Chris B and The Underground: The woman behind Hong Kong’s longest running indie music festival
The Underground, the spiritual home of Hong Kong's indie music scene, celebrates its 22nd birthday this weekend.
In 2009, Time magazine famously crowned Chris B as “the tattooed fairy godmother of the Hong Kong scene”. Chris is the founder of The Underground – Hong Kong’s longest-running indie music festival – and she was the frontwoman of the city’s first all-girl 90s rock band the Sisters of Sharon. But her impact on the city’s live music scene doesn’t end there. Chris has also organised several local music festivals and has left her distinctive mark on dozens of local bands. Excitingly, her current band, The Ferals, is due to perform this weekend (12 to 13 June) at The Underground’s 22nd Anniversary Festival.
I first attended The Underground’s Winter Festival in January of this year. As someone who had lived for several years in Manchester, a city with a flourishing live music scene and a revered contribution to musical history, I have severely missed good gigs.
Witnessing 22 homegrown Hong Kong bands play inside the candy-cane-striped Fringe Club was deliciously cathartic. With genres ranging from bedroom pop, video game jazz to Cantonese post-punk, they were all truly festival quality acts, and an undeniable testament to Hong Kong’s thriving, one-of-a-kind, and diverse live music scene. The person responsible for bringing musicians like Whitt’s End, Mr Koo, and Norio together is none other than Chris herself.
I had the privilege to interview Chris earlier this year and write one of my favourite profiles ever for Macao News. Here is an edited excerpt:
Born in Hong Kong, she was raised by a British father and a Chinese mother who loved music. The Platters, Shirley Bassey, the Beatles, and Elvis Presley were the soundtracks to her childhood.
True to her word, she started performing live as a teenager, becoming one of the vocalists and a keyboard player for the Adaptors – to this day, criminally unacknowledged progenitors of the Hong Kong scene.
But it was the band that came after the Adaptors that saw Chris make the switch from a reserved teenager, in Perigoe’s shadow, to frontwoman in her own right. Hailed by the South China Morning Post in 1996 as “four women…with a fresh take on the industry and their place within it,” the Sisters of Sharon were a grungy all-girl outfit heavily inspired by the likes of Nirvana and the Pixies, writing both Cantonese and English songs.
Since then, Chris has been in almost a dozen local bands like Smoking Monkeys, Flowers of Babylon, Thinking Out Loud, Guitars & Panties (“to prove that sex sells”), CHRANG!, and The Ferals (her current outfit), gigging often at the Fringe Club and the Wanch, some of Hong Kong’s longstanding live music venues. She has also embarked on solo ventures and collaborations, and recently jointly released an electro-rock, industrial sounding single Risky Moves with India’s FuzzCulture.
While Chris’ career as a musician is impressive, arguably her most significant contribution to Hong Kong’s music scene is through the Underground, an independent music promotion agency that she founded more than 20 years ago.
If you want to find out more about Chris’ 90s all-girl rock band and her lifelong devotion to Hong Kong’s live music scene, please check out the piece I did here.
Finally, in honour of The Underground’s upcoming 22nd Anniversary Festival, I’ve once again reached out to Chris for a short and sweet Q&A, and I very much look forward to hearing the indie sounds of Hong Kong this weekend.
The Underground features indie rock, reggae, punk, alt electronica, blues, funk, metal and psychedelic madness across two nights – how do you manage to keep the lineup fresh every year?
Great question! We are all about mixing the familiar with the new. Throughout the year we have our new band showcases (Shazza Music Showcase) to spot rising talent, plus our team members and I check out bands at other shows and events. For anniversary festivals, we strive to bring in Underground alumni; for example, Helter Skelter – two members are flying in from Japan to perform specifically at this festival. They no longer live here but feel the love of our community and our audiences.
It’s also ample proof that when you support the scene and give bands encouragement, they keep creating and performing, and the standard of bands rises along with it. Finally, it’s great to showcase different genres as audiences’ ears would get tired listening to one genre for a few hours.
For the past 22 years, The Underground has reviewed bands at all our shows, and so for some bands it’s a great way to motivate them to create fresh material for their Underground page to show progress and creativity.
Which band is most likely to get the crowd moving?
My gosh! So many! It’s like asking me to choose between my children! Shall I just list out the festival bands for you? Hahaha!
Which band on the lineup, in your opinion, is seriously underrated?
Diamond 6 (rock) and Other Theories (hard rock, alt rock).
What’s a song that’s been stuck on repeat lately?
Alpha Tone’s 《黑白》It’s full of hooks and the first time I heard them play it, I was like “this is great!” It’s euphoric.
What can we expect from The Ferals gig?
Three new songs and a more “punk” rock rather than “hard” rock set.
If you could give one piece of stage advice to your younger self, what would it be?
Don’t be afraid to put down your guitar; you might actually be ok without having a guitar to hide behind.