Cult Canadian hardcore group Fucked Up toured China recently, and the band have revealed they faced a gruelling trip across the vast country.
Emerging from Toronto’s vibrant punk scene, Fucked Up blend the fury of hardcore with a wide-ranging sonic vision. In love with freak-out hippy types Hawkwind, the band’s songs extend far beyond the limits of the punk template with one single lasting for an astonishing twenty minutes.
The band’s live show is the stuff of myth. At an album launch in New York the group played for twelve hours straight, inviting a range of guest stars onstage with them. Fucked Up are led by the mammoth frame of Pink Eyes, who frequently finished gigs by collapsing in an exhausted and bloody heap.
Fucked Up were offered some gigs in China by a Japanese promoter. The tour was self-organised, with the band travelling across the nation by themselves. At one point, the group faced a two day boat journey. “No one we spoke to had ever heard of it,” they wrote on their blog about the boat trip. “No one even knew why it took 48 hours.”
Once the group reached Shanghai, they faced an arduous bus journey. “In the bus, the driver is revealing his character,” they wrote on the blog. “After the gear shifter breaks, I see him smoking and talking into a cell phone at the same time. To make things a bit calmer, he’s made his ringtone into the sound of a cop car siren, but louder.”
“We make our first rest stop to buy sugarcane. There are several cops on bikes circling us like ‘Mad Max’…”
However once they arrived at the venue the gig itself was a resounding success. “Despite no one in the dive knowing us or our music, we got a standing ovation as we walked from the stairs to the stage. We played and it was weird. We play lots of covers, play out of the smallest amps ever, see lots of women, some taking pictures of themselves standing next to us while they play, weird mosh moves.”
