Chapter 61: Zhedu National Day Holiday
Jing Xiaoqiang was not a playboy. When he arrived at the dance hall, he threw the tape to the manager and said, "See if it's possible to re-record this tape. I can rearrange the music and change it to Mandarin to make the whole style more suitable for the dance hall effect. It will definitely sell well."
The manager couldn't help but flip through it happily: "Oh, I know, this is Beyond's new album from last month. Did they copy it?"
As he spoke, he casually recorded a tape on the large tape recorder next to him!
Jing Xiaoqiang nodded: "We can get all their previous albums. Not every song is good, but we can put together a collection of the best ones and sell them mainly to college students, then develop it into dance halls."
The manager abandoned the dance hall without hesitation and asked the people from the audio-visual company to figure out the blending.
Piracy is so rampant these days that people don’t even think it’s illegal.
One of the technical reasons is that the tape recorder in one's hand can record continuously.
You can use a genuine tape that costs five to ten yuan to buy a bunch of blank tapes that cost one or two yuan, and then copy them and sell them.
There are many such vendors in the streets and alleys and various markets, and no one catches them.
Originally, CDs had survived the cassette trend for a few years and were finally able to withstand a wave of random copying in the market. However, after only a dozen years of good times, the spread of MP3s over the Internet became completely fatal.
Beyond rose to prominence precisely at the stage when CDs were first released. Before they could reap the biggest rewards, the lead singer unexpectedly fell from grace, and since then the group has basically become a rehash of old ideas.
Moreover, as a rock band that emphasizes originality, this tough band has always been incompatible with the commercialization of Hong Kong. It even sneers at the style of various singers who mainly sing covers. It is difficult to promote it on a large scale without the recognition of mainstream radio and television stations.
Their songs were just not suitable for dance halls at this stage. They were not in sync with disco and three-step and four-step ballroom dancing, and were very uncomfortable to dance.
It was not until the rise of karaoke bars and KTVs five or six years later, and even ten years later with the rise of mass-market music venues, that this type of songs, which were extremely suitable for venting emotions, became a hit.
It was not until then that Beyond's songs gradually became classics admired .
So, ten years later, a series of singers, including Jay Chou, achieved success because of the combination of various factors of that era.
These two years can be said to be the most depressing time for Beyond, as they were neither up nor down, so they moved to RB to seek more development a year or two later.
People in later generations all know that those guys who were living a good life spared no effort and had no bottom line in variety shows and pranks. In order to stand out, the foreign bands naturally had to try their best to follow suit, which led to the final tragedy.
Jing Xiaoqiang's idea was simple and crude. He would first try to scam people so that he would have a chance to interact with these young people, and then he would have a chance to change his trajectory.
Just don't appear in RB during that time period.
There are still two or three years left, and he is very sure that he can get it done one way or another.
So that night he took the albums that Beyond had released in the past and started to think about the selection. The band was actually already familiar with some of the songs, but the market acceptance was indeed not high.
It was not until 1986 that they released their first album as an underground band, and it was not until 1987 that it gradually came to light and appeared on the charts.
Compared to the rivalry between Alan Tam and Leslie Cheung that dominated the entire 1980s, and the Four Heavenly Kings who took over later on, Beyond can be said to have just begun to emerge.
The mainland is even slower.
I tried singing two songs in the evening. Neither the part-time band from orthodox orchestras nor the dancers who were not very accepting of rock music were as crazy about it as before.
It takes some thought, and I even borrowed a guitar from the band and took it home to think about it.
It was not until he sent Uncle Cheng back that he thought of quickly finding a few skin care products and cosmetics that had been piled up in the garage and solemnly giving them to the old lady and Uncle Cheng's wife.
No matter how old the old lady is, she still happily asked about the care and maintenance steps. I am grateful for the thought.
Of course Jing Xiaoqiang went back to stay in the hotel.
There was no audio equipment in the room, so he simply used the car audio system in the basement garage to play and sing repeatedly, and then went back upstairs to sleep in the middle of the night.
The sound effects in the luxury car were so good that Jing Xiaoqiang went to an audio-visual store the next day and tried several portable Walkman cassette players but was not satisfied with any of them.
Moreover, it was very difficult for him to go to a music store and buy all the albums of Beyond in the past two or three years.
It's really unpopular.
Finally, I took advantage of the last day of the holiday to clean up the small storefront that I rented from the music conservatory last time.
Jing Xiaoqiang did not take advantage of the opportunity that Zhou Qingyun and the hospital leaders had nodded to ask for an exorbitant price, nor did he go to those popular golden shops to attract jealousy.
In fact, they are the old houses with historical heritage facing the street of the Conservatory of Music... To be specific, they are the balconies enclosed on the former flat streets.
It's only two or three square meters, and two people can't turn around once they go in. There's a lawn as big as an office desk at the door.
Professor Zhou came to take a look out of curiosity and was a little puzzled as to what could be done with such a small area.
However, the per capita housing area in Shanghai is at its lowest at this time, so it is not impossible to build a temple in a snail shell.
Jing Xiaoqiang found a glass shop and installed glass partition shelves on three walls. There was also a glass container when the rolling shutter door on the front was opened, and that was all.
So there is no question of inventory capacity at all, and we can only use the Cheng family garage more than 200 meters away as a warehouse.
He used a Cadillac with a market value of more than 500,000 yuan as a transport truck, and there was no traffic police to catch him. He just parked the car in front of the store and played Beyond's music, thinking about how to adapt it.
He started putting various cosmetics on the shelves one by one.
Jing Xiaoqiang is indeed an expert in this area. Foundation is the big item, and makeup remover, eye shadow, highlighter, blush, concealer palette and the like are all small items as big as a finger. They are not those very expensive branded goods, so there is still a large stock of the first batch of more than 100,000.
The process of displaying the goods alone attracted the attention of many women passing by.
It is no exaggeration to say that every woman passing by will stop and take a few glances.
It seems that these shiny cosmetics will naturally attract women, even if they don’t understand what the English on them means.
I was busy until dark, then I received a pager from the manager of the dance hall, asking the people from the audio-visual company to have dinner with me. Only then did I, exhausted, lock the rolling door of the space filled with cosmetics.
Of course the people at the audio-visual company agreed to release this cover album, but they were puzzled by Jing Xiaoqiang's decision to completely cover the songs of such a small HK band that was not even very famous.
Sam Hui, Teresa Teng, Kenny Kwan, Roman Tam, George Lam, Alan Tam, Leslie Cheung, Danny Chan, Anita Mui, Hong Kong has so many music superstars these days , any imitation or cover of any of them is guaranteed to have a market.
The worst that could happen is to mix a few of these people's familiar songs into Beyond's main songs.
If Jing Xiaoqiang were to go all out like this, it's uncertain whether the market would be successful.
So it is impossible to charge tens of thousands of yuan for a tape as the performance fee. Is the profit sharing based on the sales of this tape?
It's true that businessmen will not do anything without profit.
Jing Xiaoqiang thought about it and agreed. Anyway, he didn't have to pay first, and even if the total number of tape sales was just what others said, what he wanted was not money, but influence.
Then the audio-visual company will use their channels to collect all the album tapes currently released by Beyond in the next two days.
It is said that before and after these underground bands sign with record companies, they have a strong desire to create and the record companies are very exploitative.
In just three or four years, there have been ten albums and a bunch of single EPs.
Jing Xiaoqiang plans to focus on the best collections selected from these albums.
He planned this matter wholeheartedly, and even though he had to go to school the next day, he ended up staying in the underground garage for half the night.
It was not until I lay down on the bed with my head full of notes and singing that I vaguely remembered, who is coming to visit the cosmetics store?
It was impossible for him to stay in the store all day and hire a salesperson. Just counting those finger-sized cosmetics that could be sold at high prices was enough to give him a headache.
He didn't even dare to trust Huang Xuerong, who was a little bit mature before. Who knows whether the little girl will be tempted.
It harms others and yourself.
Anyway, before falling asleep, Jing Xiaoqiang vaguely thought that if Feng Xiaoxia was in Shanghai, she would be quite reliable.
If the girl far away in Pingjing could sense this, I wonder if she would cry.
The boy from afar whom I had been thinking about so much only thought of me once in this month.
But her mood is definitely better than Du Ruolan's.
The National Day holiday these days is only three days. Even if there is a weekend before or after, it is only three days starting from the 1st.
Therefore, except for local students, few college students will take advantage of this time to go home.
So Du Ruolan felt heartbroken for three days.
It seemed like the unfaithful man and the long-legged girl had gone somewhere and had been making love in various ways for three days.
For beginners who have just tasted the sweetness of love, it is indeed very uncomfortable when their lover is intimate with someone else, as if they were bleeding and stabbed.
I stayed in the dorm for three days in a daze.
But Pan Yunyan was extremely enthusiastic, busy asking every day: "It's National Day in Zhedu, why is he still out and not coming back? He must have lost a lot of weight, tut tut tut, the night is too short and the sun is rising!"
Du Ruolan started crying again!
