Due to Internet connection problems and some personal issues, ChinaMusicPod (website and twitter) hasn’t been updated for months. We are trying to sort things out and get back online as soon as possible.
So many things happened since this summer, we will keep the faith of Chinese Music, and more importantly, China.
Meanwhile, we welcome any collearboration ideas or suggestions, please contact host@chinamusicpod.com .
Another REAL producer, Steve Lillywhite, will be in Beijing next week. Following his talk in Music Matters in Singapore, the British legendary figure is invited here by Zebra Festival people. And, there will be a welcome party.
After Marius De Vries, Ross Cullum, Howie B, we are glad to see another producer for real coming to China and probably looking for projects to work with. One of the main things that we think the Chinese music industry needs most are PRODUCERS, and we are NOT talking about some random western guy who have worked for music business a bit and call themself producers – which we have enough here already.
We’d expect Steve to appear at Shanghai Zebra Festival next weekend, but early next week he will be here in Beijing. “Looking for exciting new music, and local Chinese artist to work with”, said in the invitation letter. The welcome party in on next tuesday, 2nd August, at the One Club.
Folk-pop singer Ye Bei, reggae band Long Shen Dao, indie bands Bigger Bang and Rustic will perform at the Party. We are not sure this is the best line up that Beijing has to offer to Steve, but it certainly covers different styles.
Pray for the departed and injured.
And curse who should be cursed.
A Mi Tuo Fo
阿弥陀佛。
[We are not blogging or podcasting as frequently as we should be, but we are still constantly updating our weibo and twitter so please follow us if you have one of those, @chinamusicpod on both ]
In the past few weeks we felt there’s nothing much going on except everybody seems very busy on getting those government approvals for the upcoming festivals across China. You’d sort of get use to it when you hear the story again and a again about festivals still waiting for some kind of approval just 1 month before the date – everybody’s waiting. And also when it finally happening -miraculously, there will be a LOT of chaos going on, every western bands that may plan to come to China should understand this. No festival runs smoothly here. Be prepared. Just think of all the Chinese fans who love you.
On the pop front, there is nothing much to say except the Chinese version of Mamma Mia will be revealed in Shanghai next month, actually it’s alrealy start their preview show a week ago, and got quite a lot of mixed feedbacks. Personally I can’t see how it could work just to translate the words into Chinese – maybe I’m wrong. I found an interesting article about this on ChinaDaily which pretty much sums it up: What’s the point of translating Broadway hits into Chinese?
On a more general – another level of pop music front – this whole Red Song thing has been going on for quite a while, if anyone’s interested, here is an great article on china media project website that explains it. Those songs, basically, were all my father’s generation can get in terms of any music, when they were my age. Talking about how society change. Hence in a way, I, should be really grateful and keep my grumbling at a lowest level.
Another thing is, you may or may not notice, our website is currently unreachable in China without using some internet tricks. It’s been like this for the past 2 weeks. Quite a bummer for us. I guess it has something to do with the 90th birthday of the greatest party in human history, and guess what, there is a film about that great creation - The Founding of a Party(aka the Beginning of the Great Revival), just released. Too bad it’s only got 1.4 point on IMDB, I remember it got maybe a little bit more than that on Douban.com – the biggest film review site here in China - before the points/review system disappeared on the page of this film, which makes this film the very first ungradable, unreviewable film in Douban’s history. Just for comparison, here is a “normal” film page on douban looks like.
In a sarcastic way, the film tells a story of how a group of young people fighting for democracy in a very harsh environment - which is what happened in history. Hence the film is acually very educatonal in many ways. I do believe, that 90 years ago, those young men, they were sincerly trying their best to find the better future for the Chinese people. What a joker history is.
Believe it or not, I found myself truly moved by the theme song of the film, the name is: Some Day. Here it is.
So, where do I begin?
The place is located in the south of NOSC(National Olympic Sports Centre), 1km south of the Bird’s Nest, 6km north of the Forbidden City, very close to city centre, except it’s basically a huge wasted land. The first day, it was VERY dirty, with sand and dust – and whatnot you can image in a Beijing outdoor festival. On the second day the whole place was covered with lawns, impressive, but why not one day earlier?
Hope Stage
In general, I’d say this is a quite well organized festival by Chinese standard, better than I thought. Besides the title sponsor KAMA, lots of other brands are also involved, including Mercedes, New Balance, and etc. Their own logo and brand info were also delivered to the audience very clearly.
Enough parking spaces for the audience as far as I can tell, cost RMB20 each. I heard lots of people grumbling on that. For comparison, it was free parking at this year’s Midi Festival. But the toilet situation was the best I’ve experienced. Their mobile toilets were relatively new and clean, there was no queue at all. The shops were all a bit boring and no alcohol was sold – I did saw many audiences bought their own booze though – security check was quite loose. On the other hand, police were everywhere.
Media-wise, there were two major radio channels (91.5 EasyFM of CRI and 101.8 TopFM of CNR) broadcasting live in the festival, it was first time for me to see radio broadcasting a whole music festival live. I guess it must be because of the man behind the festival – Youdai, who’s the most important real radio DJ in China, we’ve all heard his program many years ago.
the Eels on Love Stage
The second stage – Hope stage was quite small and too close to the electronic stage – more than one artists complains the heavy rhythm from the dance area, and the sound of the second stage wasn’t great. Lots of mid range frequency were missing, vocals sometimes just didn’t sound right. My source said to me all the equipment were good enough, it just the people who control the sound weren’t very professional – during some if not all performances the line array speakers were lying on the ground instead of hanging on the frame. It was really a rookie mistake but things like this happen in China.
The sound quality of the first stage - Love stage, which was much bigger than the second stage, was ok to me – until the headliner Hong Kong electric-pop star Anthony Wong appeared on stage. The sound power was suddenly cut half and vocal was completely not right. Anthony performed 4 songs in a very professional way before he had to stop (at only 8:30pm) and sing the last song with an acoustic guitar. In between the songs, he basically said they didn’t have enough time to do the sound check and he couldn’t hear any sound in his ear monitor.
Anthony Wong 黄耀明 on Love Stage
It was very confusing about what really happened after Anthony was on stage, there were many different stories during the first several hours after the show was forced to finish. Today, in summary, the sound problem is probably because 1) there was a rain in the morning and sound check time had to be reduced, 2) being a pop star for more than 25 years, this was actually Anthony’s first music festival performance, his sound crew was not familiar with the setup of a festival, the fighting for sound check, and etc. The band playing before them was the Eels, which has a much more experienced and aggressive crew. 3) the PA volume had to be cut down because of the police order, to reduce the noise. And, about the early finish, originally the concert was supposed to be finished at 10pm, and then they were forced to end the music by 9pm, and then on the day another order came from the police said they have to finish everything by 8:30pm. The official reason is the second day, 7th June, is the beginning of national higher education entrance examination, and everything should be quite. Everyone should’ve known this and solve this days, months earlier, but I guess since this is China, as an event organizer, the police uncertainty is one risk you have to take, and sometimes shit happens.
As for ticket sales, although the promoter set a rather high ticket price (advance: RMB180/day, RMB300/2day, at the door: RMB260/day), they were a LOT of ticket touts selling tickets at a incredibly low price around the entrance, on the first day you probably could buy a ticket for only RMB30, on the second day it was slight better, maybe around RMB100-150. This means there were lots of free tickets sent out, and from our source in China Ticket Online – Damai.cn – they only sold several thousand tickets. I don’t know how much sponsor money the promoter got, they must have lost loads of money that’s for sure.
My hope is the organizer could learn from this year and do a better one next year. We need a festival like this in the city. And DJ Youdai does have a good taste of music, that’s the most important thing for me.
(Don’t have time to comment on individual artists/bands for now.)
So, it was interesting, and a bit exciting. During the past few days, online live show actually came into our reality. Defenitely not as fancy and well-produced as concerts in a real venue, but they were quite noisy in their own ways. The artists who had their online debut concerts are : supergirl Zhang Hanyun(26th, May), folk rock singer Hao Yun and his band(27th), pop group Milk@Coffee(28th), rock band GALA(29th). Tomorrow it will be supergirl Huang Yali(31st).
Gift example - Airplane - Zhang Hanyun Show
First the positives. There were about 4000 to 6000 audience in each online concert of the above artists, watching the performance while chatting with each other. Actually the platform v.6.cn had to close the online entrance of the concerts after the beginning of the shows to make sure the ones who’s already inside can watch the show smoothly. I was in the filming studio when one of the artists( Hao Yun ) was performing, and from what I see, the delay from the live show and the online streaming was about 5~8 seconds, for me it was quite impressive. This means, the host (yes there was a host in the show) and the artists can respond to the audience very quickly. The fact that there was a host there makes the whole thing more like a TV entertainment show than a real music concert, there were a lot of talking involved – but I think that’s a sort of necessary evil just for making the fans pay more money to buy the virtual gifts – the IDs of the online audience who brought the most gifts were mentioned, some songs were dedicated according to a certain fan’s wish, and etc. As a product, it wasn’t really “cool” enough to meet Mark Zukerberg’s standard but it could be interesting and fun. A lot of interaction with online fans, strangely enough, it reminds me, let’s say, Tom Wait’s concert – if you’ve seen one you’d know what I mean. The model here certainly would only works for some type of artists, the whole “subtly asking the fans to pay more money” thing woundn’t work for many other artists. Also on the techical front, your screen could be frozen for few seconds because some enthusiastic fan is sending too many gifts (you’d see a bunch of flying objects on your screen – normally flowers, kisses, or airplanes), this might be really annoying for those who couldn’t afford expensive gifts.
Gift example - Blue Roses - Zhang Hanyun Show
The idea was very exciting and clever, however, these shows were set up too rushy and without proper build up time, not many tickets were sold – that’s pretty much very predictable. From the second date (the Hao Yun show), 6rooms decided to make all the shows availible to everyone, free entrance, so the income of these shows basically came from virtual gifts. There was lack of promotion of this new model of online performing, most of the people still have no idea why they need to pay the ticket to see some performance on their own computer screen. And they didn’t have enought time to sell the tickets (project launch press conference was on 10th of May, and the first show was on 26 of May, just two weeks). The reason for this is, probably, 6rooms is a Video website and had no perivous experence of being concert promoter, and there was no professional concert promoter involved. There are a lot of things 6rooms needs to learn about concert promotion and production.
Nevertheless, I am gald that 6rooms organised this series of online concerts, and I still hold my belief: this model could become more and more important in the future. We do need better production, better sound and video quality, better user experience, but at least it’s a start. Don’t forget when the world’s first car was invented, it only runs at a speed of 5km/h.
After my rambling in my last podcast episode, here is something happened today: Chinese city rocked by three blasts (this Guardian article is not very up to date but it’s so far the best english coverage I can find).
I couldn’t help but recall the speech in the film V for Vendetta. Check the video on Youku (in PRC), or on Youtube (not in PRC).
I have nothing to say. I’m zipped.
BTW, this is the guy who did this : http://weibo.com/1773401361 (it’s already a miracle that his page has not been deleted at least for now). His last weibo was from yesterday, it says “Saving the people is saving the country”.
Now we call him a suicide bomber.
Yet another music festival – but seems interesting.
The promoter finally had their many-times-postponed press conference last week and confirmed the lineup of the festival next weekend (June 5th and 6th). Apart from the act of God, one of the original headliner artists you-know-who was banned (appearently) from public performance and hence the endless headache for the organizer (since the original poster and press releases all have his name), it’s seems all worked out eventually, and the ticket finally started to be sold – just 3 weeks before the event.
The venue is between north 3rd and 4th ring Rd., southside of National Olympic Sports Center. The lineup is very appealing actually, at least quite tasteful. Eels and Cowboy Junkies are the both very interesting band. Many audience would also enjoy Lisa Ono – I always found her a bit boring after 3 songs, but I’m no expert on this whole Japanese bossanova business. Hong Kong electro-pop star Anthony Wong (Huang Yaoming) is one of the very few characteristic singers that survived in the bog-standard pop environment around 80′s to 90′s in Hong Kong, so he’s one of the few Hong Kong artists that I personaly like. I’m also curious to see Taiwanese pop rock singer Wu Bai and his band, he was always a brilliant singer/songwriter, nothing outrageous but his last album – Space Bomb – was just too whacky.
Local important acts include the band Convenient Store, folk rock singer Hao Yun, and SuperVC, who’s just been signed by Huayi Brothers – the biggest local pop label, it would be very interesting to see whether the label can bring the band to another level, since to many audience including me, it seems the band already had their peak, there will be a new album soon so let’s just wait and see.
According to the latest schedule, our new kid on the block, the band GALA, seems that they won’t be performing. Maybe they will appear when Zhang Yadong is playing, I don’t know. That’s bad news for me because I really like that new album they just put out.
Also, based on what happened in previous events, I’d like to know whether alcohol is allowed in this festival. I’m going to find out soon.
About last weekend’s unfortunate music event in Fangshan district, and a flash light at the end of a dusty dark China online digital music world.
By the way, Nokia is about to dump it’s Ovi service , finally. It’s a almost unusble service which no one needs. I felt happy for them.
On the other hand, Nokia does pay royalities to recording and publishing owners, so there’d better be a replacement soon, otherwise major labels will be losing serious money – no surprise there.
I’d still bet my money on the 6rooms online live performance.
Special thanks to Peggy for telling me the Nokia news.
____________
Artists Mentioned:
Gao Xiaosong (高晓松): Songwriter/producer, on wiki
Li Zhi (李志) : music online streaming
Lao Lang (老狼) ： music online streaming
(seems only sina music box online streaming link works outside of China)
Baidu Ting:
http://ting.baidu.com/
MCSC (Music Copyright Society of China)
http://www.mcsc.com.cn/
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (2.5MB)
Chaotic as always, these fashion parties. For me it’s quite strange to see a night club-y dressing crowd appearing in a rock n roll live house like Starlive. The CK video cube seemed quite interesting though.
The semi-celebrity host girl was totally rubbish. She was acting like a machine and just reading the words on paper, I’m very sure she got no idea about the things she said – when she introduces the bands. What’s the point of having a host like that? Please, PR people, think it through.
New Pants played a few of their new numbers which were incredibly dreadful – full of screaming. Later I talked to one of the band members and apparently this is their new style and they are going to release an album like that soon – duhh. I always enjoyed New Pants’ performance and songs, but whatever.
Can’t say much about the second artist – Korean Girl G.na, the performance was good in the standard of that sort of Korean dance music style I guess. Watching girls with high heels dancing really made me feel foot aching.
The headliner of the night – Far East Movement was absolutely BRILLIANT. Love the performance, and I’m really glad to see the asians starting to make real noise in the western music industry. Hip-hop isn’t always my taste but FEM are just fabulous. I hope they can come back to China and perform in one of the major festivals, Starlive seemed to be too small for them.
I only took this photo before the rappers were on stage – got too excited to take picures after that.
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