Month: January 2021

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Bone-Soul Glory

For NYC-based Theme Magazine in 2006, I interviewed two prominent Chinese rock musicians who I had met while living in Beijing in 2000. One was XiaoRong, a popular punk rocker who, to my high-maintenance sensibilities, had the charisma of Bruce Lee. The other was Kaiser Kuo, an American-born pioneer of Chinese rock who had been a founding member of Tang Chao and was rumored to have brought the first guitar pedal to China.

Theme Magazine, Founded by Jiae Kim and John Lee. Edited by Rain Noe.

Here’s a link to a youtube of a performance of XiaoRong’s when he first emerged. It’s good to be reminded that these things were happening in China at the turn of the millennia:

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Love in the Time of Television

Theme Magazine, NYC. Founders: John Lee and Jiae Kim. Editor: Rain Noe
***disclaimer: as a feminist who has been sensitive to reactions of female readers, I need to point out that my Korean-American editor, who is brilliant but male, chose to add the word “slew” to the first sentence. I remember this clearly because I do not typically use that word. I’m sure I have the drafts to back this up. It is also notable that I was asked to write this article by my Korean-American editors-in-chief: very happy to do so, but I have detected some sensitivity in the responses of my readers. For example, I might not have chosen to highlight the quote that is enlarged; that was the editors-in-chief’s emphasis, as it’s a graphic design choice. Obviously there are a number of varying human characteristics described throughout the article according to the carefully-designed content of the tv shows, which I chose from among perhaps eight or so box-sets offered me by my editors-in-chief. I do believe my descriptions of the shows are very precise.