Tag Archives: linkin park

Linkin Park: will they won’t they (again)?

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UPDATE: Linkin Park’s management have confirmed that they won’t be coming to China any time soon. Don’t go buy those tickets…

OK, so Timeout Shanghai picked up a juicy nugget from the official Shanghai Cultural Information (government run) website. Apparently, Linkin Park are playing a New Year’s Eve gig at Hongkou Football Stadium, the stage for their original triumph way back in 2007.

This is strange for a number of reasons:

  1. Livenation had their multi-million $$ stadium tour in September cancelled due to an inauspicious meeting between the band and he who shall not be named
  2. Livenation don’t know anything about this new show – we would imagine they would have been given a heads up
  3. Can you imagine how freaking cold it will be in Hongkou stadium on the 31st December?

We are awaiting official confirmation/ denial shortly. In the meantime, perhaps hold off buying tickets…..

 

China Music coming of age

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It’s our 4th birthday.  4 years ago today, we wrote a somewhat snippy review of the first stadium show by a Western rock band in China. You can read again here Linkin Park at Hongkou Stadium in 2007. With age and maturity (!!) we understand better the difficulty of such a feat and also the significance of the show. It is only when such milestones are passed that they become standards from which we can move forward.

Uprooted Sunshine Shanghai, 6th Birthday

And while November marks four years of the Radar observing the huge growth and progress that has been made in China’s still nascent music scene, there are some other much more significant birthday celebrations this month and next that highlight the fact that China is beginning to see some experience added to the enthusiasm that has got us this far.

On Friday, we were down in Shanghai venerable old bomb Shelter celebrating 6 years of Uprooted Sunshine. China’s premiere roots and reggae outfit have been refuting the somewhat crazy notion that reggae belongs in China: the crowd at Vibronics, while still nominally expat had a more than healthy section of roots-loving Chinese fans. ChaCha, the main MC for Uprooted was performing a farewell show before heading off to Europe having been selected for this year’s Red Bull Academy. She will play at selected European festivals after the RBMA. This is all at Shelter, which of course is celebrating it’s 4th year in business at the end of the month. Lots of wonderful achievements wrapped into a tight little ball.

All the while, we’ve been following Carsick Cars as they seem to be raging through Australia on tour, and Hedgehog added to their US fanbase on their 3rd tour of the country in October. At the same time, we are over the moon to see Hanggai high up the bill on a mainstream Australian festival that we are planning to go to at Christmas.

Hedgehog Beijing band in New York with Xiu Xiu

Carsick Cars, Australian tour

Back to the birthdays for a second: our sister company Split Works is celebrating 5 years in the promotions business in China. a few hundred shows all over China and SE Asia, the JUE Festival, the Black Rabbit Festival, Wooozy and lots more. There will be 5 shows in 5 days for 5 years, featuring artists old and new: Trippple Nippples, the Iron Mic 2011 MC competition, Chad Valley, X is Y, Jay.Soul, Hamacide and Eat Alien Brain, a trancecore outfit from Chengdu….

Split Works 5 Years Old

Shameless self promotion aside, it is for definite exciting times for China’s underground music scene. Lots of festivals, lots of live houses, a few new labels: welcome to a brave new world of Chinese Music!

 

The problem with Linkin Park

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You may or may not know that Linkin Park are without doubt the biggest Western rock band in China. They have also committed a huge amount to this region. We’ve devoted a lot of coverage on this site to the band including

our first article, a review on the Hongkou Stadium show in November 2007

the man who broke Linkin Park in China

the cancellation of the 2008 China tour

This is a band that has been promoted extensively in China for over 10 years, has done 2 tours of the mainland, and were slated to return to China this September for a run of three stadium shows (Shanghai, Beijing, Wuhan) that Livenation were putting together. Contracts were signed, licenses applied for, things were looking good. A rock stadium show in Wuhan – we’re not the biggest LP fans in the world, but we would have gone to that show….

Until a couple of weeks ago that is.

Linkin Park China cancelled banned

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Adam Wilkes (re)joins AEG

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Ten years is a long time in the music industry. A decade is almost unimaginable as a foreigner in China’s forbidding musical landscape. Adam Wilkes can point to being one of the only, if not the only Westerner to have done this kind of time here in China’s live music arena, and he has an impressive CV.

From hip-hop impresario pushing forward the talents of Andrew Ballen at Club Pegasus, to senior VP of AEG Live responsible for Asia, where he will be in charge of creating a viable Asian touring circuit for AEG’s roster of live entertainment, Adam has been intimately involved with almost every big company this site has admired from afar: a founding partner in China West (James Brown, Black Eyed Peas, Beyonce), Emma Entertainment (Linkin Park), Ticketmaster (Linkin Park #2, Celine Dion) and most recently 8th Round (the recent NBA game, Usher) he brings the maximum amount of big live event experience to AEG Live, who in our humble opinion are lucky to have him.

Linkin Park Side Project appears in Taiwanese Gangster Movie

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Louis Yu, our Taiwan pop culture maven reports in on a real Western/ China collaboration.

Monga (艋舺) is a new movie set in the no-longer area of Monga in Taiwan, where Taiwanese gangster culture used to be popular. Because this movie is set in Taiwan, and gangster films come out of Taiwan only rarely, this film is getting a lot of press right now. The director and cast have been on the chat show/ celebrity roundabout for a while now.

The latest publicity for this film is that it features a single by Dead by Sunrise, side project of  Chester Bennington of Linkin Park. Taiwanese press have made a huge deal of how the movie is about old Taiwanese gangster culture, but it features a song from a Western band. All these publicity seems to be playing in favour of the movie as press stress how suitable the song is and how fitting it is to feature this song in the movie. Last week Chester Bennington even held a press conference with the cast and director of Monga

I’ve included a promote clip with scene from the movie and the song from Dead by sunrise.

It seems that Linkin Park is really working at tapping into their market in China. They have big followings in both mainland China and in Taiwan and they are working every angle…

Killers Update

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Further to our article yesterday (HERE), Livenation (the promoters) and the band have come out with an official statement about the cancelled Killers Asia tour.

It is with great regret that The Killers have been forced to cancel their upcoming appearances in Singapore, Beijing, Hong Kong, Manila, Tokyo and Seoul due to unforeseen circumstances involving a serious illness of a close family member.  The band deeply apologizes to their fans and hopes to reschedule their shows in these cities soon, we hope you understand and respect our privacy at this difficult time.

Our thoughts go out to the band and their families, and also to the promoters who work hard for months to get shows locked in, licensed and on sale.

We also worry about the appalling track record for big shows in China, and the increasingly fragile trust that this nascent live audience must have. High profile cancellations by Oasis (promoter difficulty), Linkin Park 2008 (singer injury) and Celine Dion Beijing (care?) have been rife in recent years. Add this to the multiple Midi festival cancellations and the various other upsets that this young industry have faced (just search on the top right corner of this site for “cancelled” and you get 4 whole pages of posts), plus the upcoming “cancellations” of Lady Gaga, 50 Cent and the Black Eyed Peas, and is it any wonder that the ticket buying public treat announcements with skepticism and vote with their feet (by not buying tickets)?

The man that broke Linkin Park in China

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We have just seen the semi triumphant return of super rock/ metal/ rap/ electronica act Linkin Park at Shanghai Stadium.  You can read our review of it HERE.  Sure enough, Linkin Park have sold more concert tickets in China than any other international artist, and many people will put that down to marketing efforts by the promoters since 2007, and in part this is true.  But in reality, the push for this band started 6 years ago.  We spoke to the man who made it his mission to get Linkin Park to China. Huang Feng (黄烽) who was Warner’s marketing guy way back in 2003.

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Linkin Park do Shanghai – proper!

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[You can read our review of Linkin Park’s 2007 show HERE.]

Linkin Park’s unique blend of rap, rock & electronica ignited the hot Shanghai Saturday night. Complete this time with a massive (and working!!) rig, their non-stop (but relatively short – 90mins), show of testosterone fuelled angst was one of the best shows Shanghai has ever witnessed. How Chester Bennington doesn’t kill his vocal cords during every show is nothing short of a miracle.

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