*** Happy Halloween I guess! You might have already gotten started with it this past weekend, because it's less a specific holiday than a general date range during which you feel extra entitled to get real, real drunk and wear questionable attire. It's also an excuse to get fake evil for a minute, cavort around in some kind of costume and let your id run a little freer for a night. Kind of a weird human thing, how when we put on masks the true self is expressed more clearly, and when we take them off we hide. Anyway! I'll recommend a bunch of fun Halloween parties for you. First a little mid-week gig shoutout. As Morgan already pointed out, Danish live electronics duo Crash & Compute (Emil de Waal + spejderrobot) is coming through town, for the third time I think, once again hosted by the discerning Antidote crew. Crash & Compute has made the Beijing venue rounds — to date they've played at Dada, XP, Temple, and Jianghu — and it will be interesting to see how their amorphous but still pretty bangin' live electronics + percussion set goes down at DDC. Head there tomorrow (Tuesday) night to find out. Gig info here. Also here's a video (of spejderrobot) that I find very inspiring, especially now as a drummer with a broken knee: So that's Tuesday at DDC. And here are some Friday night Halloween bacchanals, you fiend: *** First and foremost, there's Temple's annual Misfits tribute show, featuring, of course the Beijing Misfits. You know this one will be on point because it's pretty much Halloween every day at Temple with all the freak shit that goes down there. Also, the Misfits are one of the all-time greatest bands, definitely one of the top Fake Evil bands in human history. And the Beijing-ren covering their tunes are pretty solid as well. Here are some of my favorite Misfits jams just for the hell of it (heh), and also because I'm pretty depressed I won't be dressing up as Robo this year: Temple's Halloween rager also features Bad Mamasan doing a full set of Sabbath covers. Holy shit. This will get so heavy. Whenever Bad Mamasan plays they bring like a whole extra set of amps too. Hope your Halloween mask has built-in earplugs. On the Fake Evil spectrum of British rock, Black Sabbath is way more evil than Rolling Stones... For all their Church of Satan posing Jagger ultimately got spooked out by the cult stuff. Maybe less evil than all that Norwegian business but that came after, and who's gonna do a Burzum cover set? No, I'm really asking, that's where I'll be on Halloween. Here are some Sab classics: BJ Misfits + Sabbath are joined on Friday night by Devils at the Crossroad (naturally) and Bastards of Imperialism. Will get very sloppy. *** Meanwhile, downstairs... Black Eyeliner returns to Beijing for the first time in 314 days (they counted). The original trio behind Black Eyeliner, who ran the table on Fake Evil DJ parties for the first year+ Dada was open, has disbanded, but the brand's being kept alive by stalwart party monster and denizen of dark beats, Soundspade, who now lives in Shanghai. He's making the trip up for Friday night, and has enlisted a deep coterie of friends to help make it an especially nasty one. This combined with the Temple gig is the recipe for a perfect storm of escapist shenanigans at 206 Gulou. If I were you I'd dress as the Rocketeer this year so you'd have an escape plan for if when shit starts to go sideways... Here's some recent Soundspade to get you in the mood: *** Elsewhere in Halloweenish activities for Friday: the obligatory Rocky Horror Picture Show screening at Home Plate Sanlitun. I'm not gonna front like I know a single damn thing about Rocky Horror Picture Show. People seem to like it. Has some pretty rockin' tunes I think. Seems like Ziggy Stardust but with better costumes. I don't know. This one starts at 9:30pm and comes with "free prop bags"... show up early for those and to snag a good seat. Presumably those in RHPS drag will get preferential treatment. After the flick there's a "grunge cover band" called Bye Bye Kitty taking the stage. I was trying to think of the Fake Evilest grunge song and this was the best I could do: *** That'll do it. Of course there are plenty of other H-ween things going on over the weekend; browse the full list here. Forgot to mention the Yen Fetish party, but it doesn't really fit the theme because it's actually legit evil. We'll have tickets to that one available here soon!