Glamorous Pharmacy
B10 Live, Shenzhen, China
Founded in 1996, Glamorous Pharmacy certainly knew how to make an impression on Beijing’s underground scene: at one of their early concerts they peed and shat and subsequently painted shit onto canvas. Their more socially acceptable outpourings include four albums that came out between 2002–08, since which time, on record at least, they fell into silence, though they periodically continued to perform live.
Indeed, last December Glamorous Pharmacy began a new tour called Interstellar Crooked Log. Subsequently documented on the live cassette Loud As Deadly Silence released by Shenzhen’s Old Heaven Books, they belatedly celebrated its February release with this early March concert at B10 Live, featuring original Glamorous Pharmacists Xiao He on vocals and guitar, bassist Ye Penggang, drummer Zheng Zhiyong, percussionist Zhang Wei and saxophonist Li Tieqiao.
The detached yet comforting melody of “Crooked Log” kicks in as the stage curtain opens, its title referencing the phrase once used to describe people who, having been abandoned by society, achieve transcendental happiness by living their own lives. True to the spirit of the song, Glamorous Pharmacy perform it without regret. Dressed in white and red outfits similar to the protective suits worn by medical workers, and attached together by coloured ropes, they’ve arrived at a calmer way of projecting madness, humour and absurdity than daubing shit.
One of my favourite GP songs, “Lao Liu”, is about an old man living alone who wraps a piece of fabric around his head and leaps to his death from the fifth floor. This piece originated in a news report, its text transformed directly into the lyrics. Musically, the soft tones of a glockenspiel sugarcoat an extremely bitter pill, as layered saxophones and percussion drive the drama’s atmospheric shifts and changes.
On this song and throughout their B10 set, Xiao He is a master performer, his seemingly easy and relaxing chants generating complicated feelings normally difficult to put into words. In the process he opens up enough time and space for both musicians and audience alike to emotionally engage with each other. At one performance way back in 2010, Xiao He seriously injured his feet when he jumped off a two metre high stage. He later declared he wanted to know what it felt like to jump off a building. At the time, suicides of poorly paid Shenzhen factory workers at Foxconn, the world’s largest contract manufacturer of electronics (mobile phones, tablets, etc), were on the rise due to their brutal working conditions. Xiao He himself went onto make some profound life changes. Now a vegetarian and a Buddhist, he travelled around China collecting old folk songs as well as writing his own – more peaceful and plainer than Glamorous Pharmacy’s – about nameless strangers.
As to the band, if Glamorous Pharmacy aren’t as wild and energetic as they used to be, it’s because their life force now comes from somewhere deeper, with Xiao He updating his lyrics and performances as time marches on. In “Missing Person’s Notice”, he adds to the song’s list of people who went missing in recent years, repeating their names, ages and addresses over and over again. “A Daoist From Lao Mountain” is about a man in search of immortality: is his quest fulfilled via the internet celebrity status acquired by reaching 100 million followers?
According to this tour’s promotional pages, the group’s medicines can be used for general ailments. Clearly, as their Shenzhen concert progresses, they might not offer any practical cures for your or my perceived sicknesses, but somehow most all of us feel a whole lot better after crawling in and out of the surreal spaces conjured by Glamorous Pharmacy.
Anla Li
美好药店
深圳B10现场
成立于1996年的美好药店知道如何给北京的地下场景留下深刻印记——在一次早期演出上，他们撒尿拉屎，把屎涂抹在画布上。2002年到2008年间出版的四张专辑是他们更能为社会所接受的表达。从那时起，至少从记录上来看，乐队陷入了沉寂，不过他们仍偶尔进行现场演出。
去年12月，美好药店开始了名为“星际废梁”（Interstellar Crooked Log）的新巡演。随后，他们的演出被记录在深圳旧天堂书店于今年2月发行的现场磁带《喧嚣的死寂》（Loud As Deadly Silence）中，并于3月初在B10现场举办新演出。演出阵容包括主唱、吉他手小河、贝斯手叶鹏罡、鼓手郑志勇、打击乐手张蔚和萨克斯手李铁桥。
随着舞台帷幕的拉开，《废梁》抽离却使人宽慰的旋律立即响起。歌名被用于描述被社会抛弃的人，他们通过选择自己的生活获得超脱的幸福。美好药店忠实于这首歌的精神，无怨无悔地演绎着。他们穿着防护服那样红白相间的服装，彩色绳索将彼此系在一起——他们抵达了一种比涂抹排泄物更平静的表演方式，得以在其中投射疯狂、幽默与荒诞。
《老刘》是我最喜欢的其中一首歌。它讲述的是一位独居老人用一块布包住头，从五楼跳下摔死的故事。这首歌源于一则新闻报道，报道文字直接转化为歌词。钢片琴的柔和音调为极其苦涩的药丸裹上了一层糖衣，层叠的萨克斯管乐和打击乐一波波推动着这场戏剧的氛围转化。在这首歌以及整场演出中，小河都是一位绝妙的表演者，他看似轻松惬意的吟唱，却能勾勒出通常难以用言语表达的复杂情感。在这个过程中，他为音乐家和观众开拓出足够的时空，让他们在情感上形成互动。在 2010年的一场演出中，小河从两米高的舞台上跳下，双脚严重受伤。他后来说，他想知道跳楼是什么感觉。当时，富士康是全球最大的电子产品（手机、平板电脑等）合同制造商，由于工作环境恶劣，工资微薄的深圳工厂工人自杀率不断上升。小河的生活也由此发生了影响深远的改变。现在，他是一名素食主义者和佛教徒，游走在中国各地收集古老的民谣，也为无名的陌生人创作歌曲。这些歌曲比美好药店的作品更平和、更朴实。
如果说美好药店不再像过去那样狂野和充满活力，那是因为他们的生命力来自更深处——小河随着时间的推移不断更新他的歌词和表演。在 《寻人启事》中，他在歌词中新增了近年来失踪人员的名单，一遍又一遍地重复他们的姓名、年龄和地址。《崂山道士》讲述的是一个追求长生不老的人的故事：如今，他的追求是否可以通过成为拥有一亿粉丝的网红来实现吗？
根据这次巡演的宣传页面，美好药店开具的药品属于全科。显然，随着深圳演出继续进行，他们可能无法为你我所感知到的疾病提供任何实际的治疗，然而在爬进又爬出经他们施法而得的超现实空间之后，我们中的大多数人都感觉好多了。
Anla Li
May 2024
First published on The Wire. Copyright © The Wire magazine.
