• Home
• About
• Music
  • Interviews
  • Featured Artists
  • Editor’s Picks
  • Sizzling CDs
  • Press Releases
• Columns
  • Bambi Monroe
  • Dirty Jenny : Jen Leigh
  • Rebecca Kane
  • Tanya T6
• Store
• Networking
• Archives
  • Past Articles
  • Grrrls@nite
    • Grrrls Bios
    • US
      • sanfrancisco@nite
      • detroit@nite
      • NYrox@nite
      • LA@nite
      • newyork@nite
      • orangecounty@nite
      • boston@nite
      • philly@nite
      • nashville@nite
    • International
      • argentina@nite
      • budapest@nite
      • scotland@nite
      • munich@nite
      • sweden@nite
      • germany@nite
      • australia@nite
      • london@nite
      • tokyo@nite
      • hongkong@nite
      • calgary@nite
      • spain@nite
• More
  • Contests
• Contact

Hi! BBChris here! Going to be writing about Hong Kong’s music scene for coolgrrrls.com. I’m a musician – singer & guitarist & song-writer – in a few bands – Sisters of Sharon & Thinking Out Loud & Smoking Monkeys. Hong Kong is a tiny place on the south coast of China which until 1997 was a British Colony – which explains my British accent….. It’s 97% Chinese here. And quite conservative which is cool cause it’s quite easy to be different and alternative here – I get a lot of stares for having tattoos & multi-colour hair, nothing to do with my weird dress sense of course! Hahaha I also laugh a lot and have a very positive attitude to music and life in general….

I’m heavily influenced by pop music, grunge music and nu-metal sounds yet have a heavily varied CD collection. I HAVE to listen to music as I truly enjoy it PLUS I co-run a publishing company…. I’ll tell you more about that next time I write!

What’s happening in the Hong Kong music scene? Well currently everyone is getting excited as a big music Festival is being planned with at least one whole day of music – it’s all in aid of charity. Believe it or not but Hong Kong doesn’t have any festival equivalent to “Glastonbury/Woodstock/Fuji Rock Festival”. For a world city, it’s ABOUT TIME! One of the bands I’m in “Thinking Out Loud” is very likely to be performing. I’ll let you know when more details are confirmed. Oh it’s called the “Pearl River Festival”!!

Currently, with “Thinking Out Loud” we’re playing the Hard Rock Café every Sunday which is kind of cool. We get free food and their veggie burgers are pretty good! Other good live music venues here are the Fringe Club, 48th Street Chicago Blues and The Wanch. The last gig I saw at the Fringe Club was Pong Nan who’s a songwriter to the Canto-pop stars, he’s a fantastic pianist and has a sexy song to boot. We’re there on the 8th of March – really looking forward to it as we always have a good crowd who comes down to watch and cheer. Also watched my friend Debbie Mannas’ band at the Wanch – they’re called “Heisha”, they were rocking the house. Debbie is a very attractive lady – shame I got so drunk I didn’t take a photo of Debbie & the band… Still there is one photo of the two of us

The Rolling Stones are coming to town (for the FIRST time!) and are playing over the last weekend of March – same weekend as the Rugby Sevens. We’re calling it the “Keith Richards Deathwatch tour” hahaha only cause no one seems to know what the tour is called!! Some of the oldsters here are excited about Cliff Richard coming to town, he’s been here before…. Apparently I saw him when I was in my mothers womb…

I’ve been having a Cantonese guitar competition online – seeing if guitarists from all over the world can make their guitar speak the phrase “I kick your ass on guitar with the two middle fingers of my left hand taped to my palm with duct tape” in Cantonese. I’ll be going back on Hong Kong’s Radio 3 (Pierre Tremblay’s Planet World show) beginning of next month to announce the winner. It’s been amazing listening to how creative people can be!

Oh a couple of weeks ago I bumped into Melvis Chan – he’s the Hong Kong Elvis (the only one) and also happens to be President of the Hong Kong Elvis Fan Club. I was delighted to get my photo with him and then when I got the camera back and turned around to talk to him, I discovered that “Melvis had left the alley……”

Got to take my acoustic guitar to Sam Pleitgen – he’s definitely the best in town for over-hauling guitars, producing/mixing songs – a multi-talented guy who’s also an awesome bass player. He runs the company Sound Advice plus he’s worked with some big names (recorded UB40, Sting etc.) and has my utmost respect. I lost the knob at the end of my acoustic guitar so I can’t put a strap on it. It’s been suggested that I play an acoustic on some of the songs for Thinking Out Loud to give our music an added dimension… Plus I have this peculiar habit of strapping it on me and then walking round the outlying island I live on, serenading everyone along the way…. *sigh* what my friends have to put up with……..