We last wrote about Xi’an when the Zebra Festival that was supposed to be there was cancelled in the lead up to the 2012 transition. However, the return of festivals to the city this year, as well as global brands such as adidas looking to put on events in the city, means that Chengdu and Wuhan may soon have company in the exclusive “hip second-tier city” club.

When I was younger and more into music than I am today, I swore to myself that that I wouldn’t be one of those people who thought that “their” music is better than what the “kids” listened to. This is the lesson that one draws from hating baby boomers. My own preferences ran to 70′s stadium rock, which is not the paragon of sophistication, but my adolescence coincided with Blink-182 and the Backstreet Boys. So I had to perform every acrobatic maneuver of logic afforded by a liberal arts education to convince myself that music by those guys were the latter-day cultural equivalents of Led Zeppelin and the Beatles, even though, well, they were not.

Which is why I am bewildered by how David Guetta was able to draw what seemed like many thousands of young expats to the Great Wall. First of all, did BLCU build like ten campuses without telling any of us? Did WAB (Western Academy of Beijing) and ISB (International School of Beijing) become much less selective? These are things that I don’t notice.

Second, I actually like electronica music. I went to Underworld concerts when I was in college, and I thought they were awesome. I also like French House, and was able to convince myself whenever Dimitri from Paris sampled 60′s lounge music it was somehow, like, influenced by Roland Barthes or something. Even nowadays when I hear Avicii sampling Etta James, I’m like nodding and smiling in the way that stupid people do in public lectures when they understand something.

However, every song I heard at the David Guetta concert seemed to have been engineered for dumb people to feel good. I don’t think David Guetta ever played a song all the way through. Maybe for copyright reasons he can only play the part he produced or something, but then the entire concert became a mash up of various choruses from pop songs, which when played over and over again, appear to be truncated mantras for simpletons. People got really excited every time the phrase “when love takes over” was played, but we never find out what happens when love takes over. Actually we do, we find out that when love takes over the concert ends, for David Guetta only played for like 45 minutes (inshallah). This caused great confusion for people who were used to encores, but nobody really cared. We realized that we were all at the Great Wall, it was dark and very far away from Spark (Ed.: nightclub of choice for fuerdai in Beijing).

Read Reykjavictim’s full account right here.

Without getting into too much boring detail, the process for obtaining a performance permit from the Chinese Ministry of Culture is a bureaucratic, complicated process. Aspects of it have been highlighted by both the foreign press and music industry insiders, to varying degrees of accuracy. The process, which includes submitting set lists, song lyrics and videos to the MoC, is also well-known to Chinese music fans. After the photo was Tweeted and shared on Weibo by Muse fans in China and Hong Kong, it didn’t take long for the fans to start worrying about how certain Muse songs were less than “harmonious.” They quickly started an initiative to translate the band’s lyrics in a “louder” “redder” fashion. It should be emphasized that this was a purely fan-led initiative, without the knowledge or approval of the promoters.

Of course we don’t know what has (or hasn’t happened) with the band, their agent, and the promoters in the interim since the Tweet was posted and removed. Getting bands to China, especially ones of Muse’s size and production, is not an easy or time-efficient task. Therefore promoters like to keep details close to the vest until contracts are signed and permits submitted. To have something like the performance contract leak, even if the photo is too blurry to show details, complicates matters. And to have fans, especially the 脑残粉 (“brain-damaged fans” or superfans) insert themselves into the process only complicates matters further. We don’t want to sound patronizing, but certain processes are better left to the professionals. If Muse does end up coming to China, it will be in spite of the intervention by fans. And if they don’t, one reason – of potentially many – might be because of the leaked photo and subsequent translation initiative.

We want to see more and more worthwhile arena shows. We understand that in the age of social media and the Internet it is harder and harder to control the process and consequences of information sharing. It is the fans that make it possible to bring artists to China, and we appreciate their dedication to the cause, but in a still-sensitive performance climate, in order to achieve our collective goals, music promoters need the space and freedom to do their jobs properly.  The Chinese authorities have proved time and again that in order to keep expanding the size and diversity of artists coming to China, we need to keep as low a profile as possible.  It is our hope that one day we will be free to bring in bands quickly and easily and without the acres of bureaucratic nonsense that we currently endure, but that day is not today and in the meantime, we must work with what we are given.  Three years ago, it was inconceivable that a band like Muse would be anywhere near coming to China.  Today, we accept it as almost normal.  How far we have come!