There are two places where a cigar can be considered inappropriate. One involves Monica Lewinsky, the other is a rock concert. I'll come back to that.
The Purple Jehovah's Witness (PJW) played last night to kick off
Gweilo Fest, Hong Kong's attempt to waste taxpayers' money just like the mainland did with their space launch. Sure it isn't on the same scale but it is a lot more useless as well.
I met Mrs M at Pacific Place, the most expensive shopping mall in the world. We ate a quick dinner, chatted with some friends, then joined the rest of Hong Kong's Gweilo population and headed over to the Tamar site. This site is by day a vacant lot, used as a parking lot before it eventually achieves its destiny of becoming another monolithic skyscraper, this one acting as the central Government offices. That's not until 2008 or so and in the meantime they need to do something with it.
We approached via a covered walkway which had been featured in the SCMP (the world's worst newspaper) in an article describing the best places to watch the concert without paying. It turns out the local constabulary read the SCMP because there were cops and barricades to prevent those freeloaders who thought they could get away with staring at the back of a grandstand and hearing the music.
The crowd was varied. There were bankers, lawyers, even a smattering of accountants. There were Brits, Americans, Aussies and I even detected a few South Africans. A few token locals were there too, but obviously they were a ploy by the local TV networks so they would have someone to interview post-concert. Security was lax, which is interesting because a bomb or some such would have decimated the finance and legal industry in this city. The venue itself was well laid out with big walkways, a big drink/food stand and an even bigger merchandising stand.
Mrs M and I made a quick pit-stop at a corporate box, with enough time to gulp down a drink and have a pee in the "VIP" (read non-stinking) toilets. Sure we were missing some Canto-pop princess trying to whip the crowd up with some lamentable covers, but that is the sacrifice we made. We made our way to our seats, which were surprisingly good given we bought them 2 days ago. The night was clear and reasonably mild so it all seemed to be coming together nicely. We sat and waited for the PJW to start. Behind us there were plenty of empty seats but looking out there were many eager faces ready to dance.
After ten minutes of blackness a lady appeared on stage and played some free-form jazz for another ten minutes or so. The crowd started off clapping and cheering, but after a couple of minutes there was plenty of staring around wondering if we had landed in the wrong concert. Eventually PJW made it onto the stage, gave the obligatory "Hello Hong Kong" and kicked off with "Let's Go Crazy". Sure he forgot to mention that huge sum he was being paid for this one-off, but the crowd no longer cared. Sure he wasn't wearing purple, but it seemed he was going to do all the old numbers everyone knew the words to and none of the new stuff that no one had heard since he changed his name forty two times.
Around this time some unmistakable aromas wafted past us. The sweet smell of the "wacky weed" of course, but also the pungent scent of a Cuban. This was 5 minutes into a 2 hour concert. The ladies in front of us soon moved to some of the vacant seats further up from us, leaving us fully exposed to this loser's poor timing, pathetic dancing and obnoxious cigar smoking. To distract us there was a woman two rows down who was from the epilepsy school of dancing, and then a bunch of
wbankers in front high fiving every few minutes and yelling at each how much fun they must be having.
Unfortunately though the PJW had mislead everyone. A short version of "When Doves Cry" was followed by 30 minutes of his "jazz phase", which mixed some appropriately boogy-ish style songs with some nice stretches of musician-ship. But the crowd hadn't paid for a demonstration of scale manipulation, they wanted the good songs. "Sign of the Times" and "Nothing Compares to You" were sprinkled between the lesser known stuff, and the PJW did his best to keep the crowd going, with plenty of handclaps, sing-a-longs and the bouncing up and down thing. He knew that if said "Hong Kong" he was guaranteed a cheer, so he said it five times. I asked Mrs M if he was just checking where he was, or was it part of his contract to mention the city a set number of times? The obligatory finale (why do rock acts persist with this cliche?) was "Purple Rain", a good song but not one that has you tapping your foot all the way home.
Overall I'd rate it 7/10. The good parts were good, the bad parts were few and far between but there were definitely in between parts that were just that. The pacing was off and the song mix was not well thought out. That said the crowd had a good time and I walked away thinking it had been a good, fun way to spend an evening. The atmosphere was good, the venue was perfect. If nothing else Mr. PJW is a good showman. I was sitting at the end rather than on my feet yelling for more, but had done my fair share of shimmying with Mrs M.
Yes the whole thing is a waste of money. Yes it mostly benefits the expats rather than the greater population of Hong Kong. There are not many local stars on the menu, but local starts only appeal to 95% of Hong Kong and Guandong's population of 150 million, whereas this is meant to appeal to...well, I'm not really sure who to. The festival rationale is to put HK back on the map post SARS, but paying a bunch of Western rock stars and geriatrics to come here is not going to make Mr and Mrs Average American say, "You know honey, if the Stones think HK is OK, why don't we go there for a week too?"
All that said, it was so flippin' loud I think most of HK heard the concert last night anyway. So while 6.99 million people subsided 10,000 of us to hear the PJW they got to hear some of it too. And it pushed that flippin' astronaunt off the front of the Communist Party's paper in Hong, the South China Morning Post. Money well spent.
