Shanghai 5

Shanghai 5 just reached #39 on the CMJ singles chart.
http://i70.photobucket.com/albums/i88/shanghai5/CMJ-Shanghai-5-39.jpg

Team Clermont (The Strokes, Franz Ferdinand, White Stripes, Wilco, REM) is currently doing a 300 station radio push. Shanghai 5 has just charted 18th best radio add on CMJ, and is on rotation in 42 college markets.
http://www.teamclermont.com/index_site.html
http://teamclermont.com/mediakits/shanghai5_mediakit.html

Stations reporting added airplay and rotation the week of 12-1-05
WRCT - Pittsburgh, PA
KCUR - Kansas City, MO
KAFM - Grand Junction, CO(A)
KBVR - Corvallis, OR
KMSC-2 - Sioux City, IA
KTAI - Kingsville, TX
KUMM - Morris, MN
KUNI - Cedar Falls, IA
WAWL - Chattanooga, TN
WBIM - Bridgewater, MA
WCWM - Williamsburg, VA
WFDU FM - Teaneck, NJ
WHRV - Norfolk, VA
WRST - Oshkosh, WI
WSJU - Jamaica, NY
WUCR - Cranford, NJ
WXJM - Harrisonburg, VA
KHNS - Haines, AK
KBBI - Homer, AK
and
KERA - Dallas, TX
KDGE - Dallas, TX
Total airplay 42 stations

http://www.teamclermont.com/index_site.html
http://teamclermont.com/mediakits/shanghai5_mediakit.html
- press release

Man, I wish they'd had Roadtrip Nation in 1997, when I was fresh out of college and wondering what to do with myself. My roommate and I were scraping by from paycheck to paycheck with entry-level office jobs, and student loan payments on our overpriced educations hadn't even kicked in yet. There was a drastic disconnect between the glamorous grown-up lives we'd imagined -- Music! Art! Fashion! -- and the mundane reality of living on ramen noodles and catching the bus to punch a time clock. We felt so confused about the future that we actually consulted with a Magic Eightball on a regular basis.
Then eventually somebody invented the term "quarter-life crisis," and even wrote a book about it. I simultaneously sighed in relief and smacked myself for not coming up with it first.

Several years ago, a group of recent grads faced the same kind of existential drama but dealt with it by hopping in a van, driving 15,000 miles around the country for three months, and videotaping interviews with a ton of influential people about how they got to where they are in life. Roadtrip Nation: The Open Road was born. The 2001 documentary spawned a book two years later, and now it's a PBS series that follows different teams of young people around the country.

So if you're searching for the meaning of life, you can actually apply for a grant from Roadtrip Nation and they'll help subsidize your wanderlust with a few hundred dollars. It's a pretty cool idea in general -- the variety of current projects spans from "Understanding Activists on the Arizona Border" to "Adult Film Industry Exposed" -- but what's especially interesting is how an indie band from Dallas, Texas, is working as a Roadtrip documentary team while on tour. It's DIY multitasking at its finest, and a novel idea to boot. (Phoenix bands need to get in on this!)

I met Shanghai 5 last week when they were at the Trunk Space, part of a lineup that included L.A.'s Voodoo Organist (which was touring for the first time with two drummers), and Bikeula, a noisy, fun new band with Eli Kuner and Tom Filardo from Asleep in the Sea and Eddy Crichton and Greg Campanile from Reindeer Tiger Team. The fire-eating, glass-crunching, wisecracking Steve Strange, Phoenix's one-man freak show, was master of ceremonies. (He was hilarious, although the funniest thing about his appearance was when he was stroking his bare torso with a flaming wand and a dude from the audience blurted out, "So much for the happy trail!")

Phoenix was Shanghai 5's first stop on an itinerary that's taking them to the major cities in California, plus Denver, Austin, and New Orleans. According to lanky, dark-haired Reid Robinson, who plays laptop and keyboard, they booked the entire thing themselves, focusing on playing shows at small art spaces instead of bars.

"We didn't want to get bored on the road, and this is a good way to meet people," he told me out in the parking lot, while the Catorce improv group was performing inside.

"Yeah, it does double duty," added front woman Amy Curnow, a petite, tattooed gal with punky blond streaks in her hair and a soft Texas accent.

They've had no problem getting the two-year-old band's music out there; Robinson described it as "somewhere between the Velvet Underground and a circus dirge, with a little electronica" (I'll add that there's a heavy dose of lounge exotica). He mentioned that a song from their self-released album Under a Tent, Under a Full Moon recently made it to number 39 on the CMJ singles chart, and I think this tour is sure to raise their profile even more when the Roadtrip Nation episode airs in August. Shanghai 5's project is called "Alternative America: The Revolution Never Ended!"; according to their mission statement online, they're "interviewing people on the fringe of music, writing, art, and digital convergence," along with various quirky characters they meet.

A project like this could easily go awry -- I mean, you can make any place look interesting or awful, depending on how you edit the footage -- but from what the band members told me about their encounters so far, I believe they'll do justice to our scene. In the space of one day, they hit up a Who's Who of the downtown arts community, with a few pols in there for good measure: Phoenix City Councilman Tom Simplot; mixed-media artist Susan Copeland; musician Donald Martinez, who runs the brilliant local music site TheShizz.org; John McKay, owner of Suitcase Recordings; actor/playwright Chris Danowski from Theatre in My Basement; and Gregory Sale from Arizona Commission on the Arts, among others. JRC and Stephanie Carrico, owners of the Trunk Space, gave them a generous number of referrals.

Everyone got equal time to answer the same basic set of questions about how they found their paths in life, and how they may have resisted pressure to conform.

Curnow said that one thing a lot of their subjects mentioned was gentrification. They're all worried about how it will affe - Phoenix New Times

With their smooth soundscapes, as tasteful and well-tended as a Japanese garden, Shanghai 5 seems like a band comfortable in the background. After all, their normal haunts are lounge and jazz venues. Their sound is a pretty fixture that regularly adorns sophisticated evenings at Sambuca and the Dallas Museum of Art. So it was jarring to see this local quintet in the Knox-Henderson Apple Store last Friday afternoon--unavoidable, a little shy and more than a bit out of place. The unconventional in-store also served as a kind of tech demonstration; between original songs from the group's new album, Under the Tent, keyboardist and programmer Reid Robinson delivered what were clearly off-the-cuff descriptions about the computer program Reason, which he uses via his PowerBook for various instrumentals and vocals during live shows. This wasn't the easiest gig in town--during the band's first song, the Apple Store's house music played simultaneously, and always there was the patter of salespeople and somewhat baffled customers to contend with. But vocalist Amy Curnow still charmed the confused crowd with lovely, pristine vocals. The band surely cut loose more that night at Double Wide, where its packed CD release included naughty burlesque dancers. - Dallas Observer

So last Friday at What?Bar, I was doin’ my broadcastin’ thing….sort of zoned-out, in my own little Cindy-world, when Jerry popped in a song that snapped me to attention.

A quirky little song with lead vocals of the knock-your-socks-off vein…dayum fine stuff. So I pounced upon the songstress, one Ms. Amy Curnow and demanded to know more.

I’m now a card-carrying Shanghai 5 fan…therefore I’ll follow them around like a puppy-dog begging for more, more, more! - texasgigs.com

Shanghai 5 seems like a colorful gang. Their music is rich and varied and the country-ish opener "Your Drama" is a lovely song. The playful cover of the Cars "Just what I Needed" sees singer Amy Curnow sounding spiteful and sweet at once. "Dead Man in a Hotel Room" details a suicide in a cheerful musical setting. Curnow resembles Erin McKeown in her wide-eyed vocal and even whistles. The dreamy "Truckstop" proves again that the band can't be pigeonholed. They are fascinating whatever they do and they do it well.
-Anna Maria Stjärnell
http://lunakafe.com/moon115/ustx115.php - lunakafe.com

PBS ‘Roadtrip Nation’ has selected Shanghai 5 to be a 'team’ on the documentary travelogue. They will interview people doing amazing things in education, entertainment, and art, as well as document various characters on the tour. It will be a daring challenge for the band to shoot, write, coordinate, and then perform a show.
http://roadtripnation.com/trip/100/ - press release

After getting back from a successful time at SXSW, Shanghai 5 played the DIFFA-Dallas Party with Erykah Badu and friends.
They auctioned a private Shanghai 5 performance with David Nelson's designer jacket for a final bid of $10,500 going directly to AIDS/HIV research and care. The bid was stalling at $9,000, so S5 jumped up-stage, offering DJ and sound, with the auction package.
The party was a big success with around 4,000 people in attendance. Erykah's performance was great, with upright bass, horn section, percussion, and two guitar players.
The entire show was over-the-top with fandancers, fashion show, giant screens, and a killer sound system/light show.
DIFFA has raised over $31 million in the last 20 years. - Press Release

I've only been here for a couple weeks. I'm not gonna purport to know what's wrong with Deep Ellum, nor am I daring to predict a Deep Ellum comeback, nor am I qualified yet to offer up a suggestion of what song, what band, what whatever might be a potential catalyst to a rock resurgence. It could be Shanghai 5's gorgeous "Wheel of Fortune," which spotlights singer Amy Curnow's soaring, bluesy vocals, a song that sounds like what Heart should have evolved into, psychedelic and swaggering and lyric. Or it could be PPT's intelligent funkiness, hip-hop that is what De La Soul would be if they cared anymore, from a group that, as FineLineLive.com's Amanda Newman put it, "can really get a room full of crackers movin'."

http://www.dallasobserver.com/Issues/2006-10-05/music/isthison.html - Dallas Observer

Shanghai 5 doesn't belong here. Not in this city, not in this time. While the fiercely original jazz/rock/vaudeville act may have some modern influences, the members would be as much at home playing a Depression-era traveling circus.
The band not only calls Dallas home, but it is active in the music and arts community. The group has been asked to design a jacket for the next DIFFA (Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS) fundraiser. Their songs also are featured on the PBS show Roadtrip Nation, which airs in November.
The group is waiting to record a follow up to its last album, Under A Tent, Under The Full Moon, and playing local shows. Here's more from its frontwoman, tattooed chanteuse Amy Curnow:
http://www.quickdfw.com/poplife/weekendq/localtracks/stories/DN-pop--shanghai_28ick.ART.State.Edition1.3eca4c1.html - Dallas Morning News/Quick

Ironically, Shanghai 5 is in the process of finishing up their latest record with Earl Harvin in the producer's seat...Earl Harvin, the winner of a bajillion Best Jazz DOMAs, including last year's (at which point he was officially retired from the ballot). Reid Robinson, the angular and tree-tall Shanghai-ster, is hesitant to describe the sound of the new recorded effort for a lack of satisfactory words, but mention of the collaboration with Harvin plays to the band's "all together" style enough.

Robinson asserts that Shanghai 5's forte is really putting on and performing in variety shows. "We do better when we collaborate with people," he says. "It makes our energy better, and it's really more about the whole show than about an individual act. Those are the shows we love to have." The band has worked often with hip-hop outfit PPT, played with the odd-duck Trachtenberg Family Slideshow Players and was featured on PBS' Roadtrip Nation. They dig activist events for the sheer challenge of turning what could be an uncomfortable situation into an entertaining but meaningful occasion. Hell, they even collaborated with designer Lori Fox on a DIFFA jacket.

And all this variety only celebrates Shanghai 5's diverse grooves. The group produces a mélange of sound, with elements of cabaret (much of that coming from Amy Curnow's torchy pipes), blues, tiki/luau, lounge, rock and outright improv. By that very definition, Shanghai 5 is all forms of jazz rolled into one incredibly hardworking band.

http://www.dallasobserver.com/2007-08-16/news/big-d-s-great-roar/5 - Dallas Observer