She has glimpsed life's seediest sides time and again — from parades of transexual Roman hookers, to grade school field trips through New Orleans' Red Light District. But for Helen Feng, the most exploitive entertainment lies in China, where she accuses artists and fans of pimping, patronizing, and leaving everything sleazy.

Most of us would be intimidated by anyone brazen enough to scream “beat on the brat with a baseball bat” into a microphone. But most of us are not Marky Ramone. This is a man who says that “joining the Ramones wasn’t daunting at all” because he was already a pro. Marky told us about botching his first big audition, and holding his own with the rest of the Ramones.

Imagine an Asian Elvis: jolting hip shakes, lopsided smirk, hounddog howl and all. Now, imagine The King is a lady. A pint-sized, South Korean punk diva. Velvet Geena does everything she can to conjure Presley’s spirit on stage. Her bandmates in the RockTigers follow suit with slicked pompadours, a stand-up bass and rockabilly undertones.  Below, Geena talks about giving those vintage rhythms a punk rock twist as Korea’s first member of the "punkabilly" genre.

From grunge to metal rock, rounding an Eric Clapton tribute outfit, past hardcore, reggae and folk, with a soft Kurt Cobain landing, the weekend provides us with a musical gauntlet to negotiate.

Café background music is supposed to help us unwind, not write blockbuster movie scripts. But when Beijing bistro Navena Cafe blared a throbbing ballad called “Drenched” one afternoon last year, Hong Kong rom-com auteur Pang Ho-Cheung started writing a new screenplay then and there as his coffee order percolated. Eventually, he found the song’s source: a Myspace page belonging to Vancouver-based, Harbin-born songstress Qu Wanting.