This interview is about Pale Air’s Dayday: The man, his bar and his band
I first visited Ale Garden for one of the venue’s jam sessions, and later met proprietor Dayday, Shi Xiangtian. Slim of build with a coif of hair and glasses, Dayday wouldn’t look out of place in an office, which is indeed where he spends his days for income. At night, to supplement his earnings and engage his passion for music, he has for the past few years taken on the management of a medium-sized bar and live venue near Fudan University, where I now walk into to partake in Ale Garden’s five-year anniversary.
我第一次来艾尔花园是为了参加这里的即兴演奏会，后来认识了老板天天（史翔天）。他身材瘦削，流着一盘头发，戴着一副眼镜，表面上和办公室里的人并不格格不入。为了补贴平时的收入，他有一份白天的工作。到了晚上，他全身投入自己对音乐的热情。在过去几年里，他负责管理复旦大学附近的一家中型酒吧和现场演出场所。现在我走进这里，参加艾尔花园的五周年庆典。
Dayday is there in his signature glasses, sporting a collared v-neck shirt, and downs a shot of Jim Beam. Within moments he takes the stage with a vital sounding shoegaze band, a wall of sound through almost walls of people. Tonight’s performance again features indie bands Thousand Failures and Yeqiu Quan, just as these groups have performed at previous Ale Garden anniversaries. The place is about half full to start, but gradually fills to capacity of about 40-50 standing. Ale Garden needs to have events, public or private, almost every night, in order to draw the mostly student and recent graduate crowd to the bar.
天天戴着他标志性的眼镜，穿着有领子的V 领衬衫，喝下一个 Jim Beam shot。不一会儿，他就带着一支充满活力的盯鞋乐队登台了。今晚的演出再次由独立乐队千败和野球拳担纲，这两支乐队在之前的艾尔花园周年纪念演出中也有过精彩表演。演出开始时，全场只有一半人，但后来逐渐站满了约 40-50 名观众。艾尔花园几乎每晚都需要举办公共或私人活动，以吸引以学生和新毕业生为主的人群到酒吧来。
Dayday says it all started with a musically-inclined cousin, who played the guitar and piano in addition to traditional Chinese instruments guzheng and erhu. In the summer after high school, Dayday picked up his cousin’s guitar and practiced changing frets and chords while watching TV shows, learning to play Escape Plan’s Ten Thousand Sorrows.
天天说，对于乐器最早的接触源于他爱好音乐的表姐，他的表姐除了会弹吉他和钢琴外，还会弹中国传统乐器古筝和二胡。高中毕业后的暑假，天天拿起表姐的吉他，边看电视打发时光边练习和弦变化，学会的第一首演奏是逃跑计划乐队的《一万次悲伤》。
While his college roommate was a fingerstyle virtuoso and he spent some time with Fudan University’s rock club, Dayday attributes his time in Taiwan’s Sun Yat-sen University as being most formative, since he played out the kinks in his style there and “pre-made all the mistakes he could make before getting on stage back in Shanghai.” Covering songs by Jay Chou and Metallica and watching the University’s music club put on the Southern District Rock Festival were fun, but his own performances left much to be desired in terms of tightness and professionalism.
步入大学，他的大学室友是一位指弹高手，他自己也曾在复旦大学的摇滚俱乐部呆过一段时间，但天天将在他的萌芽主要归功于台湾中山大学的时光，因为他在那里他组了第一支乐队，风格多变，一直在磨合。“在回到上海的舞台上之前，我把所有可能犯的错误都预习了一遍”。翻唱周杰伦和 Metallica 的歌曲，观看大学音乐俱乐部举办的南区摇滚音乐节，这些都很有趣，他也意识到自己的表演在紧凑性和专业性方面还有待提高。
Invigorated by his Taiwan experience, Dayday formed bands in his fourth year of college, including Joint, Red-White Dice, and Before the Mirror which only lasted for a semester each. He graduated with regret for not getting into bands earlier, but this regret propelled him to form shoegaze band Pale Air in 2017, which has continued to the present day. Pale Air being a play on words Pale Ale, a beverage which bassist Li Qingyang has a particular fondness for. The band features Xu Weiyang on drums, guitarist and vocalist Zhang Jiangnan, and guitarist Dayday, and 2017 began a carefree time when the band could “play on effects panels all day long” and “immerse [themselves] in the sea of creation.”
台湾的经历让天天感到振奋，回到大陆已经是大学四年级，他在大学四年级开始组建了 Joint、红白骰子和镜间等乐队，但每支乐队都只维持了一个学期。毕业时，他后悔没有早点玩乐队，这种后悔感促使他延迟毕业一年，也因为这个决定在 2017 年组建了shoegaze 乐队 Pale Air，并一直延续至今。Pale Air是Pale Ale的谐音，贝斯手李清扬对这种啤酒情有独钟。乐队成员包括初代鼓手徐玮良、吉他手兼主唱章江南和吉他手天天，2017 年开始了一段无忧无虑的时光，乐队可以 “整天玩效果器”，”沉浸在创作的海洋里”。
Pale Air got its start in various Fudan venues along with Neo Bar, and is now signed with renowned indie music label Shengjian Records. The band recently released a studio album, their first since beginning the project in 2019, with influences such as Slow Dive, DIIV and Ringo Deathstarr. Prolonged creation of the album came from band members going abroad along with impacts from the pandemic, and succeeded in the end with recordings done in an uncle’s basement and Mark Gardener from Ride’s studio in the UK. Mixing was done by Chi from shoegaze band DoZzz, after the last recorded bits were completed in Dirty Fingers’ studio.
淡色艾尔乐队在周边酒吧和复旦的各个场馆起步，现已签约知名独立音乐厂牌生煎唱片。乐队最近发行了一张专辑，新鼓手灯灯加入，组成了新的阵容。这也是他们自 2019 年开始这个项目以来的第一张专辑，受到了 Slow Dive、MBV、Ride、DIIV 和 Ringo Deathstarr 等乐队的影响。因为乐队成员出国以及疫情的影响，这张专辑创作得很漫长，最终在章江南舅舅的地下室和英国 Ride 乐团的 Mark Gardener 工作室完成了录音。在 Dirty Fingers 工作室完成最后的录音后，混音工作由来自 shoegaze 乐队 DoZzz 的 Chi 完成，母带工作由来自东京茶乐队和下沉广场乐队的园长完成。
For his part, Dayday wonders if he should get started on something other than Ale Garden, which he originally took on because of health reasons. It’s not hard to see him as the driving force and a leader behind Ale Garden’s success – its WeChat posts get hundreds and even thousands of views now in a steady increase from before – and Dayday has tried his hand at organizing shows as well, with mixed results. His experience speaks to the difficulty of making an income in China’s current independent music scene: “It’s hard enough to think about myself, let alone the wider environment,” he admits, but “life becomes more three-dimensional because of music, it records the present, becoming a part of memory.” Here’s hoping fans can appreciate the effort put into the music and Ale Garden before Dayday (maybe) moves on to something new.
(A jam session at Ale Garden)
对于天天来说，他不知道自己是否应该开始做一些其他的事情。如果最初不是因为健康原因选择不工作而接手了艾尔花园，现在的生活又会是怎样的呢？不难看出，他是艾尔花园成功背后的推动者和领导者–现在艾尔花园微信公众号的浏览量已经达到数百甚至数千，比以前稳步上升。他的经历说明了在中国目前的独立音乐场景中赚取收入的难度： 他坦言：”考虑自己已经很困难了，更不用说考虑大环境，但 “因为音乐，生活变得更加立体，音乐作为一种载体记录了当下，成为记忆的一部分。“ 希望乐迷们能在天天（或许）转向新的领域之前，欣赏到他为音乐和艾尔花园所付出的努力。
