Can it be true? The word is that The Beat Bandits - Shanghai's most hard working band, a la The Commitments - is calling time on their fledgling career. If you're the type to make more than one visit to Yuyintang, LoGO or Lune in a month, your chances of catching one of their sets on one of your nights out is extremely high. Flying the flag for Surf & 50s/60s Rock n Roll they simply do not disappoint.
But apparently tonight they will play their last show together as a group at Yuyintang, along with relative new-comers Battle Cattle, scene stalwarts Duck Fight Goose, Thee Phantom 5 & DJ BO - a fantastic line-up in itself. They will also be giving away copies of their FIRST and ONLY demo, so if you want to be able to tell your grandkids about this quality and band that rocked Shanghai for a couple of years back in the day, get yoursens down to YYT tonight, twist, jive and show some love for The Beat Bandits!
Here's what Toshi had to say about everything when we got in touch with him...
Toshi - "yeah,this weekend is the last 2 gigs for The Beat Bandits in Shanghai. We will break up after the Japan tour.
The reason - basically it follows what Misuzu wants, originally this band was formed for trying the surf/garage music that Misuzu wanted to do, but now The Beat Bandits as a band has too many musical elements - like 50s garage inst, 60s garage, mods, 60s Japanese, clasic surf, contemporaly cult surf etc etc! Misuzu now wants to just focus on cult surf/garage like our songs Logo Surf or Pharaoh Surf. He also wants to have a very stable band in Shanghai. As you know Simon (from the Instigation) will leave Shanghai and the Instigation's previous drummer suddenly had to move to Beijing. These things happen often in Shanghai, and it obviously influences the band and stops any real progress.
Misuzu and Rina will start their new band after the Japan tour so dont worry, there is still a garage band in shanghai!!"
Here's some Beat Banditry to get you in the mood, and if you've not seen them live before check out what our man Phil (RIP) made of them. Oh and if you definitely can't make it tonight then you could do worse than head to Lune tomorrow, they may well be hangin' around.
