As the leader of China’s first all-female punk band, Hang on the Box, Gia Wang has blazed a furious path. She’s been on the cover of Newsweek, scored a Japanese record deal and toured America way back in 2003. While the group has largely been dormant since releasing their last full-length album in 2007, they’re back and hitting up Yuyintang on July 9 for their first Shanghai show in over a decade. We let the charismatic singer handle the re-introduction.
I fell in love with rock and roll when I was in high school. I loved punk music so much. It was a way for me to express the rebellion and hormones I was feeling as a teenager. I wanted to form a female band.
While I respect Cui Jian, Cobra, Tang Dynasty and other bands from that first generation (of Chinese rock), I wasn’t influenced by them.
In the summer of 1998, just before our first gig at Scream Club, an American student named Scott introduced me to Bikini Kill’s music.
That first gig was quite chaotic. There were no rehearsals and no plan. Xiao Rong, the former singer of Brain Failure, wanted to help me with my guitar so he released the guitar strings before the show. Of course, I forgot to tune them when I started playing. It didn’t matter. I felt great when I was playing on stage.
You can tell how I felt about the music scene at the time from the song ‘For Some Stupid Cunts at BBS’ from our first album, Yellow Banana.
To be honest, I want to forget about (the 1999 Newsweek cover) until we make the cover of a bigger magazine. When you focus on your own stuff, you pay less attention to what happened in the past.
I don’t remember anyone coming to me and saying our band influenced them, but there have been some people who liked HOTB who became great musicians, like Zhang Shouwang from Carsick Cars, Ding Ke, Yuan Yuan, Chun Shu or even the journalist Tian Xiaoye. They are still friends and supporters, which we are very thankful for.
My personal attitude is quite punk, but my music is not. I don’t want to be lumped into one style, which is why I’m always changing my music.
There was a time I even did some experimental music. But now I prefer future rock and post rock. Maybe we’ll do some blues on the next album (smiles). I like interesting things – not staying the same.
I didn’t think the last EP (2013’s Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) was good enough. We changed our band members last summer and didn’t settle onto the right lineup until autumn.
Our current guitar player is Xu Jingchen, who used to play for Hanggai. Our bass player is a very young and talented girl named Beibei. Da Bang’s drummer, Lin Nan, has been a great help, and we have a keyboard player named Xu Ming. I think the current lineup of HOTB is the best so far.
We are planning to release two singles this summer and hopefully our new album in the winter. We want to perform more shows and let new audiences know about our past and present.
This will be my first time performing at Yuyintang and only the second time we’ve played a proper venue in Shanghai. We hope we can play there as often as possible.
Our song ‘Shanghai’ [listen above] mocked this atmosphere of girls getting plastic surgery and marrying rich, tasteless Chinese guys. But I think this has affected Beijing as well.
Actually, I think the underground culture in Shanghai is very well-developed – the girls there are more independent than before.
July 9, 9pm-late, RMB100. Yuyintang.
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