Back in Autumn 2020, I realised (and blogged!) that Hong Kong needs a charity that will help our out-of-work full time musicians, suffering primarily because of the restrictions on their livelihoods that Covid-19 has imposed. From that point onwards, I started asking people who ran/worked/used to work at charities and might be able to give me ideas/suggestions/advice. I got lucky on many levels. I discovered my good friend Jane English, was actually co-founder of Support Act in Australia, an organisation which provides crisis relief services for Australian artists, crew and music workers, (it ..read more

Earlier in September, I went on RTHK’s Backchat to talk about the working musicians’ difficult predicament (as I’m saying yes to everything and anything that will bring awareness to their plight!) This was definitely worth it, as Graham; who works at West Kowloon, heard me talking about the out-of-work musicians and how some are being evicted (I talked about the survey) and he was moved by their plight so he searched and found me and to cut a long story short, since 27th September; we’ve been working with West Kowloon to give musicians performance opportunities. (in fact, if you’re reading thi ..read more

​Please read last week’s blog post, so this week’s post makes more sense Just to clarify, I am talking to many different people about helping full-time musicians NOT those lucky enough to have a day job and play music for fun. Since 31st August, we have been invited to meet one Executive Councillor and five Legislative Councillors: Mr SHIU Ka Fai, Mr Leung Yiu-Chung, Mrs Regina Ip, Mr Cheng Chung-Tai and Mr Ma Fung-Kwok. Last Friday, Neil and I met with Ms. Regina Ip and also Mr Cheng Chung-Tai. This is all part of our ongoing mission to bring AWARENESS and an URGENT plea to the Go ..read more

At the end of July 2020, I was so distressed to hear from my friend Neil; that a musician who has five children; was being evicted because of his inability to work. I wondered how many musicians in Hong Kong are facing similar circumstances? 5? Maybe 10? I wondered how many full-time working musicians are there in Hong Kong? 50? Maybe 60? Most people have a day job, don’t they? Instead of guessing and assuming, I decided to launch a survey that would be totally directed at musicians. I decided one week was the optimum time as we wanted to get the results fast (assuming those unable-to-wo ..read more

Here in Hong Kong, we’re experiencing our third wave of Covid-19 and to be honest, it’s way worse than the previous ‘waves.’ The HK Government have shut bars, pubs and places of entertainment for the past two weeks. Starting tomorrow, restaurants can only offer take-out service. There is no ‘musician cluster’ this time, however live music (and dancing) is somehow seen as high risk of infecting people. For working musicians, this is their worse nightmare happening again. In an expensive city like Hong Kong, without an income, what are they doing to make ends meet? If you are a working musician ..read more

As more and more bands and musicians dip their toes into live streaming, I decided to compile five handy performance tips. On the technical side, my only tip would be – it’s best to test your live stream works well and SOUNDS great and that YOU and/or YOUR band looks great BEFORE you stream. Test on phones, computers, browsers etc. that everything is working BEFORE each event. Don’t don’t DON’T start your event with “I don’t know if you can see or hear me….” Act like you would for a real gig. This means having a poster promoting the event ahead of time and promoting the same way you would for ..read more

All through March 2020, I was writing and rewriting this blog post daily. Then after each day, I would revise what I wrote and update or even change my point of view. Like almost everyone I know, I was overwhelmed with Coronavirus this, Covid-19 that. I also spent almost every day, second guessing if we could go ahead with events or not and then debating postponing them and then actually postponing them. It will not surprise me, if I have to postpone more postponed events soon… I got told by a friend, that The Hong Kong Arts Development Council received some funding, from HK Government’s Anti ..read more

Today I published an article on The Underground website called (Top 10 things NOT to do when you are playing a showcase/gig).  As a promoter, I’ve curated 119 Shazza Music showcases, 250 Underground shows, hosted various Battles and Competitions and I’ve also MC at other people’s live music events since year 2000; which means I’ve seen and introduced bands over 2000 times in my life!  Sometimes it’s difficult to feel excited about a band, if they do one or more of these things on my list.  Of course, my top 10 list is totally based on my opinion and is HongKong-centric, however ..read more

I was involved in a ticketing company for four years and quit in July 2019.  Which meant I had to find another ticketing company to use, for my upcoming events! For the past six months, I’ve been researching and testing a bunch of alternative ticketing sites, and decided to blog about my adventures, as it might be useful to other promoters here in Hong Kong. First, I looked at ticketing apps to plug into the Underground website and there were some cool ones out there but could not find any bilingual ones. Then I decided to reach out to ticketing companies based in Hong Kong and got the f ..read more

Today was meant to be Funk Ska Nation, a show I manifested, planned and curated in the latter part of 2019. I had an awesome line-up and it was going to be an amazing opening show for the Underground’s 16th year. Then it all unraveled yesterday as I got an update that a crucial member of The Red Stripes was ill and they would have to pull out… In all of these years of The Underground, we’ve only ever rescheduled one show and that was for Ladybeard in 2016 (he got sick and wasn’t permitted to fly to HK!). We have had bands pull out for various reasons in the past and normally we would find anot ..read more