Kicking off on Tuesday (June 27), this year’s H2 will see a total of 56 acts performing over six days (not including a showcase by the Aspire Music School and surprise pop-up “punk poets”). The USP? Artists typically get no longer than 30 minutes on stage – offering audiences the chance to catch up with a dozen bands in a single day. “You get a whole year of music crammed into one week,” says Keith Goodman, co-owner of The Wanch and H2 festival director. “And for bands, there’s no excuses – if you can’t play six songs, you shouldn’t be doing it.”

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Hot original music picks include emo-ish Brother Plainview, carnivorous power trio Meatgasm, Arctic Monkeys-inspired psych-rock troupe The Lemon Ones and mysterious space rock newbies The King of Pig Bones. They’ll share the stage with unknown upstarts and live cover band favourites like Rockstars Anonymous, Powerful Moss and Black Sabbath tribute Supernaut, while Whitt’s End will perform fresh from winning The Aftermath Battle of the Bands 2023.

However, the event is notably a tad more muted than previous years: H2 has traditionally been held over a full week, but this year was only marked down for five days before a sixth opening night was added. And “only” 75 acts applied to play the limited slots – half the pre-pandemic peak. “We didn’t know if there was going to be that many bands still around,” admits Goodman. “During Covid a lot of people left – and you only need one person out of four to leave for a band to be over.”

The festival will be the first held in the bar’s new home on the corner of Jaffe Road and Luard Road – a stone’s throw from the old venue, but a world away in atmosphere to the gritty, insidery vibe of the OG location. Indeed, regulars have taken to calling the new spot the “Wanch Rock Cafe” in recognition of its cavernous space, pro sound system and calorific kitchen offerings. (Dinner at the old Wanch meant a packet of crisps at best.)

“A full house before was 60 people inside – and 100 in the street. Here, we can get 200 people inside,” adds Goodman, who has also performed at nearly every H2 festival himself as frontman of popular Britrock band The Sleeves. “I still miss the old Wanch, but I think maybe we now offer a good way for people to sample live music in a more accessible ambience.”

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Commercially, it’s a boon – with four mainstream alcohol brands signing on as sponsors. “From a music point of view, I like the gritty DIY vibe of the old Wanch,” adds Goodman, “but sponsors like seeing something a lot more slick and proper.”

So as Hong Kong gears up for the return of a long lost musical friend, we sat down with the man behind the brand and opened up the Hong Kong Rocks photo archive for a walk down memory lane – and to find out how it ended up with such an oblique name.

2010-13: Baby steps

After three decades under various different managers, the old school Wan Chai bar was acquired by new owners in 2010, including Goodman and John Prymmer, the long-haired American blond rock dude many today consider “the face of The Wanch”. To celebrate the change of ownership, Goodman cooked up the idea of a one-off “handover hallelujah”, a one-day affair that saw around a dozen bands play over 12 exhausting hours.

“We took over The Wanch in March 2010, took a month or two to get comfortable, and thought, ‘We need to do something to announce that we’re back … and here!’ The whole idea was to breathe some fresh love into this great institution that had been a bit neglected. Forgotten. Unloved.

“The name? One, it was to celebrate the handover of the bar; and two, it happened around the handover holiday. Hallelujah was the relief that we’d finally got the venue – we’d been in talks for a couple of years.

“This picture is one of the few photos we have from the first few festivals – but it sums up those days perfectly. It shows the energy and the chaos, the life and the passion – exactly what we were trying to inject into The Wanch at the time.”

2014: Rock ‘n’ roll star

After the initial hurrah, soon all the bands that didn’t get to play were asking when their turn would come, and in 2011 the Handover Hallelujah came back as a two-day weekender, and a precedent was set. Gradually multiplying in size over the following years, the H2 format settled around 2014 (and regular photographic documentation efforts began).

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“That was the period it went from being a baby to a teenager,” adds Goodman. “Early on, we established this tradition of very short sets and very quick turnarounds between bands. What keeps people in is not having to stand around for hours waiting for bands to tune up. So there’s a lot of bands – but if there’s one you don’t like, they’ll be done before you’ve had a chance to finish your drink.”

This photo shows local rock stalwarts Bamboo Star performing an early gig before the international exposure that was to follow. “I remember them p***ing me off by putting a huge banner on the stage – cheeky, cheeky,” quips Goodman.

2015: Dr Who?

The 2015 H2 is remembered for being the longest – and hardest on the liver.

“We kept extending the festival because we didn't want to say no to any bands, and this year we dragged it out to eight days. But enough is enough – at the end we looked at each other and said ‘never again’,” says Goodman. “With that much time you get to the point where you realise: this time last week, I was doing exactly the same thing as I am now.”

2016: Read ‘em and Weep

In 2016, the Handover Hallelujah name was shortened to the cryptic moniker H2 – soon after, word started to spread that it stood for Hangover Hallelujah all along.

“We changed the name because at that time there was a sensitivity around the word handover and where Hong Kong belonged, and we never wanted to take sides. We’ve always been apolitical. The Wanch is all about the music – it’s a place you go to forget about what’s going on outside,” says Goodman.

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“That’s Danny from Weeper – a fluffing great band, while they lasted. The guitarist had an eight-string, down-tuned – he wanted to bring a half-stack amp and set it up in our tiny venue. They had a bigger sound than the old Wanch could accommodate – but now we’d have no problem.”

2017: Hey Joe, where you going with that guitar in your teeth?

“The Hey Joe Trio are stalwarts of H2 – although they’re not playing this year, mind. They started as a Jimi Hendrix cover band – but they’ve gone on to bigger and better things. We loved it when that guy played the guitar with his teeth!

“The thing about H2 is that you’ve got 50-plus other bands on and you’ve only got 30 minutes – so you really have to bring your A-game to impress people. You don’t want to be the band everyone goes outside for a smoke or a chat during.”

2018: Pink heel blues

“Put on your red shoes and dance the blues? These feet almost certainly belong to Angie Komar – one of the few people brave enough to regularly wear heels to the old Wanch.

“She was the long-term lead singer of two legendary Wanch cover bands that were going for years – Crazy Lemon and Urban Nomad. Finally, she was all set to leave Hong Kong – we did her leaving do, then sent her to catch a plane to start a new life in Bangladesh. Then Covid happened and she got stuck midway – she never got past Singapore. So a few weeks after her farewell shows she was back on stage in The Wanch.”

She’s still in Hong Kong and fronts Unfashionably Late – starring three-quarters of Urban Nomad.

2019: The big 10th birthday bash

The Wanch went all out with its 10th anniversary event, with 80 bands playing over a hell-raising week … which would also prove the last “official” H2 festival for four years.

By now the multi-band premise was road-tested and familiar to the audience. “There’s a real base of people that come out for three bands – and get to sample 10. It’s like a musical buffet,” adds Goodman. “You play to your friends, but you also play to the other bands.

“That’s Josephine from The Prowlers – metal singer extraordinaire.”

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2020: One last hurrah

“In 2020, everything was closing and opening, off and on – the government banned live music a few times, and suddenly it was June and it was on again. So we put together a festival in a few weeks. It didn’t feel like a real H2.”

Instead, the promise-breaking eight-dayer was simply called Hallelujah Live Music Festival 2020 – a hallelujah that Covid-19 was apparently on the wane and music and gatherings were allowed again. The joke went round that it would be the “only festival shirt you’ll buy in 2020” – sadly true for most – and regulars began simply calling it H1, in recognition of the familiar missing face behind the soundboard. “John [Prymmer] was stuck in Australia, so it didn’t have all the bells and whistles. But as soon as we got started – a festival’s a festival – it’s laughter, smiles and hangovers, everything you want.”

We picked two snaps from this epic final hurrah, because Goodman couldn’t choose between this pair of equally omnipotent icons of the local scene – Canadian drummer/bassist and Sunset Studio founder MacLean, and Filipino Rubicube frontman Iris Pascual.

“These two people epitomise what the festival is – a melting pot that brings together the best of the music community. The local legends who bring it – week in, week out.

“I love Iris,” adds Goodman. “He came all the way to my hometown in the UK to watch my band The Sleeves play – and he even bought a ticket!”

Sadly, within a few weeks, the pandemic was back in full force and by August 2020, The Wanch would shut the doors of its home of 33 years, for good.

“I was gutted. I handed back the keys to the Wanch on my birthday,” remembers Goodman. “I was devastated. With everything that was going on with Covid, the whole world turned on its head, and the Wanch was the one thing that kept me grounded. And suddenly it wasn’t there any more – it sucked the soul out of me.”

But that wasn’t the end of the story …

2021: Rockin’ in the Rio world

With Covid-19 cases again seemingly on the wane in summer 2021, Goodman started putting on weekend gigs at the neighbouring (and also now defunct) Rio bar, culminating in a five-day festival featuring many H2 regulars back out en force. “My priority at that point was just to find somewhere for bands to play. It didn’t feel right to use the H2 brand,” he adds. But to many in the audience, Rock at Rio felt like the spirit of The Wanch rising from the flames – albeit fleetingly. At that point, The Wanch’s closure was presumed final – a state of affairs that remained until the new venue opened suddenly in May 2022 (only welcoming its first musicians on stage in October when restrictions relaxed).

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Rock at Rio would also prove to be among the final gigs of one of Hong Kong’s most enduring alternative bands – “lounge punk” trio Logo, whose effortlessly cool Hong Kong bassist Kylie Chow is pictured above. “Logo were creative people – what do you get when you put sculptor, a lawyer and professional musician together?” adds Goodman. “It’s a colourful Hong Kong story – and a colourful Hong Kong band.”

2023: A new beginning

Check the full festival schedule for the 2023 event above – all gigs are free to attend.