Puppet + 6501
B10 Live, Shenzhen, China
This is the first post-pandemic concert I’ve been to after three years of shutdown in China. Puppet and 6501 are from the northwesternmost autonomous region of Xinjiang. Where other Xinjiang artists have moved elsewhere in China – the rock group Shuh Tou to Dali, Yunnan, for example – Puppet and 6501 have stayed on in their hometown Ürümqi, some 4000 kilometres away from tonight’s venue in Shenzhen.
Both groups are led by guitarist and singer Feruh, who founded Puppet in 1991 and 6501 to mark a new start some 24 years later. As the puppet master pulling both bands’ strings, Feruh keeps a tight control over their song subjects and moods, what with their hints of mercy, doubt, sentimentality and chaos emerging from their generally tight rock guitar driven music. That said Puppet’s songs sometimes get very soft, while 6501’s sound colder and harder.
In 2015, Feruh named his new incarnation 6501 after the first four numbers of the Citizen Identity Number for Xinjiang’s capital Ürümqi. On their first album The End, the cover shows the back of a male statue playing an Uyghur rawap (string instrument) at the People’s Theatre of Xinjiang. The original statue and its female partner were destroyed and removed during the Cultural Revolution only to be repaired and rebuilt in 1981.
Feruh named his two bands’ current tour Ten Thousand Kilometres after Puppet’s 2022 album of the same name. Tonight at B10 Live, his plucked guitar strings open up a shifting invisible space that variously paces, prefaces or transitions Puppet/6501’s rock songs. In Puppet’s opening set his robotic mantra vocals unwind the narrative threads of his songs like an awakening snake through the group’s streams of steady and strong drum beats and variously romantic, cold or wild melodies. Feruh loads his lyrics with sheep, robots and television metaphors to tell his stories of pain, resistance and other life complications.
At the end of Puppet’s set, guitarist Guo Meng leaves the stage to the trio that also make up Feruh’s other band 6501, featuring himself again on guitar and vocals, Zhang Dong on bass and Xiao Fa on drums. On “You’re Absolutely Correct”, Feruh lazily, almost reluctantly intones “Yes, you’re absolutely correct” over and over, like he’s sighing his approval. In “Got Me On My Nerves” he reveals his true feelings through the line “Fancy, considerate, thoughtful, hypnotic, and surreal they appear, but they got me in my nerves” . These lyrics are translated from Chinese; in the original, his lyrics have fewer syllables than these translations, and come across angrier, more sarcastic and direct.
The Puppet album Ten Thousand Kilometres featured guest appearances from eight Chinese musicians, including Lao Lang, Lao Dan, Zhang Weiwei, Zhu Xiaolong, Wu Tun from the aforementioned Shuh Tou, Gao Hu from Miserable Faith, Zhao Tai from Mercader and Maotao from Wu Tiao Ren. At different stations of this tour Feruh extended invitations to various guests. In Shenzhen they’re joined by Maotao, on the Puppet songs “Late Seventies” and “Television”, Wu Tiao Ren’s own “Sad People” and 6501’s “Got Me On My Nerves”. If Feruh’s tone is characteristically restrained or sometimes repressed, the yelling and dancing Maotao sometimes comes across like a hysterical version of Feruh. By contrast, powered by Xiao Fa’s drum beats, on 6501’s “Got Me On My Nerves”, Feruh and Zhangdong’s comical closing chant “ba, ba, ba, ba, ba...” sounds like hope.
Anla Li
July 2023
First published on The Wire. Copyright © The Wire magazine.
