idea of ​​​​moving Wan Qing's song, he paid close attention to every little detail.

After all, the two most famous perfectionists in the circle are Ou Bo and Dong Erqian.

Wan Qing is the creator of a masterpiece. If there is any mistake in their songs, the performance will not have the same flavor!

So from the beginning of the rehearsal, Bian Lang basically followed the original live performance that he had seen on the original Earth.

"There is no way forward, and no way back..."

As the word "路" in "归途" fell, the lights on the stage lit up, and the drumstick in Dayong's hand rose and fell. After a festivity, the sound of the trumpet of the wheel began to fill the entire venue.

The trumpet instrument has a special meaning to the two bands in Chinese rock bands.

One is Diu Huoche and the other is Wan Qing.

Wan Qing is a rock band that truly integrates Chinese and Western music, because they are a Chinese rock band that truly uses the traditional Chinese pentatonic scale of Gong, Shang, Jiao, Zheng, and Yu to Western instruments such as violin and trumpet.

As for the band's eponymous album "Universal Youth Hostel", in the list of "Top 1989 Chinese Rock Albums (2019~)" selected by the Earth Rock Paradise, Wan Qing's album tied for first place with Cui Jian's "Rock on the New Long March", and each received full marks.

In the ten years before the release of Wan Qing's self-titled album, Chinese rock fell into the vicious circle of underground rock. Due to the impact of pirated music on the Internet, Chinese rock had "no market, no audience, and no money". The barren soil made Chinese bands in that decade fall into the so-called "underground spirit" of self-entertainment.

Performing in front of dozens or even single-digit audiences in an underground bar, going out for a BBQ and then rushing back to the rental house in the basement at the urban-rural fringe of the city of BJ.

What Chinese bands advocated during the underground rock era was "agitated live performances, explosive sounds, and forced low-fidelity sound quality..."

No one cares how "good" the music is in an underground bar with serious retrogression, and it is impossible to produce pleasant sounds under such acoustic conditions. Therefore, the most popular "new metal" in the underground rock era is a competition of which band is more noisy and which band's audience is the craziest.

But growing up in the soil of underground rock, there emerged a band like Wan Qing whose purpose is to create "pleasant melodies". The ten years they spent repeatedly honing their album of the same name happened to be the decade of underground rock. This has to be said to be a miracle.

At the same time, another change brought about by Wan Qing is that they made Chinese rock fans no longer focus only on the "rock spirit".

In recent years, even some younger music fans hold the view that "Lao Cui set a bad example for Chinese rock", because the first generation of rock musicians born in that turbulent era attached too much importance to the "spiritual power" behind the music.

We can accept that a band's music is not so "nice", but if their lyrics do not involve some anti-establishment, rebellious, or opposing themes, before 2010, such a band would almost certainly be criticized.

The Dada band, which won the HOT2 in "Summer of the Band" 5, attracted a lot of criticism that year, because the hardcore rock fans at that time did not recognize their music at all and thought they were just a pop band.

Not to mention the vigorous online movement of "criticizing pseudo-rock" after the millennium. Musicians like Leather Pants were criticized and ridiculed by rock fans in that decade. When Leather Pants appeared on the Spring Festival Gala, the controversy over "pseudo-rock" was pushed to its peak.

But Wan Qing's appearance made people realize that the so-called rock spirit does not necessarily mean only raised fists and collisions under the stage. They use poetic lyrics and intoxicating melodies to wrap the thorns of realism behind all the beauty. This high-level treatment method is enough to enlighten people.

This meticulously crafted album has almost no shortcomings. It is difficult to say what the real "element" is that makes Wan Qing successful. Even though people talk about the trumpet in this album, it cannot cover up the fact that it also has countless wonderful guitar melodies and a large number of bass melody lines.

What's even more rare is that their meticulous work did not get bogged down in the dead end of "making the music complicated". You won't hear such "showy passages" as obvious speed playing or tapping in this album. Even for a quasi-novice who has been learning electric guitar for about a year, it is not a difficult task to play Wan Qing's solo. This is probably what is meant by "great skill without effort".

So it is understandable that the threshold for appreciating "Universal Youth Hostel" is actually very low. It is no wonder that the Hebei Mandarin spoken by guitarist and lead singer Dong Erqian actually gave rise to a group of band lead singers with the same Hebei accent in Taiwan on the other side of the strait in the next ten years.

It can be said that although Wan Qing was born as an underground band, their music is completely free of the "earthiness" of underground rock. What you can't imagine is that an album of such weight was even released independently that year and did not enter the vision of any record company.

But ten years later, today's music fans will no longer go to the New Haoyun Bar to excavate the shouts of "We are from the underground" and the bored army in the howling club, but everyone remembers the album about "hippies, sea monsters, runaway horses, kitchens and love".

So much so that 20 years later, this album has become a financial product. An unopened first edition album can’t be bought without 5K. Even an unopened 16th edition has a price around yuan. With such a premium, even Jay Chou’s colored vinyl may not be able to beat it!

If Lao Cui's "Nothing at All" defined the aesthetics of the first half of the history of Chinese rock, then Wan Qing's album of the same name probably laid the foundation for the aesthetics of the second half of the history of Chinese rock.

In today's Original Earth, you may be able to find a new band that has never heard of Lao Cui, but it is hard to imagine that they have never heard of Wan Qing.

So, this section is considered an interlude of the trumpet solo. When it was played with a melody similar to a march, music fans were deeply shocked by the indescribable melody and arrangement.

Besides being nice to listen to, it’s just really damn nice to listen to, and it gets nicer with each passing moment!
Some people, however, focus on the lyrics. "There is no way forward, and no way back..." How do you describe these lyrics? Although they are a bit depressing, thinking back to every Saturday after get off work, when I returned home or to the dormitory and lay quietly on the bed, or looked out the window in the rain and felt a little sleepy, thinking about the meaning of life will make me more confused.

The only difference may be that we are just living and thinking is just thinking. As the New Pants sings in the song: "People without culture are not sad." Sadness and pain are signals of the existence of ideals. Pain is the last weapon against mediocrity and the confirmation of self-existence.

Bian Lang’s self-mockery is not about himself as a rising rock star, but about putting himself on the level of the more ordinary majority.

And the interlude just now seemed to be just the beginning, making them wonder whether they were also one of these 100,000 hippies!
"Hosting reality, imagining distant places, looking around, having no talent, not working hard, not knowing how to distinguish between grains... not being able to interpret words, not being able to defend oneself..."

If the previous lyrics overlap with a moment in everyone's life, then everyone present can probably recognize one or two lyrics from the part just sung.

The melody of the next interlude changed again. Compared with the previous march-like interlude, the long-pitched trumpet sounded, and a sense of laziness came up. I felt that the previous part was a bit inspiring, but now it is a recognition of reality, and then it will start?

"I like to keep dogs, I don't like to wash my hair, I don't work, I get nothing, I hate arguments, I'm not good at speaking, and finally I become a silent accomplice..."

Previously, Dayong was worried that someone would identify Dong Shuxian with the name Dong Erqian, but now Bian Lang has changed his name to his own. Now no one will think too much about it, and will just think that the lyrics are satirizing certain people and things.

The reason why Bian Lang made such a change is that he actually realized one thing: although this song was written by Ji Geng for Dong Erqian, in fact, when the audience listens to it, they are basically putting themselves in the shoes of the audience.

So the name is about who it is, it’s really not that important. Of course, it would be best if it’s yourself, so as to avoid causing unnecessary trouble.

This interlude is even more interesting. The sound produced by the trumpet, drums and bass mixed in the same rhythm pattern transcends the scope of rock and goes directly to the dimension of symphony.

"Beep beep beep...beep beep beep...beep beep beep beep..." This rhythm pattern appears a total of four times in this interlude.

The first three times, the trumpet ended with a sound. The first and third times, the trumpet sounded like a fight or a defense. But the middle time, the trumpet sounded like an eggplant hit by frost, shrunken and wilted...

It just so happens to coincide with the lyrics of the first three paragraphs of the main song!

As for the ending of the fourth paragraph, it allows Di Li to show off briefly.

It is this kind of simple and ingenious arrangement design that makes those in the circle who understand the song once again feel the crushing from a different dimension.

Today's Bianlang has played from folk rock, grunge, hard rock, psychedelic to blues rock, and the last song, according to Liu Ziyang's words: "A new style of Bianlang has been born!"

"Drinking to drown sorrows, not very good at drinking, bewitching others, numbing the heart, pouring on QY, relaxing brows, indulging in H, the time is approaching..."

Along with Bian Lang’s “Hey… Hey…” sounds, there was also the sound of wheels’ trumpets.

Having been with the Rolling Stones for so long, this is undoubtedly the most glorious time in his career. Under the spotlight, every interlude seems to be a solo specially created for him, a "marginal" musician.

At this moment, playing this last part, like the tune of the setting sun falling into the sea and the aging of a beauty, feeling the attention of tens of thousands of eyes from the audience, Lunzi smiled in his heart!

He knew that among these tens of thousands of pairs of eyes, there must be a pair like Kapok's, silently sharing this moment with him.

In fact, Mu Mian and the others arrived here a few minutes later than Yang Meng and Li Linqing.

Although they are under the Rolling Stones, their opportunities to see the band live may not be as good as those overseas Chinese music fans who have followed the band in Europe.

Although the girls have worked with Bian Lang in different bands, they all know that the Rolling Stones are much more powerful than the smaller bands!

Every time they watch a show, they can learn something from it. Just like this song, the melody of each verse is the same, which seems to be not very technical. But in fact, being able to sing the song to people's hearts in this way is what really requires skills!

For example, Ding Ding, looking at Dayong who is as steady as an old dog, she feels that her basic skills in speed change are still a bit far to go.

As for Kapok, she is now really happy for her boyfriend.

He was lucky enough to get the chance to premiere this song. According to Bian Lang's personality, as long as the Rolling Stones business did not lag behind and he did not make trouble for his son, he would be destined to grow old with the Rolling Stones!
But she knew the outcome of this imaginary thing would probably end up like the following lyrics:
"Mr. Bian Erlang, who had just had a big dream, opened the window and raised his telescope. What he saw was a thick smoke... There was no way forward, and no way back..."

After singing, Bian Lang kept shaking the crank of the guitar, while the three choruses kept singing the same lyrics: "Mr. Bian Erlang, who is just having a big dream..."

The sound became smaller and smaller, and was finally blown away by the wind and interrupted by the sound of fireworks!
At this time, on the top floor of a building in Happy World that is closest to the music festival, two figures were standing in the night breeze. The night sky illuminated by fireworks also illuminated their faces.

The curly-haired girl touched her belly, as if talking to herself, or as if giving instructions: "Did you hear that, Director Bao? That's your father's singing. Remember this voice. When you grow up, your mother will bring you back..."

(End of this chapter)