About two months ago, Beijing Bird's Nest, Mayday once again set a record of the Chinese music circle concert scale created by itself -
After the release of the ninth album "Autobiography", they started the theme tour of "Life Infinity". In 18 months, they traveled to 55 cities around the world and sang 122 shows, attracting more than 4.15 million viewers...
When a number of mainland talent singers tried their best to compete for the Bird's Nest to make their name clear, Mayday had held 11 concerts at the Bird's Nest, making it the singer (band) with the most concerts in the Bird's Nest so far.
has been in a group for 21 years, and Mayday has been side by side with many names. 21 years have passed, and those names are bleak and bleak, and only Mayday has been expanding its influence with the controversy over pleased fans, over-commercialization, and pseudo-rock. Everyone is playing in a band. Why is it that only Mayday survived and the more they live, the better they are?
text | Yan Kunmu
edit | Jinshi
1
8 years ago in 2010, Mayday's lead singer Ashin suddenly announced at the concert at the Beijing Workers' Stadium that the goal of the next performance was the Bird's Nest. At that time, Zhang Yiming, the organizer of Mayday's Inland Concert and the general manager of Beijing Feifan Jingqi, was sitting in the audience. His reaction was: "I was so scared that I was trembling." In 2012, before Mayday's first concert was held at the Bird's Nest, Zhang Yiming was still very nervous: "If I didn’t watch the five-color lottery pictures turn into whiteboards day by day, and I don’t believe it if I beat me to death.”
Now, Zhang Yiming has long been accustomed to Mayday’s box office appeal: “Where you go, the box office is 'sweeping'. This is only Jacky Cheung before Chinese music scene. “
Mayday’s first performance in the mainland was in 2004. At that time, they paid for air tickets and instruments and took the extremely low appearance fee to step onto the stage of the “nameless highland” in Sanlitun, Beijing. The on-site ticket price is 30 yuan, and if you have a student ID, you can get another 10 yuan discount. The list of bands for the performances was scribbled on a whiteboard with markers, and in front of them were Future Bikes and Joyside, the latter of which was the main one, followed by a big exclamation point, while Mayday's name was followed by a bracket, marked: From Taiwan.
2004, the young and infinite Mayday performed in "The Unknown Highland", which was also their first time to perform in mainland China. Photo/ Online
There were only a few more than 20 audiences at the performance, and most of the audience went to joyside. It was a band that looked very punk visually. During the live performance, the lead singer would go on stage with beer and sing while drinking, and would take out a condom and put it on the microphone. In contrast, Mayday, wearing long-sleeved trousers, looked a little "behaved". When he first came on stage, he was booed because he was not rocking enough.
A music critic who experienced the performance on the spot described Mayday's popularity in the mainland at that time: "Beijing's Carrefour handles records. Looking around, it's all Mayday's "Long Live Love".
However, at the end of 2004, Mayday regained his face. They opened up the mainland market because of the popularity of the two songs " Stubborn " and " Contentment ". A year later, they held a concert of 10,000 people in the Workers' Sports.
In 2005, Mayday attended the Music Storm Awards Ceremony. The well-known music critic Wang Xiaofeng called that day a "shame of Chinese rock." At that time, there were Huaer Band , Zhou Yunpeng , Xu Wei , Wang Feng . The award presenter was Zheng Jun and beyond band drummer Ye Shirong . The award was Mayday who came to the stage to receive the award. They won two awards for Best Rock Album and Best Rock Band with their fifth album "The Children of God Are Dance". In an interview afterwards, Wang Xiaofeng was asked what he thought of Taiwanese rock. He said bluntly: "Is there any rock in Taiwan?" and announced that he would withdraw from the judges from now on.
In fact, Mayday's positioning since its debut was rock.
In 1997, Mayday, which was also a student underground band, and a group of Taiwanese pioneer rock bands at that time, released a collection of works, named "National Songs". The performers' list include quarterbacks who are known for their hard-core rock and three times nominated for the Golden Melody Award for Best Orchestra, and the Chairman's Choir who won the Golden Melody Award for Best Orchestra in 2018.
, which was placed in "National Songs", is the first publicly released work in Mayday. The lyrics express the theme of world-weariness - what if you are full of helplessness with the world? I asked my good friends to go racing and vent. This is a song that is very audibly in line with the definition of "rock". All instruments are used unrestrainedly. In the initial version of the MV, several members also roared on the streets of Taiwan with yellow hair and sunglasses. In their own words, the song “sounds like a wind-running ride on the national highway on the Wolf 125 (a popular motorcycle model in the 90s).
In the independent rock collection of "Mandarin Songs" released by Jiaotou Records, Mayday, who was still an underground band at the time, contributed their first song to enter a professional studio for the first time in their lives - "Rolling the Wheel". Picture/Network
. When the album was officially released later, they weakened the arrangement and changed it to the feeling of "riding on a little lamb". When the album entered the mainland, they directly deleted the song.
2
To some extent, becoming more gentle and popular is also Mayday's own choice.
Former Huaer band lead singer Da Zhangwei once said when talking about why he didn't continue to do rock: "I think these people who really do rock music are amazing. They are particularly willing to disappoint others. I don't have the courage to do this."
In the first album "'s first creative album ", "Long Live Love" and "Sea of Life" published by Mayday, their themes are mostly complaining about the world, dissatisfaction with society, and confusion about feelings and the future. These three albums are collectively called "Blue Three" by fans because their covers are all blue.
It was also this period that Mayday left many direct, sincere and imaginative works, so that "Blue Three is Mayday's best album" has become a consensus among the fans.
Before officially releasing the album under Mayday's name, they produced a gay theme album called "Hu" as producers, which included five songs about same-sex issues, "Hu" , "Humbling", "Happiness", "Reveal", and "The Look of Love" created by Ashin.
The most popular "Hu" is inspired by the novel "The Wise Son" by Bai Xianyong . This is the first gay novel in Taiwan. It describes a place called Lotus Pond, a place where the same-sex lovers meet, and the source of "the evening breeze kisses the lotus leaves" in "Hu".
Later, after Mayday became an army, they took these songs back and put them in their albums, but they all made adjustments to the expression scale accordingly.
"Hug" entered the first album to create the album with girls as the starring role. In addition, the lyrics themselves mainly describe the artistic conception, which hides the gay topics obscurely. It was not until 2014 when the new version of the song was re-made for the song, gay equality was used as the theme again.
In 2014, the re-shooted "Hug" MV will express the diverse concepts of love again. Picture/ Network
And the "The Look of Love" "The moon is floating in the lotus pond, I keep wandering by the pool, the battlefield of angels and devils, body and soul, insomnia nights" has also been changed to "The stars shine in the night sky, I keep wandering under the starry sky, only I am ignorantly running, because your eyes have turned into light", and only one sentence is retained, "In the same body, there is the feeling of love and being loved."
About two months ago, Beijing Bird's Nest, Mayday once again set a record of the Chinese music circle concert scale created by itself -
After the release of the ninth album "Autobiography", they started the theme tour of "Life Infinity". In 18 months, they traveled to 55 cities around the world and sang 122 shows, attracting more than 4.15 million viewers...
When a number of mainland talent singers tried their best to compete for the Bird's Nest to make their name clear, Mayday had held 11 concerts at the Bird's Nest, making it the singer (band) with the most concerts in the Bird's Nest so far.
has been in a group for 21 years, and Mayday has been side by side with many names. 21 years have passed, and those names are bleak and bleak, and only Mayday has been expanding its influence with the controversy over pleased fans, over-commercialization, and pseudo-rock. Everyone is playing in a band. Why is it that only Mayday survived and the more they live, the better they are?
text | Yan Kunmu
edit | Jinshi
1
8 years ago in 2010, Mayday's lead singer Ashin suddenly announced at the concert at the Beijing Workers' Stadium that the goal of the next performance was the Bird's Nest. At that time, Zhang Yiming, the organizer of Mayday's Inland Concert and the general manager of Beijing Feifan Jingqi, was sitting in the audience. His reaction was: "I was so scared that I was trembling." In 2012, before Mayday's first concert was held at the Bird's Nest, Zhang Yiming was still very nervous: "If I didn’t watch the five-color lottery pictures turn into whiteboards day by day, and I don’t believe it if I beat me to death.”
Now, Zhang Yiming has long been accustomed to Mayday’s box office appeal: “Where you go, the box office is 'sweeping'. This is only Jacky Cheung before Chinese music scene. “
Mayday’s first performance in the mainland was in 2004. At that time, they paid for air tickets and instruments and took the extremely low appearance fee to step onto the stage of the “nameless highland” in Sanlitun, Beijing. The on-site ticket price is 30 yuan, and if you have a student ID, you can get another 10 yuan discount. The list of bands for the performances was scribbled on a whiteboard with markers, and in front of them were Future Bikes and Joyside, the latter of which was the main one, followed by a big exclamation point, while Mayday's name was followed by a bracket, marked: From Taiwan.
2004, the young and infinite Mayday performed in "The Unknown Highland", which was also their first time to perform in mainland China. Photo/ Online
There were only a few more than 20 audiences at the performance, and most of the audience went to joyside. It was a band that looked very punk visually. During the live performance, the lead singer would go on stage with beer and sing while drinking, and would take out a condom and put it on the microphone. In contrast, Mayday, wearing long-sleeved trousers, looked a little "behaved". When he first came on stage, he was booed because he was not rocking enough.
A music critic who experienced the performance on the spot described Mayday's popularity in the mainland at that time: "Beijing's Carrefour handles records. Looking around, it's all Mayday's "Long Live Love".
However, at the end of 2004, Mayday regained his face. They opened up the mainland market because of the popularity of the two songs " Stubborn " and " Contentment ". A year later, they held a concert of 10,000 people in the Workers' Sports.
In 2005, Mayday attended the Music Storm Awards Ceremony. The well-known music critic Wang Xiaofeng called that day a "shame of Chinese rock." At that time, there were Huaer Band , Zhou Yunpeng , Xu Wei , Wang Feng . The award presenter was Zheng Jun and beyond band drummer Ye Shirong . The award was Mayday who came to the stage to receive the award. They won two awards for Best Rock Album and Best Rock Band with their fifth album "The Children of God Are Dance". In an interview afterwards, Wang Xiaofeng was asked what he thought of Taiwanese rock. He said bluntly: "Is there any rock in Taiwan?" and announced that he would withdraw from the judges from now on.
In fact, Mayday's positioning since its debut was rock.
In 1997, Mayday, which was also a student underground band, and a group of Taiwanese pioneer rock bands at that time, released a collection of works, named "National Songs". The performers' list include quarterbacks who are known for their hard-core rock and three times nominated for the Golden Melody Award for Best Orchestra, and the Chairman's Choir who won the Golden Melody Award for Best Orchestra in 2018.
, which was placed in "National Songs", is the first publicly released work in Mayday. The lyrics express the theme of world-weariness - what if you are full of helplessness with the world? I asked my good friends to go racing and vent. This is a song that is very audibly in line with the definition of "rock". All instruments are used unrestrainedly. In the initial version of the MV, several members also roared on the streets of Taiwan with yellow hair and sunglasses. In their own words, the song “sounds like a wind-running ride on the national highway on the Wolf 125 (a popular motorcycle model in the 90s).
In the independent rock collection of "Mandarin Songs" released by Jiaotou Records, Mayday, who was still an underground band at the time, contributed their first song to enter a professional studio for the first time in their lives - "Rolling the Wheel". Picture/Network
. When the album was officially released later, they weakened the arrangement and changed it to the feeling of "riding on a little lamb". When the album entered the mainland, they directly deleted the song.
2
To some extent, becoming more gentle and popular is also Mayday's own choice.
Former Huaer band lead singer Da Zhangwei once said when talking about why he didn't continue to do rock: "I think these people who really do rock music are amazing. They are particularly willing to disappoint others. I don't have the courage to do this."
In the first album "'s first creative album ", "Long Live Love" and "Sea of Life" published by Mayday, their themes are mostly complaining about the world, dissatisfaction with society, and confusion about feelings and the future. These three albums are collectively called "Blue Three" by fans because their covers are all blue.
It was also this period that Mayday left many direct, sincere and imaginative works, so that "Blue Three is Mayday's best album" has become a consensus among the fans.
Before officially releasing the album under Mayday's name, they produced a gay theme album called "Hu" as producers, which included five songs about same-sex issues, "Hu" , "Humbling", "Happiness", "Reveal", and "The Look of Love" created by Ashin.
The most popular "Hu" is inspired by the novel "The Wise Son" by Bai Xianyong . This is the first gay novel in Taiwan. It describes a place called Lotus Pond, a place where the same-sex lovers meet, and the source of "the evening breeze kisses the lotus leaves" in "Hu".
Later, after Mayday became an army, they took these songs back and put them in their albums, but they all made adjustments to the expression scale accordingly.
"Hug" entered the first album to create the album with girls as the starring role. In addition, the lyrics themselves mainly describe the artistic conception, which hides the gay topics obscurely. It was not until 2014 when the new version of the song was re-made for the song, gay equality was used as the theme again.
In 2014, the re-shooted "Hug" MV will express the diverse concepts of love again. Picture/ Network
And the "The Look of Love" "The moon is floating in the lotus pond, I keep wandering by the pool, the battlefield of angels and devils, body and soul, insomnia nights" has also been changed to "The stars shine in the night sky, I keep wandering under the starry sky, only I am ignorantly running, because your eyes have turned into light", and only one sentence is retained, "In the same body, there is the feeling of love and being loved."
Mayday's bassist Martha also talked about this change in a conversation with the famous Taiwanese music critic Zhang Tiezhi. "If our generation of people make music, they have to rely on record companies if they want to make records. The relationship between the two will affect how to make music. The first level is to come up with something to convince the record company. If you want to do it well, what you need to think about is how to make the first one to continue to have a new record. In this process, you need to make some choices in your own music, hoping to let others hear and convey what they want to resonate and understand, so that the audience can resonate and understand."
Mayday's choice is to make itself evolve more and more "positive" - the emergence of a series of inspirational theme works represented by "Stubborn", which also made them completely out of Taiwan and gain a huge influence in the entire Chinese-language market - For most listeners in the mainland, Mayday's first music image was created by "Stubborn".
If "Stubborn" is Mayday's first musical image reshaping, then "Suddenly Missing You" 4 years later is their second musical image reshaping. This time, they expanded their audience from campus to the entire urban young people.
Music critic Erdi said: "This is a song from Mayday that is extremely substitutable and resonates in various situations, writing a pulsed pain caused by intermittent eruptions."
Since then, the image of a man and a woman who cannot love has been preserved in Mayday's playlist. The later " You Are Not Really Happy ", " I Don't Want to Let You Be Alone ", "Okay", and " Later Us " are all repetitions of this type. Love songs like
, which are highly popular, are once again considered evidence that Mayday has left rock, but it has to be admitted that this is indeed the way that can be accepted and understood by most listeners.
3
Among a group of Chinese bands that appeared at the same time as Mayday, the Flower Band can become a group of mirrors with Mayday.
They are both from campus and performed in live house as underground bands in their early years. During the performance, the Huaer Band was spotted by a record company called Xinfeng and had the opportunity to release an album. Mayday was a demo produced by the lead singer Ashin and bassist Martha riding the little sheep everywhere to give her own demo, and was finally signed by Rolling Stone.
A small episode is that when Lee Zongsheng called the group leader monster and said he wanted to meet them, the monster replied: "Are you Lee Zongsheng? I am still Luo Dayou!"
The first albums of both bands were published in 1999. The initial desire for expression came from young people's confusion about the adult world - Mayday in " Crazy World" In ", sing: "I want to fly so much, escape from this crazy world, so much hardship, so much fatigue, so much inexplicable sadness." Huaer wrote in "Stop": "Empty knocks on the will, as if this vow has stopped. I doubt people's lives are concealed."
In 2000, Mayday and Huaer Band were nominated for the Best Singing Group at the Golden Melody Awards that year, and both released their second album in 2001.
fork appeared in 2003.
Before this year, Mayday's members Ashin, Monster, and Martha were all at the age of serving in the military, and they had to announce a temporary suspension of the regiment. Later, Ashin and the monster were returned due to flat feet and thalassemia respectively, and only Martha went to serve as a soldier. When the group activity was not possible, Ashin and Monsters worked in depth with Stefanie Sun and Jingru Liang . These experiences have transformed them from young student group members to mature record industry participants.
May God's lead singer Ashin has successfully collaborated with singers such as Leong Jingru, Stefanie Sun, and Rene Liu. Photo/Network
In 2003, Martha returned to the team and made a comeback in Mayday. At this time, they not only entered a mature stage in their creation, but also understood the operating rules of the market and business, and were preparing to go to a broader world.
It was also in this year that the Huaer Band and the record company at that time fell into a dispute over contract termination due to disagreement of ideas. In the end, the members of the Huaer Band chose to jointly bear a debt of 400,000 yuan and terminate the contract with the company.More than 0 years later, Da Zhangwei talked about his differences with his former boss in an interview with Tencent Entertainment: "When he wrote the album " I am your Romeo ", he was stunned when he heard it and refused to do it. He thought that that was betrayal of rock music, but I always thought that music was to express personal emotions, there was no difference between good or rock or rock. And there was another reason, especially when I grew up that time, I realized that I wanted to make money for my parents, because my parents started to train me to learn music at a young age. I felt it was very hard, and at that time they were all laid off, so I felt that I must make money to support my family. . Fu Chong (the boss of Xinfeng) told me that he could live by earning 200 yuan a month. I said that it was you, you don’t have family pressure, I have it.”
In contrast to it, in the relatively mature Taiwan record industry, the producer of Mayday was Li Zongsheng’s level. Martha once said that many of their creations were preserved by Li Zongsheng: “Brother told the company’s planners not to give them any opinions, they can do whatever they want.”
Li Zongsheng, who discovered Mayday, will still stand up for them on different occasions. Photo/ Online
In 2006, the popularity of ringtones and the rampant online piracy made the entire record industry enter a cold winter. Gone are the era when you can make a fortune by selling records. Chen Yongzhi, the general manager of Rolling Stone Records at the time, said in an interview: "In the past, 60% of the records would not lose money. By 2006, 70% of the records would lose money."
In this year, Da Zhangwei said that he knew that singing punk could no longer support himself, so he began to sing brainwashing songs like " Xishuashua " in the wave of online songs, which once ranked first in the popular ringtone list. But because of the involvement of plagiarism, the Huaer Band was eventually completely disbanded amid the controversy. Many years later, Da Zhangwei became famous by telling jokes and imitating Cai Qin in variety shows. Now, his more accurate positioning should be "announcement artist" rather than a musician.
In Taiwan, Chen Yongzhi persuaded the senior management of Rolling Stone and independently established , Believe in Music , with Mayday's agent Xie Zhifen. It only signed contracts with Mayday and Liang Jingru, and began to try to break the profit model of selling CDs, and use live performances, star derivatives and other methods to support their investment in music. In the next 12 years, Mayday also achieved great success in business because of this decision.
Da Zhangwei once lamented in the program that Mayday is a very rare orchestra in the Chinese music scene that has not been dissolved. Photo/Network
4
I believe that after the music was established, I will make live performances with Mayday a profit channel for singers to rely on for survival.
Before this, the general model for artists to hold concerts was that the agency company charges the appearance fee and then a third-party outsourcing company was responsible for the performance. "Most of the domestic concerts just finished singing, and the program arrangement formed a fixed style, singing fast to slow songs, then jazz rock, and finally skewers, and then it ended." said Zou Xiaoying, publicity director of Star Alien Records.
At that time, concerts were usually considered to be a consumption that only middle-aged people could afford. Those who could hold concerts in the mainland that were veteran singers such as Jacky Cheung, Tsai Chin, and Fei Yuqing .
In order to update the concert experience, I believe that Music has set up a department for Mayday to serve the concert. Chen Yongzhi’s requirement for them is to make concerts like films, regardless of cost. In order to meet this requirement, the team will start meetings with Mayday six months in advance to set a complete theme concept for the performance, and spend two months refining the theme to all levels of visual effects, repertoire, and required hardware technical support. Finally, the performance rehearsal and execution.
In order to highlight the integrity of the concept, Mayday will not only shoot small movies with special effects comparable to Hollywood blockbusters for the concert, but also brought the 18-meter-diameter "Saturn Rings" built with giant Transformers models, tanks, and LED screens to the stage, and even the glow sticks at the concert were not spared.
Starting from the "Noah's Ark" series tour, Mayday has upgraded its official glow stick.Fans buy a unified glow stick before entering the venue. This glow stick is not only of excellent quality, but also receives a unified signal at the concert site, changing colors and flickering frequency according to the rhythm, style and stage design of the song - to date, this is a unique experience in the mainland concert market.
At the Mayday concert, the lights on and off the stage were consistent in color, producing an amazing light and shadow effect. Photo/ Visual China
In addition to creating cool visual effects, Mayday's concert will also create a sense of participation and collective memories. Every time I perform, Ashin emphasizes that it is "We complete the concert together", rather than you come to listen to my concert. "A good concert is a preaching conference. It should be like this. Everyone is your believer." Bassist Martha once said, "He (Ashin) is the person with the highest emotional intelligence in my life. He speaks beautifully, completely, and has clear thoughts."
Regarding the charm of Mayday's live performance, music critic Ye Yunping once said in an interview: "Because of the decline in record sales, Mayday has focused more and more on concerts. Mayday has also developed a skill that is very good at conducting concerts. They know how to interact with live audiences and have a more accurate grasp of the psychology of fans. This will in turn affect their albums and control the accuracy of their works - that is, when will this song touch you, and when should it come like this? It's like watching a very well-made Hollywood movie. The plot is very Great, the screen effects are also very good. It can be said that their music is an accurate craft. "
5
However, precision sometimes means conservative. Ye Yunping also pointed out that there are fewer "uncontrolled" things in Mayday's music now: "Although it has become very perfect, very precise, and has good control. It can always arouse the audience's emotions at the right time, but there is always a little "accident". "
In fact, Mayday also tried to create accidents after commercial success.
In the album "Poetry of Post-puberty in ", Mayday not only created "Suddenly Missing You", but also created "Householding and Life Below ". This is a song with a depressing atmosphere, which sings the life state of most people directly: you can never realize your ideals and become the person you really want to be, and you can only live your life in mechanical repetition. In addition, there are also works like "Night Visit to Vampire" that compares life to a cage. However, the final answer given by the market was - "Suddenly Missing You" to become popular as expected, and those two songs have never been favored by the market.
It was also in this year that Mayday's political stance was questioned by netizens on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. Ashin responded to netizens' comments on Weibo all night, "We will not get involved in politics" and "This is a good opportunity to enhance communication and understanding." Since then, their expressions have become more secure and conservative - in the end-of-life album "2012" and the 20th anniversary review album "Autobiography", "Terrible" is the middle-aged version of "Stubborn", which also focuses on near-death topics, "Breaking Eyes" is the re-composed ", 5, ", which also accuses the confinement of a single social standard of human nature, and "Three Fools" is the upgraded version of "Survival Above, Life Below".
0 The nine creative albums released since Mayday's debut include almost all of their familiar songs, carrying countless praises and some criticisms. Picture/Network
Nowadays, when talking about Mayday, the most commonly used adjective by music critics is "success". Music critic Inland Feiyu said: "Mayday is the most successful mainstream band group in the Chinese music scene since 2000. It is healthy, uplifting, inspirational, fresh and diligent. It is all good young people. Although it is called a band, it is more like an idol group."
At the press conference of "Autobiography", Li Zongsheng, who discovered Mayday, called them the first group. "I have looked at you calmly over the years. I really think that Mayday is the most successful band in the Chinese music scene, and has never been in a mess for 20 years."However, he was also worried that Mayday would lose himself because he cared too much about his fans. When talking about his hope for Mayday's future, Lee Zongsheng said: "Mayday is not only a successful orchestra, but also a great orchestra. After success, don't forget who you are and where you come from. ”
. Mayday used a joke to resolve the question raised by Leehom, “Actually, we have many opportunities to communicate with our elder brother in private. In fact, when talking about a great band, he told us one thing, that is, the most important thing to become a great band is to disband (laughs). "
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More than 0 years later, Da Zhangwei talked about his differences with his former boss in an interview with Tencent Entertainment: "When he wrote the album " I am your Romeo ", he was stunned when he heard it and refused to do it. He thought that that was betrayal of rock music, but I always thought that music was to express personal emotions, there was no difference between good or rock or rock. And there was another reason, especially when I grew up that time, I realized that I wanted to make money for my parents, because my parents started to train me to learn music at a young age. I felt it was very hard, and at that time they were all laid off, so I felt that I must make money to support my family. . Fu Chong (the boss of Xinfeng) told me that he could live by earning 200 yuan a month. I said that it was you, you don’t have family pressure, I have it.”In contrast to it, in the relatively mature Taiwan record industry, the producer of Mayday was Li Zongsheng’s level. Martha once said that many of their creations were preserved by Li Zongsheng: “Brother told the company’s planners not to give them any opinions, they can do whatever they want.”
Li Zongsheng, who discovered Mayday, will still stand up for them on different occasions. Photo/ Online
In 2006, the popularity of ringtones and the rampant online piracy made the entire record industry enter a cold winter. Gone are the era when you can make a fortune by selling records. Chen Yongzhi, the general manager of Rolling Stone Records at the time, said in an interview: "In the past, 60% of the records would not lose money. By 2006, 70% of the records would lose money."
In this year, Da Zhangwei said that he knew that singing punk could no longer support himself, so he began to sing brainwashing songs like " Xishuashua " in the wave of online songs, which once ranked first in the popular ringtone list. But because of the involvement of plagiarism, the Huaer Band was eventually completely disbanded amid the controversy. Many years later, Da Zhangwei became famous by telling jokes and imitating Cai Qin in variety shows. Now, his more accurate positioning should be "announcement artist" rather than a musician.
In Taiwan, Chen Yongzhi persuaded the senior management of Rolling Stone and independently established , Believe in Music , with Mayday's agent Xie Zhifen. It only signed contracts with Mayday and Liang Jingru, and began to try to break the profit model of selling CDs, and use live performances, star derivatives and other methods to support their investment in music. In the next 12 years, Mayday also achieved great success in business because of this decision.
Da Zhangwei once lamented in the program that Mayday is a very rare orchestra in the Chinese music scene that has not been dissolved. Photo/Network
4
I believe that after the music was established, I will make live performances with Mayday a profit channel for singers to rely on for survival.
Before this, the general model for artists to hold concerts was that the agency company charges the appearance fee and then a third-party outsourcing company was responsible for the performance. "Most of the domestic concerts just finished singing, and the program arrangement formed a fixed style, singing fast to slow songs, then jazz rock, and finally skewers, and then it ended." said Zou Xiaoying, publicity director of Star Alien Records.
At that time, concerts were usually considered to be a consumption that only middle-aged people could afford. Those who could hold concerts in the mainland that were veteran singers such as Jacky Cheung, Tsai Chin, and Fei Yuqing .
In order to update the concert experience, I believe that Music has set up a department for Mayday to serve the concert. Chen Yongzhi’s requirement for them is to make concerts like films, regardless of cost. In order to meet this requirement, the team will start meetings with Mayday six months in advance to set a complete theme concept for the performance, and spend two months refining the theme to all levels of visual effects, repertoire, and required hardware technical support. Finally, the performance rehearsal and execution.
In order to highlight the integrity of the concept, Mayday will not only shoot small movies with special effects comparable to Hollywood blockbusters for the concert, but also brought the 18-meter-diameter "Saturn Rings" built with giant Transformers models, tanks, and LED screens to the stage, and even the glow sticks at the concert were not spared.
Starting from the "Noah's Ark" series tour, Mayday has upgraded its official glow stick.Fans buy a unified glow stick before entering the venue. This glow stick is not only of excellent quality, but also receives a unified signal at the concert site, changing colors and flickering frequency according to the rhythm, style and stage design of the song - to date, this is a unique experience in the mainland concert market.
At the Mayday concert, the lights on and off the stage were consistent in color, producing an amazing light and shadow effect. Photo/ Visual China
In addition to creating cool visual effects, Mayday's concert will also create a sense of participation and collective memories. Every time I perform, Ashin emphasizes that it is "We complete the concert together", rather than you come to listen to my concert. "A good concert is a preaching conference. It should be like this. Everyone is your believer." Bassist Martha once said, "He (Ashin) is the person with the highest emotional intelligence in my life. He speaks beautifully, completely, and has clear thoughts."
Regarding the charm of Mayday's live performance, music critic Ye Yunping once said in an interview: "Because of the decline in record sales, Mayday has focused more and more on concerts. Mayday has also developed a skill that is very good at conducting concerts. They know how to interact with live audiences and have a more accurate grasp of the psychology of fans. This will in turn affect their albums and control the accuracy of their works - that is, when will this song touch you, and when should it come like this? It's like watching a very well-made Hollywood movie. The plot is very Great, the screen effects are also very good. It can be said that their music is an accurate craft. "
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However, precision sometimes means conservative. Ye Yunping also pointed out that there are fewer "uncontrolled" things in Mayday's music now: "Although it has become very perfect, very precise, and has good control. It can always arouse the audience's emotions at the right time, but there is always a little "accident". "
In fact, Mayday also tried to create accidents after commercial success.
In the album "Poetry of Post-puberty in ", Mayday not only created "Suddenly Missing You", but also created "Householding and Life Below ". This is a song with a depressing atmosphere, which sings the life state of most people directly: you can never realize your ideals and become the person you really want to be, and you can only live your life in mechanical repetition. In addition, there are also works like "Night Visit to Vampire" that compares life to a cage. However, the final answer given by the market was - "Suddenly Missing You" to become popular as expected, and those two songs have never been favored by the market.
It was also in this year that Mayday's political stance was questioned by netizens on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. Ashin responded to netizens' comments on Weibo all night, "We will not get involved in politics" and "This is a good opportunity to enhance communication and understanding." Since then, their expressions have become more secure and conservative - in the end-of-life album "2012" and the 20th anniversary review album "Autobiography", "Terrible" is the middle-aged version of "Stubborn", which also focuses on near-death topics, "Breaking Eyes" is the re-composed ", 5, ", which also accuses the confinement of a single social standard of human nature, and "Three Fools" is the upgraded version of "Survival Above, Life Below".
0 The nine creative albums released since Mayday's debut include almost all of their familiar songs, carrying countless praises and some criticisms. Picture/Network
Nowadays, when talking about Mayday, the most commonly used adjective by music critics is "success". Music critic Inland Feiyu said: "Mayday is the most successful mainstream band group in the Chinese music scene since 2000. It is healthy, uplifting, inspirational, fresh and diligent. It is all good young people. Although it is called a band, it is more like an idol group."
At the press conference of "Autobiography", Li Zongsheng, who discovered Mayday, called them the first group. "I have looked at you calmly over the years. I really think that Mayday is the most successful band in the Chinese music scene, and has never been in a mess for 20 years."However, he was also worried that Mayday would lose himself because he cared too much about his fans. When talking about his hope for Mayday's future, Lee Zongsheng said: "Mayday is not only a successful orchestra, but also a great orchestra. After success, don't forget who you are and where you come from. ”
. Mayday used a joke to resolve the question raised by Leehom, “Actually, we have many opportunities to communicate with our elder brother in private. In fact, when talking about a great band, he told us one thing, that is, the most important thing to become a great band is to disband (laughs). "
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