Respawn Entertainment: Days of Glory

Chapter 905 Humming an Old Tune on the New Road

Bian Lang did not deliberately imitate Liu Tao's singing style and accent in pursuit of a high degree of authenticity, although it was not difficult for him, as he was also from Yunnan Province.

But Bian Lang felt that closing his eyes and pressing his vocal cords at this moment, using the memories to evoke emotions, was the best way to release the pent-up frustration in his heart.

Back on Earth, Bian Lang had asked Lao Yang why he wrote such painful songs when life was already so tough. Lao Yang didn't answer directly but instead asked him, "What about those sad love songs?"

Bian Lang didn't answer at the time because he thought of a saying: "If no one records suffering, then our happiness will also become worthless!"

Old Yang and Liu Tao didn't leave, so Bian Lang still habitually called the band, which had changed its name to Cun Tie, "Yao." Although, Cun Tie might sound like it evokes a sense of power from the lower classes.

The music of the Waist Band is both simple and complex. Through the trivialities of life, through silent contemplation, through hopeless cries, they infuse their slender frames with the souls of thinkers. In their music, they expose the most fundamental aspects of this nation to everyone without embellishment.

Such a band would definitely not become popular in China. Back then, someone who was drunk said that Brother B, Yao, and Brother Yunpeng were the kind of bands that might ruin themselves while playing around.

Brother B really ruined himself, and Lao Zhou had several songs banned, and his back is now aching. As for the drunk guy, he's already become a monk at Jizu Mountain.

Bian Lang recalls that during a small live performance, when Liu Tao sang the next line of lyrics, many female fans in the audience burst into tears on the spot:
You promised to be moderate with alcohol.
Other than that, I have no other worries.
Thinking back to those conversations from previous years

Memories of courage and sincerity
Let's not erase it...

Upon hearing this, Guo Sichu felt a strange tingling sensation in her nose.

Who hasn't had a past?

Those ruthless farewells that tear off the mask of civility may fade into indifference after the initial pain subsides. But this helpless concern and advice always stays with you for a very long time!

The ghost that most people care about

It will still be with me.

I can't even dream of disintegration right now.
Even remain on the earth's surface
But it won't be permanent...

At this point in the song, Bian Lang seemed to wake up, opened his eyes, took two steps back, and began to strum the acoustic guitar in his hand.

The usually stern and unsmiling Zhili appeared even more aloof at this moment. He found a box, sat on it, lowered his head, and began to play the interlude on his electric guitar.

The blues melody combined with reggae rhythms is the most distinctive feature of this interlude. The purely rhythmic parts, with the keyboard, drums, and electric guitar working together, evoke the soul of black blues from the 1960s and 70s, but once the electric guitar melody kicks in, a psychedelic flavor emerges.

Foreigners who couldn't understand the lyrics went from being completely confused at first to gradually calming down, and now they could hear the thoughtful arrangement through the interlude. Gradually, some people started to whistle softly along with the melody.

As for the Chinese music fans who understand the lyrics, while being led by the nose by this twisted feeling and searching for resonance in their memories, they are also sighing: "Who says Bian Lang can't write this kind of twisted little love story?"

Bian Lang hadn't written many songs on this theme before, since he hadn't had this kind of experience and simply couldn't think of any. Besides, he wasn't the type to torture himself.

Otherwise, on the night Dong Youbian left, he wouldn't have sung "Don't Break My Heart," but rather the entire Zhang Yu series, starting with "Kiss Goodbye"!

As for the media figures in China, whether they are friends or foes, they were all left speechless by the lyrics of this song.

In foreign countries, works that lean more towards personal emotional expression will obviously be at a disadvantage when touring abroad. Unless you're already a big name like those established artists from the original Earth, at that level, music fans actually prefer to listen to niche, less frequently performed material.

They want to delve into the true secrets of your inner world, but in the eyes of these media professionals, Rolling Stone doesn't seem to be at that level yet.

However, in the eyes of Olaf and other musicians, this kind of song is actually the one that best reflects Bian Lang's creative skills.

Well, just look at those big songs like "Fade To Black," "No Place to Hide," and "Dreaming Back to Tang Dynasty"—the arrangement and high notes alone would make the live performance absolutely amazing!
The outro of "Fade To Black"—if it were played, who among the tens of thousands of people in the audience wouldn't go crazy?
When the five sets of high notes from "Dreaming Back to the Tang Dynasty" and "No Place to Hide" come together, no matter what the lyrics are, everyone will scream and say you're awesome.
But at a rock concert, you sing a slow song with a melancholic feel, and the performance doesn't fall apart. That truly demonstrates skill!
From the first performance by Ou to Bob now, his Mandarin is still only superficially understood, clearly not enough to directly grasp the meaning of the lyrics. But for some reason, he feels that this might be the most moving kind of music among those who are always on the move.

At this moment, he felt that his motivation to learn Chinese had reached its peak, even more so than when he found his Chinese girlfriend, Green Algae.

After all, Green Algae's English is not bad, so communication is not a problem for them. However, if you don't learn Chinese well to directly interpret the lyrics of Bian Lang's Chinese songs, you will always feel that something is missing when listening to the translation.

But he actually oversimplified the matter. The Chinese language is so profound and complex; it's not difficult to understand the meaning of this song! However, once you understand this song, you'll want to challenge yourself with something even more difficult.

Starting with Liu Tao, then Secretary Ma, then Zhao Ciwei, and finally Lao Ding, if you can understand the lyrics of all these people, you can basically graduate from Chinese language studies. But if we're talking about a listening comprehension test, we absolutely have to add Jay Chou to the list!
As for Olaf, with his rapidly improving speech, he could basically understand the meaning. He hadn't really paid much attention to the lyrics of this song before, but now, in this situation, listening to it again...

Looking at Guo Sichu on stage and thinking about Dong Youbian in the past, he felt that the Chinese proverb "Life is mostly unsatisfactory!" was absolutely true.

Bian Lang's smooth sailing in music was, in his opinion, earned through various emotional ups and downs! And he believed that this was probably a fate that Bian Lang would never be able to resolve in his life!
So, as the interlude ended, Bian Lang sighed and continued singing: "I'm forgetting you, so please forget me too..."

Although it wasn't real, Bian Lang imagined the scene of Cun Tie at the Chang'an site the moment he closed his eyes.

As soon as Liu Tao opened his mouth, the chorus below completely drowned out his Yunnan-accented Mandarin: "Go forward by another path..."

At this moment, a group of harmonies used the "sobbing" of human voices to form the last instrument in the arrangement.

And then there's Guo Sichu, who was completely improvising a duet with Bian Lang! It was like a version of "Dark Surge" mixed by some mixing master, a duet by Anthony Wong and Faye Wong, which turned an already fragmented view of love into a spider web! In the last part, everyone except Bian Lang stopped to make way for him.

His voice was still suppressed at the very bottom of his vocal cords, making it extremely unpleasant to listen to, but Bian Lang, with his eyes open, sang with a sense of relief: "Someone has to keep pushing forward."
But I hope you can go to the very edge.
Humming an old tune on the new road

One billion pairs of lacerated eyelids

I await your good news...

The heavy drumbeats, along with the blues-infused outro, continued.

Chen Manman, who had been holding her breath and not daring to be distracted for even a moment, finally breathed a long sigh of relief at this moment...

"Hum an old tune on the new road..." He only understood this one sentence.

Although the song appears to be a sad love song written for a breakup, it is actually dedicated to the band members of Yao. The ghost refers to Yang Shaokun, the one who should drink less refers to Cao Danping, and the song also teases Rao Fei and Yang Yang, who work at the hospital, about getting eyelid surgery.

This song is from the album "Readable by People".

In Hangzhou in 2017, at an indoor music festival, the Yao Band, which had disbanded three years earlier, stood on the stage for their first performance in ten years since their formation. Behind them, a projection read, "Waist, this is the last time," which was both their farewell to their past identity as "Waist" and a transformation and rebirth in the name of "Cun Tie" (meaning "inch of iron").

Since the formation of the Yao Band in 1998, lead singer Liu Tao and his friends who play music around them have maintained a mysterious image in the independent music scene, even though they have been singing all the way from Zhaotong, Yunnan Province to Beijing.

Their sharp, obscure lyrics written for the underprivileged, along with their unadorned, rough voices, remained only among a select group of avant-garde youths until their final album before disbanding, "Too Late to Meet," was released in 2014, which gradually garnered them widespread attention.

Later, former members Liu Tao and Yang Shaokun formed a brand new band called Cun Tie, and "Readable for People" was their first work released under the name Cun Tie.

During the "Too Late to Meet" period, Yao had gradually shed the disharmony and sharpness of her first two albums, and the new album continued the pleasant and warm tone of "Too Late to Meet".

The clear guitar accompaniment began, with a hint of Zhaotong accent and the hazy poetic charm of a small town. Liu Tao's voice still had that familiar quality, but the abstract lyrics had gained a deeper perspective honed by the years.

The five flavors of life, as always, come rushing in, with humorous and witty melodies, as well as various metaphors about life and this era.

Looking back, the lyrics and music may never have changed... Looking ahead to tomorrow, "Cun Tie" takes the pen from "Yao" and continues to write the diary of the road ahead.

In the compilation "Readable by People Nearby", many long and unique song titles are like moving prose pieces. The very everyday lyrics still have many wonderful lines that suddenly pop up and shock the listener's consciousness. The inspired words make the listener unable to help but admire Liu Tao's lyric writing skills.

Listening to the Cun Tie Band is like listening to an unfathomable realm of life. When the music starts, it's like opening a novel or essay, and then savoring it carefully. Every passage makes the listener think deeply, and every storyline is like a shocking experience for the listener.

"If Your Heart Is Young" is the best choice as the opening song. The first line of the lyrics immediately plunges the listener into the abyss of memories. The gentle folk style reveals a touch of blues atmosphere, as if you have just taken a sip of wine and are slightly tipsy, but feel very warm, leading the listener to face life with a calm attitude.

The song title "Witnessing You Just Completed This Jump" is powerful enough to move the listener. The band Cun Tie interprets the feelings of a person contemplating suicide. They sing from low murmurs to passionate screams, as if using different interpretations to explain the complex and difficult mental journey of a person contemplating suicide.

The last verse of the lyrics is incredibly poignant, unexpectedly tugging at the heartstrings of the listener.

"Have a pleasant journey" has a transcendent artistic conception, as if it were a twin of Huang Shujun's "The Song of Unending Sorrow". Both of them use many names, both are about life, and both bring emotion to the listeners between the lines.

"What I Want to Say When Saying Goodbye" echoes "Have a Happy Journey" and seems to be the second half of the song. The music arrangement with a touch of nostalgia, reminiscent of old Western songs, combined with very sentimental lyrics, reveals a lot of sad emotions.

Several songs on the album have very long titles, resembling lengthy novels, rich in depth. One of them is the blues-tinged "Is What I Feel Your Sadness?", which also uses many names in its lyrics, but the imagery is even more profound.

Next up is "Believe He Once Believed the Poems Are Disappearing on Shortwave," a song with a tender, old-school jazz vibe. The focus of the entire song is on the poetic lyrics, which are both beautiful and poignant.

"I'll Tell You a Joke," with its folk-rock influences, tells a poignant story of bygone days in a hoarse voice, and is also a masterpiece with profound imagery. The final track, "Untitled," is a playful tune, and the feeling of old English songs comes rushing back, as if it were a silent promise from the band.

Perhaps "Readable for the Moderns" lacks musicality and is even too saccharine, but such words and imagery, rich in philosophy of life, do not need too many fancy notes to package them. The Cun Tie Band accompanies the listener through the journey of life with the folk music atmosphere of 20 degrees Celsius, which is just right.

As for "I'm Forgetting You," its retro charm is like a subtle and profound poem, yet it expresses a brave and sincere memory.

After finishing the song, before the outro was even over, Bian Lang put the acoustic guitar back on the stand, then walked back to the microphone stand, smiling and waving at the figure that was nowhere to be seen!

Guo Sichu laughed along with her, and she even wondered, "If we ever break up, what song will he use to end things?"

But she immediately cleared the thought from her mind.

After all, life is only a little over 30,000 days long, and she has already lived more than a third of it. At this point in her life, she hopes that Bian Lang will be her partner for the rest of her life.

Whether mental or physical...

"Singing an old tune on the new road... I await your... good news..."

After silently reciting those lyrics, she walked towards Bian Bianlang and gently, naturally, took his right hand...

(End of this chapter)