*** Gonna zoom in a bit today. Focus on punk and hardcore, as I like to do a few times a year. Cleans the cobwebs out. Too much base noise builds up ear wax. This weekend is Punk-It-Spring, a two-day mini-festival with a heavy emphasis on China's homegrown punk rock scene. Though it's only in its second annual edition, Punk-It-Spring has already sort of become the most legit punk festival in Beijing, eschewing as it does the corporate croneyism of the much longer-running annual Beijing Punk Festival, and adding a solid foundation of newer, younger bands in the roster alongside the heavyweight headliners. Will give you a little taste of Punk-It-Spring's highlights below. Also worth noting this week is the yearly visit from Hong Kong's King Lychee, standard bearers of the growing Chinese Hardcore scene. They're at Mao Livehouse on Saturday, putting a close to their 15th anniversary tour through the Mainland. *** Let's start with the one international band on the table: Jet Boys from Japan, who will headline night one of Punk-It-Spring on Friday, April 10. This is really big for the local bands playing, as JET BOYS have been one of the main inspirations for Beijing's particular band of green-gilled drunk punk debauch. The core of the band was forged in the late '80s, but it wasn't until the '90s that Jet Boys — on the strength of frequent live shows, often involving full frontal nudity, "milk showers and daikon grating action" — started to gain international attention alongside likeminded contemporaries Guitar Wolf and the 5678's (yeah, the band from Kill Bill). Jet Boys' specific variety of on-stage meltdown has been the most deeply felt here, though. See The Diders for an example of hardcore local acolytes. (Not coincidentally, Diders are also playing Punk-It-Spring on Friday, and launching into a full China tour with Jet Boys after the fest.) Here's a sample: *** Wu Wei, SMZB The other big headliner on Friday is Wuhan's SMZB, maybe the oldest still-active punk band in China. They're coming up on 20 years, damn. SMZB is also the most blatantly political punk band in China, not sure how they get away with it. Frontman Wu Wei's phones are tapped. Nevertheless, the band has persisted for nearly two decades, earlier this year completing a massive round of the Mainland to release their most pointed statement yet, A Letter From China: SMZB's made it to Beijing fairly regularly over the last few years, and it's always a riot. Expect a jammed house by the time they take the stage. Plenty to get into before these two, as well. Opening sets on Friday from some of Beijing's finest punk outfits, old and new, including Zankou, Gum Bleed, Diders, Bastards of Imperialism, and LaiSee. Here's a quick shot of LaiSee live at Punk-It-Spring's incubator, School Bar: *** Lu Chen, Top Floor Circus Day 2 of Punk-It-Spring casts the net wide throughout China. Headliner is Top Floor Circus, the wildest act out of Shanghai. Top Floor Circus is known for their genre-bending stage act, which combines Shanghainese cross-talk with lounge tunes, often costumes, even more often costumes being systematically stripped off by their singularly unhinged frontman Lu Chen. Though their music hasn't been stylistically "punk" since the band's earliest days, Lu Chen's attitude is defiant, aggressively individualistic, borderline anti-authoritarian. In an interview with ChinaFile a few years back, Lu Chen says of the band's shifting musical output: When we first started, we wanted to make experimental music. Then we became a punk band. Now we don’t mind being a pop band. We want our music to be more accessible and enjoyable so that people can find agreement with our artistic perspectives through enjoying our music. Nowadays when we perform, the audience no longer bitterly shouts “You guys are hooligans!” Instead, they cheerfully laugh at us and yell: “Haha, you guys are hooligans!” Here's where they were at about a year ago: Top Floor Circus rarely makes it up to Beijing — think the last time they came was over two years ago. They always bring a diehard core audience, despite the fact that most of their Beijing fans can't understand a word Lu Chen says. Expect a unique stage show, even if you also can't understand any of the dialogue. Closest comparison I guess would be to Beijing's Secondhand Rose — Top Floor Circus offers a comparable admix of accessible tunes and grandiose stage theatrics. On Saturday, Top Floor Circus is joined by a strong bill of Chinese punk from around the land: The Last Choice (Changsha), Accidental Collision (Chongqing), Banana Peel (Guilin), Dirty Fingers (Shanghai), Green Tea Bitches (Jinan), plus Sharp Pills and Human Centipede holding down Beijing. It was a tough decision, but I had to land on Dirty Fingers as the best band name of the lot. Here's a video of them raging Shanghai's Inferno last month: *** Last up, for something a bit harder/faster: King Lychee on Saturday at Mao. King Lychee is China's longest-running hardcore band, just finishing their 15th lap around the sun with a two-week China tour ending in Beijing. Though they've been fighting the fight in Hong Kong, their largest fan base lies in Beijing, where they headline the annual CNHC (China Hardcore) festival. Tonight's all about them, though, as they celebrate lasting this long in HK's suffocatingly superficial music scene. King Lychee frontman Riz Farooqi is a testament to durability on that front, most recently launching UniteAsia.org, a blog and online community aiming to bring together likewise marginalized punk and metal scenes throughout the region. Here's King Lychee's contribution to Rock in China (RIP)'s Core in China comp to take us out: *** RECAP: Punk-It-Spring = FRI + SAT April 10-11 @ Snake Livehouse King Lychee = SAT April 11 @ Mao Livehouse