Interview with Damian of Fucked Up

By , 2010年 8月 8日

Listen to Fucked Up while you read:

Image courtesy Dai Cheng

Canadian hardcore band Fucked Up played a handful of China shows last March as part of a larger tour in Asia. I missed them by a few months, so I was curious to learn how their experience setting up shows and playing in China compared with some US hardcore bands I’ve seen come over in the last year.

Damian, the singer of Fucked Up, obliged my questions and shared his perspective on why shows in China felt more “like home” than Japan, some of the standout Chinese bands he encountered, and a few pointers for foreign bands considering making the trek out to the Mainland.

pangbianr: How did the idea/proposal to play in China first come up? Who booked your shows?

Fucked Up: We were contacted by this great guy called Abe. He told us we should come over and he would set it all up for us. We had been approached before by some other people about going over but it always fell through because of our name. Abe had brought bands over before using just tourist visas so the name would not be an issue. Around the same time a guy named Dan contacted us. So we got Dan and Abe to start working on it together. We then got a crazy good offer to play a show in Japan so we decided to use some of the money from that to fund the China tour (because we knew we would not be making money in China). We took a boat from Osaka to Shanghai and pretended to be backpacking our way through Asia. We have a Gibson sponsorship so we can borrow guitars from them when we go different places so we got them to lend us some guitars but apart from that it was really DIY.

pbr: Where all did you play in China? Beijing, Wuhan, Shanghai… anywhere else? What was the best show?

FU: Nanjing and Changsha. We had a day off in almost every city so we got to explore a little. Shanghai was the biggest and the rowdiest but I can’t say that that really counts because we were playing mainly to foreign people and not a lot of Chinese people. Wuhan was a ton of fun… actually all of them were fun… except Nanjing which was weird. People for the most part were just so unjaded by the whole thing which made it seem far more rewarding than most of the shows we play.

“People for the most part were just so unjaded by the whole thing which made it seem far more rewarding than most of the shows we play.”


pbr: Who did you play with? Did any Chinese bands stand out?

FU: Speak Chinese or Die were great and I can’t remeber the name of the band but we played with a rad band in Changsha. They were going for a modern screamo/emo/Thrice thing but to me they came of like a rad 90’s Ebullition band.

pbr: How was the turnout? Did kids seem to know the music? Regardless, did they get into it? Were the shows crowded?

FU: The turn outs really varied. Nanjing was like 50 people… most of which did not care and Shanghai was 300 or so. As I said though, with the exception of Nanjing, all the shows felt really awesome to play. For the most no one knew our music but they did get into the show.

pbr: What did you do while in China? Tourist sight-seeing type stuff or just stick to the road? Was there anything you wished you could have done/expected to do that you didn’t get to?

FU: There is tons I would have liked to have done. My wife was 8 months pregnant at the time so I split as soon as tour was over while the rest of the band got to hang out a bit and see the sights in Shanghai. That being said as I mentioned before, because we knew we weren’t going to be breaking even on the tour we treated it like a mini vacation and had some time to see things: various Wats, museums, Mao’s body, the Forbidden City, etc.

Read about FU’s China shows on Fucked Up’s blog

pbr: What were your expectations of traveling and playing in china? What was the most surprising thing? What was the least surprising thing (ie what most conformed with your expectations)?

FU: We were all terrified. I think the most surprising thing for us was how similar the kids that go to shows were to the kids that go to shows anywhere. I think we all thought it was going to be rooms of kids waving little Red books at us (which was based entirely on nothing). But coming from Japan where everything was so different to what we were used to, China felt kinda like home by comparison in so far as you hang out with kids from the show after the show and go get food or just hang out.

“I think the most surprising thing for us was how similar the kids that go to shows were to the kids that go to shows anywhere.”


pbr: When I ask Chinese friends if they have heard of Fucked Up they say “yeah they played here, they’re with Matador Records.” There seems to be a lot of name association like that going on here and less awareness of underground bands, especially foreign hardcore bands. Do you think that it was necessary for you to obtain a higher “profile” before touring in China became a possibility?

FU: It is hard to say. I mean in Beijing and Shanghai it mattered because there were people there to see us but at the other shows I got the impression that people were there for the most part to see a band from the other side of the world.

pbr: Might you play in china again?

FU: We all really want to. We loved it there. We are talking about going for longer this time and try and make it further out into country.

pbr: What would you say to a band considering coming to China? Logistics, cultural preparation, advice, warnings, “don’t go”, etc…

FU: I would say do it. I mean don’t expect to make money in any big way but it was a 100% worthwhile experience. I would also warn vegetarians to prepare to eat a lot of rice and Chinese broccoli.

pbr: What was the most difficult part of the process for Fucked Up touring China?

FU: For us it was the fear of “sneaking” in. Every year the Canadian government brings bands over to play a Canadian festival (because of our name and lyrics we would never qualify for it). So every band we talked to about going over had done it this way so it was not a lot of help to us. It wasn’t until we talked to DOA, who had snuck in, that we calmed our fears a bit.

Fucked Up at Northside Festival in Brooklyn, June 2010. Photo courtesy Nic Daughtry

pbr: Any good miscellaneous China stories you want to share?

FU: We ate deep fried bees one night and I had my photo taken by some street merchants because they thought it was hilarious how low I wore my pants. Actually a ton of people took photos with me because I was so weird looking to them.

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