Lighting Up
Fingers will blister on the fretboards as six of Hong Kong’s hottest bands serve up some sizzling rock on August 25 at the YMCA’s Music on Fire band show. The musos will strut their stuff on a unique T-shaped stage to facilitate more audience-performer interaction, and an art installation featuring giant matchboxes will help set the scene for what the organisers hope is going to be an electrifying night. This gig is the latest in a series of YMCA live music nights, organised to help develop the fledgling local band scene. So get along to the Assembly Hall on the fourth floor of the YMCA (41 Salisbury Rd, TST, 2268 7714) and get into sounds from Monogel, 22 Cats, Fan Hung A, Visitor, The Love Song, and Aday. Tickets are $70 for the public and $50 for full-time students. You can get them at the YMCA, the Panic (2396 2608), Zoo Records (3188 2303), or the Cat Store (27109953).

Only You Can Make This Change In Me
Nah, it’s not the Platters, but something almost as cool. The long-running Canto music extravaganza Only You, featuring Chan Po-chu and Adam Cheng, continues until August 27 with its ostentatious hats, ludicrous make-up and spellbinding performances. Make the most of the show’s last few days by booking your seat at the HKAPA’s Lyric Theatre through HK Ticketing on 31 288 288. Tickets will rip you $180, $280, $380, $480, or $800, and the show is in Cantonese.

Tom Yum
“An annual event…” says our dictionary of the word ‘carnival,’ but it obviously hasn’t heard of Tom Lee Music. This month’s installment of the Tom Lee Music Carnival is free (of course), on the waterfront by the Hong Kong Cultural Centre. Festivities kick off on Sunday, August 20 at 2pm with a skin thumping circle led by Japanese drum mistress Kumi Masunaga in the Cultural Centre Foyer. Then, from 3:30pm at the Piazza Area C, rock band Dear Jane will introduce two-and-a-half hours of live music by local bands Hidden Track, Pao Jai, Sam Li, Nymphetamine, Broken Lighter, and Marine 16. Can you not be there?

They Just Wanna Be Your Teddybears
He may have left the building, but he’s back in the city with four times more pelvis pulsations than before. Celebrate – or commiserate – the 29th Anniversary of Elvis’s Death at Blues By the Bay (Shop L012B, New World Ctr, 18 – 24 Salisbury Rd, TST, 2739 3366) in a special one-night-only show on August 27 with four of Asia’s most screamed at Elvis impersonators. Superstar Naoto Ogata, Japan’s top Elvis doppelganger, headlines the show. His Heartbreak Hotel hit number one on the Japanese charts and his album of Elvis songs in Japanese sold more than a million copies. Ogata will be supported by Hiroshi Ishikawa, who specialises in Elvis’s ’70s music, 19-year-old Justin Lim, and Thailand’s 16-year-old sensation Bribute. All that will cost you 680 pingers, but you’ll get dinner with it. The show starts at 8pm and runs until midnight.

Combing the Fringe
The next fortnight’s action at the Fringe Club first boxes your ears with Listen Up! on August 18. Expect catchy and upbeat punky tunes from The Train, blues-veined wild rock with just a hint of electronica from Very Ape, and sweaty rock from energetic three-piece Bodytoning. As usual, $80 will get you entry and a drink.

The Red Show rocks off on August 19 with five energetic youngsters passionate about pop, Latin and ’70s rock. Let Felix Li, Samson Cheung, Crystal Tsang, Ian Chang and Rachel Ho tickle your dancebuds with their originals and re-works of old classics. The show starts at 10:30pm and will set you back $80.

The Me?…We! Movement rolls back into the Fringe Club for a night of hip-hop and alternative rock to get your head nodding on August 25. Local rockers Sanskrit will shoulder up alongside the Chin Mo crew. Rapper Chef will also be on hand to put words to the beats, and one or two others will chip in to seal the deal. Flip the movement $90 and turn up at 10:30pm.

And, of course, the Saturday Night Jazz Orchestra will be doing their thing on August 26, led by Taka Hirohama and the irrepressible Elaine Liu. Get your traditional and contemporary jazz injection in one hit from this big band for $80, from 10:30pm.

An All-In Fling
Guys, gals and even the littl’ uns are all in together for a sing fling on August 26. The Kassia Men’s Chorus, Women’s Choir and Youth Choir join forces for the first time in Summer Fling 2006, where they’ll visit Sting’s Fields of Gold, John Lennon’s Imagine, Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water, as well as curling those vocal chords around Mack the Knife, How High the Moon, and Cabaret. Take them ears out to the Garden Room in The Helena May, Garden Road, Central, from 8pm. $200 gets you in with a glass of wine. Call 2575 3931 for bookings.

Hot Air
It’s typhoon time, but not all summer winds are bad. A group with a long-winded name, the Hong Kong Festival Youth Wind Orchestra, is putting on a concert called the Summer Winds of Hong Kong. The breezy youngsters will be blowing up tunes on August 26 at the Hong Kong City Hall Concert Hall from 8pm. Tickets are $100, $80 and $60, available from Urbtix, 2734 9009. Meanwhile, for those still in classical mode, the Hong Kong Symphony Society stages the Fantastic Band Carnival 2006 on August 27 at the Tsuen Wan Town Hall Auditorium. Pay $100, $80 or $60 for the show, which starts at 3pm. Call 2687 1826 for more.

More seasonal treats on the same day are a serving of New Tune Music Association’s Fruitful Concert Punch at the HK City Hall from 8pm ($120, $100, $80, $60), and An Afternoon Concert of Summer Delights with the Hong Kong Chorus Society at the HK City Hall Theatre from 3pm ($100 or $60). Tickets for both can be booked through Urbtix on 2734 9009.

It seems everyone is in carnival mood, even the strum-and-pluckers. The Hong Kong Guitar Orchestra makes merry in the 2006 Summer Guitar Carnival at the Tsuen Wan Town Hall Cultural Activities Hall from 8pm on August 25. Get your tickets by calling 2734 9009 – they’ll cost you $80.

Mae Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau
Wanna hear a Welsh choir tackle a song in Swahili? You got it when the 50-strong Melody Music Comrades in Arms Choir led by Alwyn Humphreys, for over 25 years musical director of the world-famous Morriston Orpheus Choir, joins the Hong Kong Welsh Male Voice Choir for the Festival of Welsh Music. It’s a charity concert on August 26 in St John’s Cathedral on Garden Road, just down the hill from the Peak Tram station. Each choir will perform some of their own stuff, then they’ll team up for numbers as varied as Dylan Thomas’s Sunset Poem, the famous Welsh love song Myfanwy, and the popular American Trilogy. Proceeds from the concert go to the St John’s Cathedral HIV Education Centre – you’ll get one free ticket for each donation of $250 or more. Tickets are now available from the St John’s Cathedral Book Store, or Nigel Wightman on 9222 8226 or wightman02@netvigator.com

Music On High
Brazilian breezes will be blowing through the Skylight at the Peak Galleria with two more performances from the Danny Lavelle Group. The band brings its ebullient bossa nova and samba styles to the venue on August 19 and August 27 as part of the Music at the Peak summer concert series.

Musical Artillery
The World Battle of the Bands fires off in Hong Kong with heats starting August 17 and running to September 2. Get down to Edge (G/F The Centrium, 60 Wyndham St, Central, 2523 6690) on Thursdays and the Cavern (LG/F, 33 Wyndham St, LKF, 2121 8969) on Saturdays to catch the preliminary action before the semi-finals in mid-September and the Hong Kong finals in October. Competing bands include Rusty Cross, Naked Breath, Marine 16, Lazy Susans, The Ladybird Jazz Quartet, Nuclear, Lunch Box, Dullfigure, Transnoodle, Zodiac, Empty Tomb, Zero Minute Revolution, Xenic, Spodac, ChoChukMo, and Garoupa. That enough for ya?

Gasp! It’s Mariah!
Mariah Carey will be bringing her booty-shaking self to Hong Kong – more specifically, Tamar – on October 28. Start wetting your pants now.

Summer Daze
A cold beer on the sand under the sun will be the order of the day for the Silvermine Bay Music Festival on August 19. From 3pm until 10pm, the surf will be cookin’ with sound waves as 10 local bands rip out rock, hard core, metal, punk and even some pop at the Mui Wo beach on Lantau Island. The event is organised by a group of 20-something Mui Wo music lovers who want to attract more people to the area, and it’s supported by the Islands Youth Association. Each band will play sets of approximately half-an-hour, and it’ll all be for free. All the organisers ask is that you turn up in a green t-shirt to show support for the festival and to blend in with the beautiful surrounds on Lantau. Bands will include Naked Breath, Southern District S.S., Popconis, Vone, Y.C., M-Bomb, Tonick, Bee-Bob, Pedestrian, and 2005 Yamaha Asian Beat winners Infinity.