Pool splashes, junk trips, roof top chill out, garden bbqs … all good ways to celebrate summer. Add to that summer sounds selected to set feet moving, and you have a great summer party.
Hong Kong Beat recently served up a 60 minute mix of Latin and tropical rhythms, with a dash of pop, from current chart releases, for a junk party, and can still taste the mojitos listening to this 🙂
90-ish minute live recorded set from a recent outdoor rooftop silent disco with Sound Off Experience at the FWD Max Passion Party, for a mostly 20s/30s aged Hong Kong crowd, so spinning a mix of current chart dance, as well as Korean and Chinese chart dance tunes from the past few years.
It was just getting lively but had to pull the mix to let the main event – local live band Supper Moment – get on to strut their very good stuff 🙂
Summer’s arrived in Hong Kong and many families return to their home country for holidays, or relocate for good. This means farewell parties for friends, especially at the end of school.
Hong Kong Beat mobile disco recently played a very special summer birthday/farewell party for two pre-teen sisters; a very special party that they will never forget, a silent disco on an open-topped tram, trundling through Hong Kong’s busy streets. 30 girls dancing and singing along at the top of their voices, to music in their headphones, created quite an experience for them, and for the people in the streets and passing trams!
So here’s the soundtrack to that fun trip, and here’s to great memories of iconic parties!
Yeah, I know it’s almost Christmas and freezing cold in many parts of the World, but it doesn’t matter how cold it is, a bit of cheesy-flavoured calypso, zouk and meringue party music will always get the sun smiling again.
This is an edited 1-hour set from a Caribbean-themed beach party, recorded during the limbo competition.
One of the great things about the Hong Kong night life scene is the number of bars offering live music by locally based and often part-time musicians, from folksie-blues rock and rollers at pub venues around Wanchai and LKF/SoHo, like The Wanch and Backstage, to local indie hip-hoppers, usually in almost “underground” or, at least, limited exposure venues hidden among the higher floors of commercial and residential buildings of Mongkok and other former industrial areas of Kowloon, providing a mix of their own music or remakes of old classics.
The jazz scene in particular is of a very high standard with traditional, Dixie and smooth jazz being offered by rolling acts at The Fringe and Grappa’s Cellar, and some very well known international acts love the scene in Hong Kong because it is so intimate. If you haven’t rubbed shoulders over a pint with Georgie Fame in between sets in a Hong Kong jazz bar, you must be living in a monastery!
In many of the more commercial bars though you will find many cover bands made up from highly accomplished Filipino musicians and singers, who often sound as good, if not better, than the originals, and covering everything from Black Eyed Peas to Nirvana in terms of commercial and style spread.
During the 90s, a group of friends and myself used to frequently hang out at Hong Kong’s Dusk Till Dawn bar, which had a rotation of two or three bands a night and was one of the best venues for these cover bands, especially with a happy-hour two-for-one deal from 6 to 10 pm, then again from 1am until closing, all with great live music throughout the night.
I put this 90s alternative rock and grunge set together as a tribute by the real acts to the wild nights in Dusk Till Dawn and the great music played by those cover bands.
For more info on Hong Kong’s great live music scene, pick up a copy of HK Magazine for free at any coffee shop or most bars/pubs, or go to their website.
For now, sit back and enjoy a little rock and rolling, 90s style, for Sunday Selection 🙂
Going back to the funky vinyl days and grabbing a few tunes from the front of the ‘sorted by artist’ crate.
Funky Friday brought to you by the letters A and B 🙂
There’s nothing like some thumping Latin dance tunes to get the feet moving, hips shaking, and put the heart into overdrive.
This is a 30ish minute set from a party in 2014 and, boy oh boy, did the ladies shake it 🙂
Aye caramba!
The 90s were looked on at the time as a decade that you either hated or loved the different directions that music was developing in.
R&B had gone down the road into hip hop and rap, inspired in turn by social dissatisfaction and gang culture; pop and disco had evolved into europop, house music and the rave culture inspired by new age thinking and, well, drugs; while rock music had gone dark and grungy, inspired by whatever demons rested in the minds of the musicians.
In the rock World however, there was still something of a melodic vein, and sometimes more ambient chilled sound coming from the indie/garage and alternative rockers, often fusing sounds of urban music, with folk, pop and hard rock to create new, fresh sounds.
Hong Kong Beat takes a listen to some of these tunes for a 90s alt rock chill-out.
Many people regard the 60s and 70s as the era of the great soul men – Wilson Pickett, the Reverend Al Green, Barry White, Marvin Gaye… And certainly it seemed that during the next couple of decades, R&B moved away from soulful tunes and voices in the main, although the advent of neo soul kept an undercurrent alive.
However the past 10 years or so has seen a resurgence in the popularity of great soul music with some new neo soul male artists, notably D’Angelo and of course John Legend, who’s voice seems to be popping up everywhere from his own albums, to Tarantino movies, to dance tunes, to hip-hop. But they are not alone in reviving the feeling that only a silky tenor or baritone can bring to a set of heart grabbing soulful lyrics.
So for Soulful Saturday this week, Hong Kong Beat presents a selection of some of the New Soul Men in the Millennium.
What’s going on, indeed.
The 90s brought a lot of change in music, in part due to the availability of electronic means of making music and, in a big part, the ability to sample old tracks. This was especially true in dance and R&B, where sampling older funk tracks in the 80s gave musical life to the street poetry of rappers.
R&B by the 90s had developed into several streams (rather than genres I would say), hip-hop/rap, new jack swing, neosoul, jazz-funk/soul-funk being what I would call the main streams.
Underlying all of these streams though were the funky rhythms and bass licks that the 90s R&B artists had grown up listening to with their parent’s music.
Here’s a little selection of funk infused 90s R&B tracks for Funky Friday.
Hong Kong Beat 