The rock 'n' roll frontier stretches further every day, reaching places never dreamt of when Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play.

Dave Bidini found it in a Beijing back alley. His discovery came at the end of a night of partying in a hard-to-find drinking establishment in the Huo Hai canal district. It was called the No-Name Bar.

Bidini's longtime band, The Rheostatics, had recently split up and he was on his first big solo tour, a junket through China with a group of other oddball Canadian acts such as The Shuffle Demons. Their mission was to introduce Canadian culture to China.

At the No-Name Bar, Bidini and company shared a table with a group of Lhashan TV stars known in Himalayan pop circles as The Spice Girls of Tibet. Drinking led to singing. National treasures were swapped -- Tibetan friendship anthems for Barrett's Privateers.

At 4:30 a.m., the No-Name closed. The Canadians said goodbye to the Tibetan Spice Girls and poured into the street. At the end of a dark alley, they found an all-night record store stocked with a fridge full of beer. A few locals sat around listening to music, drinking tea and smoking cigarettes. Bidini couldn't speak the language, but he felt at home. It was the same sort of feeling he had felt as a kid searching out used record stores in '70s Toronto.

There was a limited stack of CDs for sale. Bidini even found a copy of I'm So Tired of Waking Up Tired, recorded by The Diodes, an obscure Toronto new wave band, in 1978.

This was a little more than a year ago. Rock 'n' roll was, and still is, new to China. At a concert a few days earlier, Bidini had used hand signals to instruct an overly polite audience how to rush the stage and clap their hands in time to the beat of BTO's Taking Care of Business.

Yet, here, in this Beijing back alley, Bidini had stumbled upon what was surely the makings of a Chinese rock 'n' roll underground, a new frontier.

"I had been to China a couple of years before and there hadn't been anything like it," Bidini explained in an interview. "So places like that are very, very new ... It's neat to find some sort of frontier, especially since the frontier in North America seems such ancient history."

Bidini's Chinese experience is one of many recounted in his latest book, Around The World in 57 1/2 Gigs (McClelland & Stewart).

Bidini's 25 years with the Rheostatics -- the iconic Canadian indie band's final concert was at Massey Hall in March 2007 -- earned him a reputation as a dedicated rock 'n' roll anti-hero, celebrating our national heritage with songs such as The Ballad of Wendell Clark.

During the past dozen years, however, the 44-year-old Toronto native has also found his muse in writing books. He's written a total of eight books about the things he loves most -- rock 'n' roll, hockey, Italian baseball and writing.

Meanwhile, Bidini has also fully adjusted to life as a solo musician. He has a new three-piece backing band, with an album of new songs due out later this year. He's bringing the band to The Casbah on Sunday to perform the new material as well as a few old nuggets like Horses from The Rheostatic years.

Hear Graham Rockingham on Thursdays on the Scott Thompson show AM900 CHML and see an audio/video version of his best bets on thespec.com.

Showtime

What: Dave Bidini Band, with Designer Jeans, Paul Linklater

When: Sunday, 8 p.m.

Where: The Casbah, 306 King St. W.

Cost: $10

grockingham@thespec.com

905-526-3331