Blue Flashing Light

Band's frontman reflects on playing in China

Athens band Blue Flashing Light on the Great Wall of China last month. Blue Flashing Light on the Great Wall of China last month.

By Ian Schwarber  


EDITOR'S NOTE: The Athens-based rock band Blue Flashing Light played a series of concerts last month in China, performing in Beijing and Chengdu as part of the Chingdu International Peach Blossom Festival. The band was selected for the trip by the Atlanta-based U.S.-China Cultural and Education Foundation.

Still feeling the scraps of jet lag, I know what it feels like to be juvenated. To be amazed. To be riveted.

In China, I learned that being an Athenian - or in my case, by some standards, just a "greenhorn" half-Athenian - teaches you about the realm of possibilities.

Going to China, and coming back, were experiences both humbling and uplifting, all at once.

And from what I'm feeling, it doesn't want to end.

The other night, Bruce Burch of the Music Business Program at the University of Georgia's Terry College of Business told me, "You guys are true entertainers."

That was vindication enough that outside-the-box thinking was a worthwhile venture, but to be invited to speak to a class of his students, was unreal.

To have Gordon Lamb write in Athens' Flagpole magazine that we did some cool things in China also was unreal, but so important, because you realize that though a columnist might not be all about your music, he still can be all about music as a presence. As a factor.

That's what I learned in China. They didn't know our songs, or our meanings, for the most part, but they did respond in unison to our passion to bring it.

The Athens Downtown Development Authority, the Classic Center, the Athens Convention & Visitors Bureau and Mayor Heidi Davison supported the trip, so that it could be recorded on film. That might sound like a list of sponsors, but it actually was something more: possibilities colliding beautifully.

It also was special to return to the Melting Point, where I work - and from where I was so graciously allowed to go unhindered on the journey.

We went to China as Athenians, and returned as Athenians informed firsthand of China - our future business rival or business partner (depending on how "they" shake it out), and certainly, our host for the 2008 Olympics.

So many things about China are ill-represented in the States, and they are too many to go into here.

Suffice it to say the Chinese are happy, happy people, who welcome joy immediately. They are warm, and free to be themselves, if given the opportunity to know that is possible.

Some of them do know its possible, and they were being themselves. We hoped to show that possibility to many others, and we surely did that for some of them.

We're going back to China - hopefully as soon as the Olympics - not because Beijing's air is the cleanest, because it isn't, but because there, the sun might shine brightest.

I felt empowered to be as bright as I wanted to be in China - by China - and I am certain my band feels the same.

It's interesting how it takes work to get people in seats for performances here. Maybe we have higher standards here in Athens, in Georgia, in America, or maybe we have our focus too narrow, I can't be sure.

It takes drive to fill seats in China, but what I'm sure of is that they rock out as a whole - with vigor and passion.

For a look at the many details of the band's trip to China that I had no choice but to leave out here, visit the band's Web site at www.blueflashinglight.net.

Ian Schwarber is the frontman for Blue Flashing Light.

Published in the Athens Banner-Herald on 04/05/08