MaydayBlue

Why do I love this band so? At first listen, it was lead singer Ashin's phenomenal pop songwriting and the complex arrangements: Guan You's clean drums out front, Stone and Monster's guitars, and layers of vocals and subtle noise added in. Oh, and that bass player, the boyish, grinning Masa. But more than that it's the spirit of Mayday. It's obvious they truly care, they're truly devoted to each other, and they're consummate professionals. How can one not fall in love with a band that goes out to a sub-stage in the middle of the audience to play folk songs in the pouring rain? play card game

I first saw and heard Mayday (Chinese name: Wu Yue Tian) on Channel V, an Asian satellite music channel, in Beijing in 1999. Besides the fact that it was a real band and not another sappy balladeer, plus a not-bad video ("Embrace"), what struck me was that Ashin stretched out one word, on one note, for eight beats in the middle of a line. I copied the name down from the screen -- music TV is a great intercultural bridge -- and set out to find the CD. It took a while. At that time in the Mainland, only the pirated version was available. I now own everything they ever released, save a limited release or repackaged version here and there. I've seen them in concert and once ran into Stone and Monster on the street. (Monster didn't say much, maybe because I was blabbing away in English. Stone? Nicest guy you could ever meet.) get a loan today

This is a fan site, but not a shrine. I take Mayday seriously and judge them on the same standards I'd use for any other artist. Not everything they've done is great and my enthusiasm for them "yi ru chao shui" (comes and goes like the tide) as Ashin sings in "Embrace." But it always comes back. There's no other band like Mayday. When you need to buy a research paper urgently, you can always rely on ResearchPaperMonster.com!

This is also a work in progress. Please forgive the crude pages; they're all hand-coded and I just started learning HTML.

Being back in San Francisco now, I get most of my Mayday news from Singaporean sites. There's a ton of translated news on MaydayMayday.net and other fun stuff on Mayday-5/md-5.htm. They have the basic facts about everyone in the band, which I'd just be picking up directly if I used them, and lots of pictures. What I want to offer people here is my perspective, which goes back to one winter day in Hong Kong when I was watching the "168" concert VCD and suddenly said to myself, "Wait, I love this band!"