The creative force behind Hong Kong’s best band, The Yours, have their eyes on transforming the city and creating its very own alternative music and fashion scene. It’s a carefully crafted plan and their club night, Wow Wow Wow, is three events in and gaining momentum. They stand for everything Hong Kong’s youth-culture traditionally lacks: individuality, attitude, a love for music and fashion and a desire to stand independently against the grain of Lan Kwai Fong piss-ups and the herd-like following of bland trends in pop music and fashion. The slogan for the flyer reads ‘THEY HATE US – WE HATE THEM’ and it speaks volumes.

‘Jack’ Pak Ting Leung and Azia Chau are the brains behind the band and the movement. Speaking to Brouhaha the night of Wow Wow Wow 3, they’re dressed in full gear and look every part stars. Besides playing together in the band and running the Wow Wow Wow clubnights and fashion blog, they work together in PR for a high-end fashion brand. They met through the band and their love of music and frustration of their surroundings pushed them into taking the initiative to start the fire.

Their influences sit in the 40 years before our time; the high art construction of Andy Warhol’s Factory scene in the late 60s and the stars of that show, The Velvet Underground; the new wave movement that followed punk and all the striking fashion that went hand in hand with it, to name but two. Naysayers may scoff saying they’ve seen it all before but what makes Wow Wow Wow so exciting is the fact that this call to arms hasn’t come through the usual channels of Westerners turning up in Hong Kong and looking to change things; this push for change has come from within.

It’s 9pm on a sweltering Saturday night, Wow Wow Wow 3 is an hour away from starting and the preparations have been made in Kamal, a bar in TST. On a normal night in the basement of Kamal you could be in any bar in the world. Inoffensive ornaments adorn the walls and the décor is textbook faceless lounge. Wow Wow Wow, however, is not a normal night. Every inch of the nothing décor in the sizable basement is covered in sheets that have been spray painted, penned and in one case, burnt. Slogans are scrawled all over them and they read like a counterculture exam sheet. Every aspect has been covered, from the complete transformation of the venue to their precise looks (Jack, this evening, clutches a bunch of roses and his topless torso is draped with a leopard-print shawl, taking inspiration from the Manic Street Preachers’ Richey Edwards, right down to the white skinny jeans, while Azia sports a more traditional punk look.) With the band, the blog and the full-time job, how do they find the time to do this?

Big a city as it may be, there’s still a small-town mentality to Hong Kong. For fun, the only options are either hit the sterile clubs and drink your weekends away with the button-up shirts and the Gucci clad girls. Alternatively you can start a band that goes no-where through lack of interest and support. For anyone looking for more than Lady Gaga, Akon or Bon Jovi on a Friday night, the options are dismally limited.

“It’s really hard, actually,” sighs Jack in his soft voice. “We spend so much time on Wow Wow Wow and the band. It is just the two of us but fortunately we have a lot of friends who help us set up, advertise, take pictures, video clips, all kinds of things.”

These friends are milling around and they themselves look fantastic. A whole clutch of influences have been taken on and although they all look different, they look like a striking unit, a gang, and in Hong Kong especially, completely different and fresh.

Wow Wow Wow vow vow vow to change that. “The reason why we started Wow Wow Wow is we found people who felt the same as us, we wanted to go to parties to dance. We couldn’t go to parties to dance because there were no nice parties or places that we liked,” says Azia. “We didn’t like the local dance parties so we had the idea to start something ourselves.”

Jack continues: “So we had the idea to create a scene and put lots of cool people, lots of good looking people or people really interested in music and fashion and culture together. That’s why we started this.” Do they feel it’s coming together? “I think so,” says Jack. “It’s growing.” What does it take to join this club? “People should be real cool, real punk, carefree, really love music and fashion,” says Jack, with Azia following closely to back up the carefree element. The scene seems carefree, to a point. There’s still the close precision paid to things like the dress code. Tonight’s pointer delivered via Facebook is ‘Fashion Anarchy’; what is the meaning behind this? “We have to give people a suggestion or a form for people to follow because they don’t really know what to wear or how to dress,” explains Jack. “We don’t want to use the word educate, but…” chips in Azia. Do they feel this dress code is intimidating or a good excuse for people to dress up? “I think both,” Jack reasons. “To begin with it’s difficult for people to really dress up, but the first time you come here and see all the people dressed up, the next time you come, you dress up. This is our idea behind it.” A few hours later when the night kicks off, the gulf between those who sport an immaculately crafted image and those first-timers in sports casual is huge and the skewed logic could actually make a lot of sense. This writer, for one, felt a little out of place in the standard jeans and t-shirt which in turn tapped into the desire to fit in. I’m guessing I wouldn’t have been the only one. There’s a solid gang mentality in Wow Wow Wow; the us against them ethos that’s been born of frustration and played out by all their heroes, The Clash; The Velvet Underground; Manic Street Preachers; punk; new wave; it’s present here and it’s got the same buzz of excitement around it as their heroes and embodied in their reactionary slogan.

What were the beginnings of Wow Wow Wow? How did these two normally unassuming people decide to take action and what has happened in Hong Kong to shape them? There’s a simple answer to what they could do before they started: “Be bored,” says Azia. “Seriously,” says Jack. “We were just boring kids. We really wanted to go out or hang out but in the end it always just turned out we could sit down and drink or talk, that’s it. That or play music.” “But our parents didn’t really allow us to play our music loud,” says Azia.

It’s not that Hong Kong doesn’t have things happening, they explain. “Lots of things are happening here but all of them are just boring,” says Jack. “You can go to Lan Kwai Fong and have some R&B, Lady Gaga, but it’s so boring.”

March 2009 saw a turning point. When Mike Mystery and Jane Blondel took to the decks at Philia for the first Songs for Children night, the music-loving population breathed a heavy sigh of relief as all of a sudden, just like that, we had an amazing indie music night. People flocked and some of them, Jack and Azia, took inspiration to go it alone and start something equally as exciting. Jack perks up when he recalls SFC: “These days we have Songs for Children, they are doing something really good. We are really inspired by them. I love Mike and Jane so much.”

“You know, Mike and Jane really support us,” says Azia. “Sometimes our schedule will clash and we will just talk about it and sort it out. They’re so nice.” This kind of support shows that these scenes are not about money but born of passion for diversity and alternative good times in the city.

Every Wow Wow Wower has a clear influence in their look. What are the influences behind the movement in general? “A LOT,” enthuses Jack slowly.

“For me 80s post punk and back into late 70s rock music, bands like Joy Division for sure,” says Azia. “Lately I’ve been listening to a lot of Sonic Youth and no wave bands from New York like Suicide.” “In my life, be it with fashion or music, all my influences – they’re all from the past, from the 50s to the 80s,” says Jack. “I like The Jesus and Mary Chain so much, The Cramps, The Velvet Underground especially – their image, their music, it all really inspired me to form The Yours and to do this sort of thing.”

Their local inspiration stops at Songs for Children, however. “Honestly we are so eager to see more good bands in Hong Kong but…what we usually see, it’s not exciting to us,” says Azia. “We are so sorry to say that there are no bands in Hong Kong that we like,” says Jack, before reeling in a little: “Except my friend’s band, Laura Palmer and some new up and coming bands who are starting to get interesting.” They’ve got this problem in their sights too. “We would like to initiate a music scene in Hong Kong. Another project we’d like to work on besides this is to start organising mini gigs and parties,” says Jack. With the club night, The Yours and their own legion of groomed bands filling more and more nights, they’d be edging much closer to a bustling scene. Is the scene they’re trying to create derivative? Jack: “Recently I’ve noticed in the world these scenes just start again. In places like London and New York they go round in circles – we would like to do the same kind of thing in Hong Kong.”

The slogan for the night is so brazen, brash and bold that it can’t help but be admired. “It’s actually inspired by 70s punk bands,”says Azia, explaining that punk has been the theme of the party (the themes change each time). “Wow Wow Wow is a very underground indie type place and we change our image from month to month,” says Jack. “The mainstream people, if they don’t want to join us, don’t join us. We don’t want to join you. That’s our message.” ‘They’ are most other people in Hong Kong, and Jack and Azia have a firm opinion of them. “Hong Kong people only care about money, until now. From the page one until now, it’s all about money,” says Jack. They forsee change on the horizon but it’s a long way off. Culturally they have grown up to expect nothing. “There is no expectation, that’s what it is,” says Azia. “No expectations, year by year. That’s why we want to do something exciting by ourselves.” With the exception of Songs for Children and The People’s Party, whose praises they also sing for their devotion to bringing quality international acts to the city, going it alone is the only way forward they can see. Besides the above-mentioned glimmers of hope, they see the last five years in Hong Kong’s history as a cultural void: “It’s nothing specific,” says Azia. “Just the whole picture. The whole picture is quite disappointing. As we said earlier, it’s boring. There’s nothing at all exciting for us.”

The closest thing they can find to local inspiration is the Beijing music scene, a scene which has been picking up momentum, flourishing and producing diverse and dedicated alternative acts and most importantly, has followers active in supporting them and perpetuating momentum.

“Beijing is really, really good,” enthuses Jack. “[The clubs] D22, Mao Bar, people there really like music, they are really into it. I love Beijing so much. Beijing is a good example of something good that’s happening, Hong Kong is not.” Why so?

“Fashion is no good, music is no good…” says Jack.

“Parties are no good…” continues Azia.

“People are no good,” says Jack. Jack and Azia are looking to change all of this. How will change come about? How are they planning on spreading the word of Wow Wow Wow and get people taking the initiative to go out and use their spare time to start more nights and scenes? To them that would be the best thing that could happen to Hong Kong in the near future. Azia explains the plan: “First of all we really have to get people into loving this kind of thing, enjoying this kind of culture and get them to a level where they are so eager and want more and more and more but there’s not enough. Then they will do something on their own.”

These are high hopes but those willing to push the scene further have got an uphill struggle ahead of them, albeit it one that Wow Wow Wow themselves overcomes each month for the club night. “It’s horrible. It’s really horrible, actually,” agonises Jack. “First of all we have to think about the theme, after that we have to design the poster and the flyer, after that we have to think about the venue and really look around.” With all the clubs and bars in Hong Kong, it turns out they’re not the easiest things to get hold of: “We tried to go to Soho and Lan Kwai Fong, they tried to charge us $40,000 or something. We can’t afford it! Other than the venue we have to think about the decoration, the DJs…” the list goes on. The DJs aren’t too much of a problem though as it’s friends and the periphery to the core Wow Wow Wow team who put up their skills, or lack thereof: “We don’t mix, we are actually very horrible DJs but we choose nice tracks,” says Jack, refreshingly reversing the usual trend in Hong Kong clubs who are happy to have seamless mixes all at the same tempo, blasting out utterly irrelevant three-hour sets at a time. Like at Songs for Children, there are occasional gaps between songs, they come on at different levels, there’s no showyness, just great music and proof that there’s a human behind the DJ booth and not a bland digital mixdown.

The look, the time, effort and energy they throw into this, there’s one more burning question that’s pertinent to Hong Kong: what do their parents think of it?

“They don’t care actually,” says Jack. “They’re like whatever, just do it.”

“They’re carefree,” chips in Azia. With that Jack pipes up:

“They should come to Wow Wow Wow!”

“They are not cool enough, sorry! No room for them,” laughs Azia. So what will come of the first gang in town? The night was a huge success with an atmosphere rarely experienced in Hong Kong and there are the high hopes that this movement will grow, organically sparking offshoots and inspiring other scenes to emerge. And if these hopes don’t come to fruition? If the work involved and the weight of responsibility of trying their hardest to change a culture and kicking against walls gets too much for our Wow Wow Wowers? If that, then their efforts will be remembered by those involved as one hell of a time for Hong Kong and these parties will go down in legend.

Words: Tom Cassidy

Bringing independent acts to Hong Kong is risky business. Luckily there are a tireless few who brave the odds and fly over much needed fresh blood for nights of excellent live music.

Joining these few for the first time on Friday was Songs For Children, previously a club night that brought true indie music and spirit to our bars and clubs. Since their arrival early this year their nights have been a breath of fresh air in this commercial hip hop and bad pop house infested city.

Songs For Children’s first step into live music was the UK’s Theoretical Girl whose indie pop songs have enough serrated edges to fend off twee and who live, liberally spread smiles and shook hips at Wan Chai’s Rock School venue.

Relatively new itself, Rock School could become a nice mainstay of live music in the city, even if it does mean squeezing into the tiny lift with red-faced businessmen and the young ‘hosts’ from the floor above.

The venue was packed out which was a hugely encouraging success, as were The Yours, the local support act.

The black clad now two-piece looked like a real band, a huge accolade in the pub-rock peppered Wan Chai district.

With a searing intensity in every second of their performance they oozed cool, glamour and edgy individualism as they played their relentless wide-eyed post rock with buzz-saw guitars over a drum machine.

Once a fun but oblique homage to The Stooges, The Yours are now in a league of their own.

If the gig scene can support them long enough before they have to jack it in and get on with their day jobs they could well become HK’s answer to The Velvet Underground and the city’s best band.

When both acts had finished the dancing went on into the early hours. The party spirit felt like a genuine celebration, a sense that things could be changing in Hong Kong. If a night like this can be a success then it means good things ahead for Songs For Children and our fair city.

-Words & Picture: TC.