Beijing 1988 by Sid Frank

On a sunny Beijing morning in July 1988, I headed out on my Forever brand bicycle, with a bulky VHS video camera in my carrier. I had borrowed the camera, which I was using for the first time, from the university where I had taught for the previous seven months. I intended to film the alleys, parks, markets and streets that had been a regular part of my daily routine. I was hoping to have a personal record of a city that had had a profound impact on my life.
Upon my return to Canada shortly afterwards, I showed the video to family and friends and viewed it with my partner from time to time to allay our longing to return to China. Eventually, we did return, and the video was left to gather dust in storage.
A few years ago, back in Canada to stay, I watched the video again. I was surprised at how well it conveyed – both in images and in audio - how it felt to wander the streets in Beijing at that time. It is a record of a city that has subsequently changed dramatically.
I was also surprised at how little I remembered of having made the recording and how much I also had changed.
Beijing 1988 is my reflection on memory and change. By adding my own soundtrack to the video decades after having recorded it, I hoped to bring the past into the present. In my soundtrack, I incorporate elements of the original audio that, like memory, transform and distort over time.  
This recording was developed from a series of live performances in China and Japan at the end of 2023. While performing at fruityspace in Beijing, I felt that I was bringing the video home.
I am hopeful that the recording stands on its own without the images, and that by focusing on the sound alone, the listener will experience the disorientation and subsequent tranquility I felt when discovering the unique sounds of Beijing decades ago.
On Zhu Wenbo’s excellent suggestion, I have included excerpts from the original audio which show how significantly the “soundtrack” to daily life in Beijing has changed since 1988. (The ubiquitous bicycle bells of 1988 have disappeared!)
I would like to thank Zhu Wenbo for his willingness to release this project – and for his friendship over the years.
Immeasurable thanks to my sons, Joshua and Simon, and my wife Ivy, for their boundless encouragement and unflagging support of this project and all my musical endeavours.
(Sid Frank)

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I first met Sid Frank, a Canadian, in Beijing in 2007. I think it was his third time living and working there. I actually knew Sid's two sons better at that time. Simon was in high school in Beijing and Joshua was studying in university in Canada. The brothers would meet up in Beijing during the holidays, rehearse in their bedroom and then go to D-22 and play a lot of noise. Their band was called Hot & Cold. I hadn't started making music yet and I had no idea what to do, but Hot & Cold’s live performances gave me a lot of inspiration.
At that time, there wasn't much of an audience for Hot & Cold’s shows, but there were two people who always went to see them: their mom and dad. When Hot & Cold wasn't playing, the family would always go to see local bands in Beijing and support those bands that were experimental in spirit. That's how I got to know this Canadian family. When I visited their home, I was surprised to find Sid's tape collection from the 1980s. The variety and quantity were shocking.
Sid is a huge music fan. Once he told us a story about when he and his wife went to a record store in New York when they were young. When they were browsing the record bins, they discovered that the clerk was John Zorn. (Hey, isn't that the same saxophonist who played recently in Montreal?) More than ten years later they met again in Beijing, where John Zorn and Yamatsuka Eye's duo came to perform, and Ivy interviewed him.
It has been amusing to revisit these events over the years. The question that arose was whether the father, who loved music so much and encouraged his sons to make noise, had ever made music himself. Sid replied that he had played saxophone when he was younger (free jazz, I think) but had given it up many years ago.
Things changed in 2014 though. One day Joshua told me that his father was living in India and had started to make some music with a synthesizer app on his iPad and that he would be coming to Beijing to visit his sons. He asked me if I could arrange a gig for him at Zoomin’ Night. Of course! So, in August 2014, the Canadian played the first gig of his life in Beijing. He was 59 years old at the time.
After retirement, Sid returned to Montreal and continued to perform. He has since played a few shows in Beijing under the moniker “Hot & Cold Dad”. Last November he presented a more complete work, a soundtrack to his 1988 video recordings of the streets of Beijing. There was no purpose to these recordings, just a personal desire to record, so who would have thought that years later there would be a soundtrack associated with them? Together with the archive of unintentional field recordings, they make up this album on Zoomin’ Night.
Sid's first son was born in 1988, literally in the last century. Sid has always said that Beijing was a place that meant a lot to him. I haven't asked why, but I think it is his own story. Personal history may be small compared to big history, but it's always fascinating. Now Sid Frank's personal history has come full circle.
(Zhu Wenbo)

Zoomin' Night
燥眠夜 is an experimental music label running by Zhu Wenbo. Started from 2009 and based in Beijing.

zoominnight.com
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