There is a building on Shanghai’s Xingfu Lu that has played home to two of the most exciting bar/club/livehouses in this cities musical history. The old Tang Hui was pretty much the birthplace of Shanghai’s music scene, run by crazy legend Zooma. Most weekends, the insides of Tang Hui would be full to bursting with drunken hoards outside, talking, laughing and listening. Mostly due to those drunken hoards, Tang Hui was closed down in early 2006, soon to reopen as the new (and shortlived) Tang Hui on Huating Lu and then as the slightly longer lived 4Live. About a year after the original Tang Hui closed its Xingfu doors, it was suddenly reopened as LOgO, an equally divey, intimate bar/ club/ livehouse where the equipment rarely worked, but where bands came to get their first taste of a stage, where DJ’s plied their trades every night of the week, and where the walls remained sheened with condensation and graffiti. Great nights came and went, but LOgO remained genre agnostic and committed to the ideals of the DIY party.
A performance at LOgO
Sadly, the concrete of Xingfu Lu (and particularly the convenience store next to the bar) were just too tempting, and night after night the drunken hoards collected to talk, laugh and listen. Of course, for a bar that stayed open well after the witching hour, neighbours and police regularly made their feelings felt, and those feelings were rarely supportive. This last Halloween weekend, the pressure finally told. LOgO closed with a bang and an era ends. Fortunately, with foresight aided by practically nightly police visits, owners and managers have opened LUNE, an upscale version of LOgO up near Bar 88 on Xinle/ Changle/ Fumin Lus. RIP LOgO 