Hilarious: note the huangniu ticket seller in the foreground

Your faithful Radar correspondents repeated a May holiday weekend ritual once again in 2012 by going to Modern Sky’s Strawberry Festival in Beijing. The overarching feeling of the whole weekend was repetition: same routes, same festivals, same artists. Same sponsors, even.

Located at Tongzhou Canal Park (despite our claims to the contrary – sorry again) eight stages vied for sound supremacy over the park grounds. New this year was the A Cappella stage, where co-ed voices blended mellifluously over new classics including “Dancing Queen” and “I’ll Be There For You” while the mysterious Chǎ stage played host to only 4 acts per day, including the ever-popular MC Stone (石头). Headliners for the main Strawberry Stage included Blonde Redhead, Queen Sea Big Shark and Xie Tianxiao, whereas other foreign acts invited included Laura Jansen, Jeans Team, Pitchtuner, The On Fires and Tahiti 80. Other festival favorites such as New Pants, Hanggai, Convenience Store, Carsick Cars and Hedgehog rounded out the lineup. Metal stalwarts Voodoo Kungfu, Army of Jade Kirin, Twisted Machine and Liquid Oxygen Can kept the Overdrive Stage rocking all weekend long and young blood in the form of Wanderlust, CAssette, Steely Heart held it down in the early afternoon slots.

Fresh flowers in abundance at the Veet Tent

Although there was no car on stage this year, branding was big once again at the festival. Dairy company Yili presented the Love Stage, while gaming computer brand Alienware took over the Electronic Stage. Q Magazine’s Chinese version had the Planet Stage, with an eclectic combination of local and foreign talent. If festival goers tired of the noise emanating from the stage, they could pose in Ray-Ban’s Plexiglas cage-cum-photobooth or in front of Veet’s wall of fresh pink roses (which have exactly what to do with razorless hair removal?)

Before the lights went out on Laura Jansen

We’ve long since abandoned the notion that anyone goes to a music festival to actually see bands, but some standout performances of the weekend included a foot-stomping, rousing set by Hanggai, New Pants’ infectiously fun laser-light show and sparkling electro-pop, and a set by Laura Jansen where the lights went out halfway through. Undeterred, her fans whipped out mobile phone flashlights as she serenaded the captive audience in the dark. Sound bleed was a major issue once again this year, as riffs and bass competed with guitar and vocals between stages located sometimes less than 200 meters apart.

Overall, Strawberry is dependable in both its merits and faults. It seems like it will always be in Tongzhou, always have sound issues and lack alcohol, but always invite bands that appeal to their core audience both local Chinese and foreign. However anticlimatic it was to see Blonde Redhead back headlining a Modern Sky festival so soon after their last China appearance, we won’t lie – we parked ourselves in front of the Strawberry stage all day on the first day to see Hanggai, Cao Fang, Re-TROS, Blonde Redhead, and New Pants all in succession. And it was a damn good time.

Although the programme has diversified and perhaps feels a little overwhelming, and a move to Singapore in 2011 has definitely altered its focus towards South East Asia (and away from China), the organizers have taken a big step forward with the list of speakers and contributors at Music Matters the most heavyweight group ever to make the event. If you are interested in Music in Asia, this is definitely worth considering. From AEG Live’s global President John Meglen to Lady Gaga’s Manager Troy Carter, to high level executives from the worlds of sports, advertising and digital tech, there is something here for everyone.

There is the return of the sometimes anaemic Music Matters live with a showing of bands from SE Asia, Australia and Canada. White+ are China’s sole representatives, which is a shame, but understandable. It’s an expensive trip for most of China’s artists.

We’ll be there repping the worlds of festivals (JUE | Music + Art, Black Rabbit), bands (Split Works) and brands (Splatter) in China. If you’d like to meet up, reach out through the comments.

And so it was at the back end of last week, the organizers (famous for being the main reason that beer/ alcohol is a rare commodity at Beijing festivals since May last year and also pioneers of the innovative and arbitrary 2 crowd sectioning method) have taken it one step further. Full priced tickets having been on sale for a few weeks and many 1,000′s of tickets having been sold, a 3 day duration group ticket buy went on sale on May 11: a 3 day ticket for 150RMB. Of course, netizens went crazy.

Rumor has it that Livenation were powerless to stop this most recent eccentricity by the Pinggu local government/ festival entrepreneurs, but it shows such a healthy disrespect for the consumers that bought tickets in good faith up front, and such fundamental misunderstanding of the group buy system, you have to wonder why they didn’t put up more resistance. It will be interesting to see if the consumer elements of the festival have actually improved come this weekend.

A simple (and completely Chinese) interface that lets users login with either their Xiami, Sina Weibo or Renren accounts. Once you’re in, you pick songs according to 5 questions posed by Vans:

1) The song you could play over and over again for the rest of your life
2) Your secret guilty pleasure song
3) The song you practise a lot but wouldn’t dare sing in KTV
4) A song that you want to recommend to someone you know (they give you the option to @ anyone on Weibo), that they wouldn’t think of listening to given the choice
5) A fantastic song that someone hasn’t listened to yet (you can also @ the person)

All each user has to do is type the song title, and Xiami’s vast databases do the rest. While choosing the perfect track for each question, they can also see “celebrity” picks for that specific question.

Once your mixtape is complete, you have the option to publish it to the website, share it on Weibo and Renren, and invite friends to participate. There is a list of “hottest” mixtapes as voted up by fellow users and opportunities to win prizes simply by participating. All in all, a pretty cool initiative by Vans and Midi to add a level of audience participation to an otherwise static festival environment.

Links away (all Chinese):
Vans敢放 homepage
Most popular mixtapes
Prizes