Live Review: C.S.B.Q
The Western mind cannot comprehend a riotous punk band from Wuhan having their Wednesday night gig in Taipei shut down by the police.
By “shut down”, I mean “stopped after a couple of songs so a pair of (entirely chill) police officers could start checking IDs in the crowd; then realise, about a dozen people into the faux-raid, that it was probably going to take too long, hence decide to abort their mission, let the lights come back down and the music continue”.
By “cannot comprehend”, I mean “seem mildly puzzled by either the irony or, at least, the rain-on-your-wedding-dayness of the whole scene”.
By “the Western mind”, I really mean “me”.
I was at this show based on a recommendation to check out CSBQ, the young punk band from the Hunan province of China, brought over to Taiwan for a short tour starting in Taipei. CSBQ have been busy in the last few years, releasing three albums and one EP since 2020.
The original sound of their debut is more party-like and old-school punk-based, whereas their newer songs lean into an aesthetic more akin to British 80s post-punk. The latter was evident in the set opener 薩爾瓦多 (“Salvador”), with its shouted refrain of “el pueblo unido jamás será vencido!”, borrowed from the old Chilean protest song of the same name, juxtaposed with some bouncy, disco drum beats and aqueous, chorus-drenched guitar tones.
CSBQ are seen as worthy successors to another abbreviatedly-named band from central China, SMZB, who started in the mid-1990s and almost single-handedly built the Wuhan punk scene of the past couple of decades.
If I sound like I know what I’m talking about, it’s only because I was educated on most of this by Nathanel Amar, a connoisseur of Chinese alternative music, a researcher at the University of Hong Kong, and the founder of Screaming For Life, an excellent academic blog documenting the Chinese punk community. He had flown from Hong Kong to Taipei just to see CSBQ, and their show didn’t disappoint.
From my chat with Amar outside Revolver, the local pub and small-capacity live venue where a niche band like this can play in the Taiwanese capital, I learned that the band from Changsha (not Wuhan, as I had originally thought—yet another layer of miscomprehension for this addled Western mind) has a reputation for rousing sax-punctuated anthems and humble, class-conscious lyrics.
Looking at them on the stage, the quartet do come across as unpretentious and very much working-class. Their singer and bassist, Yin Hui Ran, was sweating profusely through his green football jersey, taking sips from a nip bottle of Famous Grouse whiskey (likely bought from a nearby 7-Eleven) between songs and encouraging the crowd to “喝酒!” (“drink up”) after the cops left.
The show ended with an invitation for any punk women in the audience to join the band onstage for the appropriately named Punk Girl 朋克女孩. A few of them did, singing, bopping, and one even managing to crowd surf (an impressive effort given the lively, but sparse, Wednesday crowd).
Watching the show only made me wish I could understand their lyrics better, many of them projected behind them for crowd singalongs. Given the obvious restrictions on expression in mainland China, working around them and remaining a viable working band—while also maintaining a spirit of authentic rebellion—would require a deft writing touch and subtle understanding of lyrical nuance.
If only this damn Western mind had practiced its Mandarin characters when it lived in Taiwan more than a decade ago, it might have been able to comprehend those nuances a little better and perhaps even joined in said singalongs.