Omnipotent Youth Society (album)

Influenced by American rock band Blind Melon, The Nico was formed in Shijiazhuang, Hebei, China in 1996. The band was named after the daughter of Shannon Hoon, the lead vocalist of Blind Melon at the time.[5] The initial members were Ji Geng (Bass), Zhang Peidong (Drum), and Dong Yaqian (Guitar and lead vocalist). They considered of writing lyrics in English at first.[6] In 2000, Dong Yaqian suffered a serious depression after his childhood friend and classmate, Ji Geng went to the south of China for further study. After a month of accompanying Ji Geng's study, Dong Yaqian went to Qinhuangdao to recuperate for a while. During this period, Dong was practising the guitar all the time and composed the melody of “Qinhuangdao“. Cui Xudong, the guitarist, was thereafter added to the band in 2000. In 2001, Zhang Peidong, the drummer, left the band to pursue further study in Japan. After the new drummer, Xun Liang joined the band, The Nico officially changed its name into Omnipotent Youth Society under the suggestion of Ji at the end of the same year.[4][5] Ji wrote the lyrics of The Less Than Omnipotent Comedy in 2003, and it was the first successful try on lyrics by OYS.[6] In 2004, Xun and Cui left the band, and Ji went to Hebei Normal University for postgraduate study in English. By the year 2006, Dong returned to Shijiazhuang, and Ji returned to OYS. They recruited Feng Yuliang (Saxist), Lu Zhi (Cellist), and Shi Li (Trumpeter).[5] Since 2007, OYS started performing some of the songs in OYS (album) in live houses like Mao Live.[7][8]

Before the official recording of OYS started, some demos recorded by band members in 2003-2004 had already been spread widely on the internet.[3] The recording work officially started in 2008. Band members were reluctant to go to studios for the work, so they planned to finish the job at home, which brought lots of problems.[4] In the beginning, OYS had had a U-87 microphone and purchased Fender deluxe reverbs, but the results were not satisfying. They later realized it was essential to use microphone preamplifier and then spent 16,000 RMB to get one. With the new equipment, OYS finally finished the recording of electric guitar part of “Ten Thousand Hippies” and “Qinhuangdao”. Then the band found that their room was too small to guarantee the quality of drum track recording, so they gave up the idea of recording all the songs and turned to rearrange current works. Dong got to know about multitrack recorders later and asked friends to buy two of them on French websites. By the time OYS went to Beijing, they obtained some pre-owned acoustic boards to reform their recording room. They finished the recording of flute, acoustic guitar, and jazz drum tracks there. Then they returned to Shijiazhuang, used multi-track recorders to finish recording tracks of the trumpet, vocal, and bass. The recording was finally finished after the audio mix.[6]

While Ji wrote all the lyrics for the OYS album, Dong composed them. And the other members were responsible for the arrangement of parts of their own instruments.[4]

The first track, "The Hall of Dog's Urine", and the fifth song, "Summer Record of Foreign birds", are purely instrumental.

The second track, "The Non-omnipotent Comedy ", consists of only eight lines of lyrics throughout the song, and has a coda that accounts for the majority of the song's length. OYS released different versions of this song since, including an unplugged version, a pure playing version, and a trumpet-free version, which represent the traces of the band's experiment on music for almost six years.

The sixth track "Qinhuangdao" was composed by Dong when he was recuperating from depression in Qinhuangdao. Ji Geng's lyrics described Dong's depression at that time.[9][10][11]

The seventh track, "One Hundred Thousand Hippies" describes the characteristics of the younger generation and Dong, and sets Dong as the main character of the song.[6] For example, the lyrics "like to have a dog" and "Mr Dong, who dreamt a long dream " show the behaviours and characteristics that Dong had. The lyrics of this song not only have the harmonious nature of parallelism, but also interlaces long and short sentences.[4]

The eighth track, "All the Pubs on This Planet", is seen by some to have political implications, with lyrics such as "...singing only the love songs but seeing no tanks" and "All the pubs on This Planet..." which are believed to refer to 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. Ji Geng, the songwriter, admitted that he replaced the word "square" with "pub" to make "cruel" things "relatively romantic". The arrangements of this song feature many instruments: starting with a blues slide, proceeding with a solo of early-style-blues, and ending with guitar noise and free jazz.[11]

The ninth track, "Kill That Man from Shijiazhuang," has sparked a lot of speculation and discussion about the laid-off waves and plight of the transition led by Shijiazhuang bombings. However, Ji explained that the song was to describe a particular kind of family in during that period.[4]

In 2006, the mini-album “What are the Junkies up to?” was uploaded to the Internet, containing demos of "Kill That Man from Shijiazhuang", " The Non-omnipotent Comedy " and "Qinhuangdao", which were recorded by OYS between 2003 and 2004. Shi confirmed that a friend of the band uploaded it without the band's knowledge.[6] In 2007, a demo of the album " The Non-omnipotent Comedy (unplugged) " was released on Pocket Music Picks 01.[12]

Before the release of the official album, the band released several bootleg recordings while touring, including live versions of the album's tracks, such as " Omnipotent Youth Society @mao (2007)”, "Live at MAO Beijing 2008" (2008), "Live at MAO Beijing 2009" (2009), and "Live at SOHO 2010" (2010). These bootleg albums include live versions of "Kill That Man from Shijiazhuang", " The Non-omnipotent Comedy", "Qinhuangdao," "One Hundred Thousand Hippies," and "Big Block Smashing on the Chest" with some of the band's unpublished songs.[13][14][7][8]

The CD version of the official album was originally released on November 12, 2010, by the band themselves, and the signing was hosted at the Yuyintang bar.[15] This album has been issued three times by now. The first two editions are basically the same, and the third releases are printed on the back "third edition | March 2016".[16] In July 2011, the band released a CD version of the album in Taiwan independently.[17][18]

Li Guangping, from the Chinese Music Media Awards committee commented spoke highly of OYS: "(OYS) is the best dark horse in the end of this year. (OYS) features folk rock and unfamiliar melodies, leaping thoughts like poetry, dense, subtle, and twisting metaphors, young and lazy singing like moans. All these features let OYS stand out among a mass of rock bands which are struggling to survive. I love their profound and imagistic thinking, such as ' lived like this for 30 years; until the building collapsed!' it's so graphic and shocking."[19]

Ma Shifang, a Taiwan music critic also commented positively: "In just one night, you have conquered all Chinese music critics and become the saviors of Chinese rock music." [6]

"The band has miraculously presented a united front of aesthetic standards of rock music," said Zhang Xiaozhou, another music critic.[20]

Ifeng.com, Hebei:" In the context that Chinese rock music is gradually losing a say internationally, Wan Qing (an abbreviation of OYS) managed to restore people's faith in Chinese rock and roll, bringing back the initial feeling of being touched that rock fans once had.[21]
After its release, the album went popular with listeners and musicians from Taiwan,[22][6] and influenced the local music industry to some extent.[23]。[24] Many well-known singers have covered songs of OYS. Zhang Xuan covered "Qinhuangdao" [25] and "Kill That Man from Shijiazhuang,[26] Hebe Tien covered “One Hundred Thousand Hippies,[27][28] The indie rock band Lao Wang covered "Qinhuangdao" too.[29] The Taiwan band No Party for Caodong was referred to by some media as "Taipei OYS".[30][23]

The album won the Best Band Award at the 11th Chinese Music Media Awards and seven other nominations.[19][31]