World Wide Pants

Dateline: Shanghai (like, China) — We’re eating whole pigeons – wings, beaks, eyes – and spicy donkey in a private room at a restaurant called, inexplicably, “Kevin.” Event promoters gossip about whether or not Cut Chemist is a vegetarian. Someone casually lights up a spliff, but the waitstaff doesn’t seem to mind. This seems odd, but so does a Chinese restaurant that manages, as Kevin has, to run out of rice.

Tonight, though, there are larger paradoxes to confront. Like: Why is a dude from Spokane’s Vinegar Flats about to play funk and boogie records in a bomb shelter not far from the birthplace of the world’s most powerful Communist Party?

James Singleton’s world is getting smaller. And crazier. This raises certain questions.

Inlander: You’ve been in London, in France, now China — what has been your most positive international experience so far?
James Singleton: There’s been a lot. But I will say the craziest — in terms of crazy — has been Moscow, Russia, like a month ago. I was on tour with my band. I had low expectations. I thought, who would have heard of me in Russia? My record label doesn’t have distribution in China or Russia. So I just thought no one’s going to know us. And it was in-sane. The promoter came up to us during the sound check, and he was like “So, what do you want for tonight?” And we were, like, maybe 12 beers or something, because there were four of us.  And he was like, “No, what do you want for tonight?’ And we were like, well, maybe a bottle of vodka. And he was like, “We have seven backstage. What do you really want for tonight?” And so at that point we were thinking like, oh God, what is he asking us here?

Like, “What kind of girls do you like?”
Exactly. So, that kind of set the tone for the night. We started playing at 3 am, and it was packed packed – packed-packed packed. People were insane. It was the biggest energy I’ve seen, ever. I remember going outside afterwards, and my bandmates were signing girls’ breasts, and their passports, and I just thought: This is like total A-list treatment. It’s like we’re U2 or something. And we’re just some podunk band. We play in all these “cool” cities, like London, New York — and nobody’s half as good. But in Moscow, Russia, these people are insane. I think they’re just really hungry for music, because they’ve been shut off for so long. I’m hoping tonight will be like that.

At the sound check, Singleton’s manager Grace Wang is surprised when I tell her my cab driver asked me about Obama’s election: “They’re allowed to know about that?”

Yeah — and sometimes they know more about it than Americans. I’ve met 13-year-old Chinese kids who know more about the U.S. government than I do. It’s the same with pop music — students here listen to Linkin Park, Death Cab for Cutie, Metallica. “In China, young people are more mainstream,” said Al Di, an executive with Universal Music in Beijing, when I asked him if he thought Singleton’s music would catch on in the Middle Kingdom. Universal makes bank selling Rihanna and Mariah Carey records here, Di said, but in his estimation, “The time is not quite ready for indie musicians to come to China.” 

Indeed, a quick glimpse around the room at Eno, a Chinese clothing boutique where Singleton is doing an in-store before the gig, doesn’t suggest that the crowd is here because they dig super-underground hip-hop mashups. A few well-dressed Shanghainese yuppies are here, but there’s a whole lotta English being spoken, which means there’s a sizable crew of what the Chinese still call “foreigners” in attendance. 

So: Has Free the Wax — the scrappy, Shanghai-based promotions company run by Brazilian Leo Messias and Chinese-Australian Katrina Lui — truly brought James Pants “to China”? Or is he just here to entertain the international party people — a demographic that will show up to see him spin at fashion shows in Paris, at Urban Outfitters in New York, or at the Apple store in Beijing?

Lui admits that Chinese audiences usually don’t “request anything more” than mainstream pop, but “we’re trying to change it a bit, remind people that there is really good music out there.” Pants is their ambassador, in a way.

Messias has his theories on why under-the-radar music like Pants hasn’t caught on here — culture, language, even visual rhetoric (a lot of Chinese had trouble understanding the show’s Chinese-language flyers) — but ultimately, he says, it comes down to history. “China missed out on the ‘60s and ‘70s. The references are limited. They’re at a different point in history.”

Plus, adds Gary Wang, co-owner of the Shelter, where Singleton is playing tonight, “The Chinese crowd comes really f***ing early — 9:30 they show up, there’s no one there. And they leave at 12:30 when the party’s just started.”

The crowd at Eno sits politely, enjoys, appreciates. Pants’ entourage is a little nervous about the show tonight. Who will be there? Will they like the music? We’re a world away from Spokane’s Baby Bar, the only place Singleton says he feels truly comfortable onstage. I ask him:

A lot of your press materials, your bios and your interviews … mention Spokane very prominently. Is that your doing? And if it is, why?
I think I did do a lot of that. I used to be embarrassed to say I lived there, and basically one day, I woke up and said, “You know what, I live here, and strangely, I like it, and maybe it’s an asset to start saying I’m from here, and not be embarrassed.” Because, how many bands are from New York and L.A.? It’s like “eh…” But there’s no one from Spokane right now. I mean, there’s bands there, but I think I’m the only one touring, really. It’s just different; it differentiates you from everybody else. And I kind of embellish a little bit when I talk about Spokane. I like to create this picture of the weirdest place on earth.

But why do you do that? I mean, I grew up there, and I don’t really see it as weird at all.
I think within the normalness, and suburbia, and the sheer poverty — it’s a pretty poor town — it’s like, “I can’t believe this is here, this is so out of place.” There’s this thrift store I go to a lot on East Sprague called Drop Yer Drawers, and they come up with the weirdest keyboards. And they’re so cheap. I bought a Crumar analog synth for $20. [The owner] said he sold a Moog the week before for $50, and it’s just like, “This is too good to be true!” Then I’ve been really into the Russian markets lately, and the Indian market. I think Spokane, it seems normal if you live in the suburbs, but it’s a city where you create your own fun, and it can be a really strange place. To me, what fascinates me most about a city, it’s not the downtown shopping – it’s the weird corner stores that sell, like used magazines or whatever. That’s the stuff I love, and I think there’s a lot of places like that in Spokane right now. It’s a good place to be creative, I think.

It’s getting on 2 am, and everybody is bombed at the Shelter. Any worries about not drawing a crowd, Chinese or otherwise, were unfounded — the place is packed with locals, expats, scenesters — there’s even a girl from Texas here because she’s a genuine fan of James Pants. Singaporean beer is flowing, white dudes are trying to get dirty with Chinese girls, and a French guy is yelling at me not to publish any pictures of him. It’s Friday night in Shanghai, a city that is working while you are asleep, staying awake to make sure you got the e-mail, hoping to avoid the lady whose job it is to shove you onto the Metro when it is already full on the commute home, and then — finally — partying its international guts out while Singleton grooves and grins away behind the decks, occasionally commandeering the microphone to accompany himself in falsetto or say “xie xie” to the crowd.

The first truly bonkers moment of the evening happens when Singleton drops Daft Punk’s “One More Time.” Instantly, two thirds of the crowd start making that demonstrative finger-pointing-upward-and-quickly-downward gesture which internationally signifies “Hell, YES, this is my JAM.” They’re hooked. Singleton plays a solo on a drum machine — using chopsticks — to wild applause. Requests start flying. The Beach Boys’ “Don’t Worry Baby,” Diana Ross’ version of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” a litany of other oldies seamlessly fly out of the speakers. Occasionally, Singleton mixes in his own music — which, I now notice, is usually just a few synth farts, a cowbell, and some vocal yowling. Everyone loves it. We’re here in Shanghai and we’re far from everywhere else in the world. Singleton is playing every song in the world. Everything is becoming a blur, moving forward.  Back in Spokane, it’s still yesterday. We are living in the future.

Joel Hartse is a Spokane native and Inlander contributor currently living in China, where he teaches English.

James Pants with Supervillain at the Baby Bar on New Year’s Eve at 10 pm. 21+. Free. Call 847-1234.