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If Chip Davis (Mannheim Steamroller) and Yanni had a commitment ceremony, adopted thirteen (yes, thirteen) Chinese girls, and musically brainwashed them in a twistedly banal "East-meets-West" musical Pygmalion experiment, the results would grow up to be Twelve Girls Band. In this live video, recorded at the foot of the Oriental Pearl Tower in Shanghai, the carefully coiffed, conservatory-trained twenty-somethings perform compositions with titles such as "Glory" and "Shining Energy," playing traditional Chinese instruments over a schlocky, high-energy background of synths, drums and guitar. The compositions seem methodically cleansed of all locality, revealing no roots--the type of emptily grandiose, "universal" music that sounds at home only at an Olympic ceremony or motivational seminar.

The only dazzling aspect of this video is the gleaming nighttime city of Shanghai, whose shining spires symbolize its return to the international stage. However, as beautiful as these shining surfaces are, Shanghai's real interest lies below, in their shadows: the unseen streets where people live, eat and listen to real music. That sort of humanity is completely absent in "Live From Shanghai's" glory and shining energy.