The Funky Side Effects: Wu Kejia and his mates make blues wild

The breeze at 2 Kolegas is mixed with the smell of barbecue and fresh grass, with music echoing in the air. Wu Kejia, Checo and Morris are sitting quietly in a corner. Just a few minutes ago, their blues rock trio Wu & The Side Effects was smashing the stage with noisy riffs and grungy solos. Not exactly pure blues, but catchy rhythms nonetheless.

“We understand that blues is a system, which means every blues band sounds similar,” explains bassist Checo, who also fronts blues cover band Mr. Mojo and folk rock troupe Chocho Maldito. “However, you can put your motion into it, by bending notes, by making more distortion, by screaming in a different way and making pulses, whatever you might [think to] do.”

Ningxia native Wu Kejia is the lead vocalist and guitarist. Normally, he has a miserable expression on his face, perhaps because he’s full of dynamite. “Back when I met Checo, I had a punk band called Easygoing,” he says in a voice almost broken from the show. “My music wasn’t good enough, and his Chinese wasn’t good enough, but it just felt right when we started jamming.”

“And we both love beer,” he adds.

This launches Checo into a flash of nostalgia. “When I first met him,” he recalls, “he was like ‘Do you know this song?’ and I was like ‘F*ck, man! You know that song?’ … I realized this guy’s knowledge and understanding of blues is pretty cool, and I’m telling you as a real fan of the genre who lives right next to Texas.”

“I was originally a guitar player,” Checo says. “It was Wu Kejia who got me out of it, he opened my mind to being a bassist. That’s also the reason why we are called Wu & The Side Effects, because one thing we really want to be aware of as foreigners here is that in reality, it’s Wu’s music since he comes up with the main ideas of most of the songs. Seriously man, you got all these f*cking assholes out there and they are like ‘I’m here to teach China how to play!’. You can’t go to any country with that mentality. You learn from everything you do, and we learn from Wu.”

Compared to Wu and Checo, drummer Morris is relatively quiet – perhaps befitting of his German pedigree – but that doesn’t make him any tamer than his two bandmates. “I played in a lot of swing bands in Germany, and from that I got into ska,” says Morris. “I came to China three years ago and was introduced to these guys by [founder of 2 Kolegas] Liu Miao … The three of us really derive from different musical backgrounds, but we sort of have similar influences – like funk and blues.”

Cheers.

Beijing’s thriving music scene is starting to offer Wu & The Side Effects opportunities to make some magic happen. The band is fast approaching the release of their debut album – which will include not only the songs that usually make up their set, but also a remix CD which Morris (a former DJ) has been busying himself with. The second disc will feature the band’s songs against reggae beats and drum & bass instrumentals. “I remixed this one rockabilly song with a really slow reggae tune from Germany,” says Morris, for example. “I just hope everybody can get a different perception of what we are in the end.”

"I mean, sometimes we might play for a crowd of 5 people, it happens, 10 people at most," adds Checo. "The coolest thing is we catalyze each other. Not that we don't take in account of the audience’s reaction, but we understand that before you can infect the audience, you gotta infect yourself. "

"We all come from different continents," he continues. "Morris’ mother language is German, Wu Kejia’s is Chinese, and mine is fucking Spanish. We all not only really open to each other’s cultural backgrounds, which I think adds a lot to the music, but also to the fact that we all use a second language to communicate. That’s pretty cool, because in the end you live into a band that really comes from three continents together into one genre that already exists, it’s just the impression of a German, the impression of a Chinese and the impression of a Mexican."

“Last time we were in the studio and recorded for sixteen hours,” Wu Kejia starts to raise his voice. “What’s more importantly is after such a dreadful day, we still see the passion of rock n roll in each other’s eyes, then I was like ‘F*ck! It can’t got any more niubi than this!’ The thing is we are not counting on making money out of this band, we all have day jobs, Wu & The Side Effects is really all about what we want to do. All three of us have the spirit of rock n roll, that is not only we are friends, we are the band of brothers.”

And at three in the morning on the grass of 2 Kolegas, the weather's getting cold, the beer's feeling fresh, the music's getting louder as the streets get quiet, and the night is still feeling young...

Wu & The Side Effects performs at 2 Kolegas with the city's post punk heroes Re-TROS and the increasingly popular 24 Hours (RMB 50, RMB 40 for students. 10pm) on September 12 (Saturday).Then they makes all the way to D-22 on the same night to rock with Sichuan-based psychedelic rockers Proximity Butterfly and garage band Rolling Rolling (RMB 40, RMB 30 for students. 10pm).

On September 18 (Friday), they'll be back at 2 Kolegas for the "Sound of Ningxia" monthly series with long-stand folk rock mainstays Buyi, Nucleus (a grunge side of folk ensemble Lidong Band) and Proximity Butterfly (Free. 10pm).

Watch out for their debut album, set for release by early October.