Festival Season in China

Two weeks out from the May Festival (Labour Day) holidays and most of the major players have (finally) released their lineups and schedules. Hat tip to Beijing Daze for the Beijing events and dates.

With the absence of China Music Valley Festival (MIDI is taking over the space this year) and postponement and relocation of Dong Party aka Ditan Folk Festival to Beijing’s 2 Kolegas this year there is precious little innovation in the rest of the festivals’ lineups. Nonetheless, if the weather is nice the events are a good place to relax and catch up on the bands you always try to see, but it somehow never ends up working out during the year.

MIDI (Beijing and Shanghai)

Strawberry (Beijing)

Strawberry (Shanghai)

Festival Season is almost upon us

May is one of the two main seasons for outdoor festivals, and as such, we are expecting imminent announcements for Midi and Strawberry Fests. Apparently Deerhoof will be back for Strawberry, playing alongside 90′s Scottish “post britpop” (according to their Wiki :-) ) band, plus Lenka, Immanu El and the usual slew of domestic headliners (Xie Tian Xiao, Omnipotent Youth Hotel). Nothing from Midi yet, but that’s as to be expected. They rarely announce anything before mid April. There is also the heavily rumored return of the Great Wall Music Festival, but we’ve been here before, so let’s wait a while before we get too excited about seeing David Guetta and Andy C hit the Wall.

One festival that we haven’t heard much about is the big joint venture between LiveNation and Pinggu local government, China Music Valley. Timeout Beijing report that it’s been postponed until the autumn this year, and we tend to believe them. The festival that gave us Friendly Fires, Jesus and Mary Chain and Joss Stone in 2012 will be “back shortly”.

Midi Awards 2012

Midi Awards 2012 – the announcement is here, the nominees forthcoming, the party planned. Scheduled for this December 16th at M Space – the small theatre under the MasterCard Arena (aka Wukesong Arena), this year’s ceremony will feature performances from the likes of Chuanzi, Dongzi, Ordnance, Nova Heart, Brain Failure, Yaksa and Zhang Youdai. The awards categories are as follows:

1. 最佳年度摇滚专辑 (Album of the Year)
2. 最佳年度摇滚歌曲 (Song of the Year)
3. 最佳年度摇滚乐队 (Best Rock Performance By Group With Vocals)
4. 最佳年度摇滚男歌手 (Best Male Rock Vocal Performance)
5. 最佳年度摇滚女歌手 (Best Female Rock Vocal Performance)
6. 最佳年度硬摇滚乐队 (Best Hard Rock Performance)
7. 最佳年度金属乐队 (Best Metal Performance)
8. 最佳年度摇滚乐器演奏 (Best Rock Instrumental Performance)
9. 最佳年度摇滚现场 (Best Live Performance)
10. 最佳年度摇滚新人奖 (Best New Artist)
11. 最佳年度专辑设计奖 (Best Album Art)
12. 最佳年度民谣音乐奖 (Best Folk Music)
13. 中国摇滚贡献奖 (Award For Special Contribution To Chinese Rock)
14. 年度常委会奖 (Special Award By The Grand Jury)

The awards show is open to the public; presale tickets are 80 RMB and it costs 100 RMB to get in at the door. Student tickets are 50 RMB.

Vans敢放 “Dare to Play” online mixtape

Love is a mixtape, so they say. But for Vans x Midi Festival 2012, your mixtape is more of a risk than a love letter. Working with China’s favorite semi-legal streaming service Xiami as well as Sina Weibo and Renren, Vans敢放 is a new breed of social mixtape, where users are making it for themselves, their friends, and that cute girl from 2nd period chemistry class.

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)

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Festival silly season is almost upon us – first the old

Once more, our apologies for slow posting. We are 75% through our JUE | Music + Art Festival which is consuming a lot of our time, but all the while, there is festival information filtering in.  We thought we would try and summarize what has come over our desk in the last few weeks.

STRAWBERRY

First, we owe another apology to Modern Sky and Strawberry Festival. We had it on very good authority that the festival would be moving from Tongzhou. Strawberry has announced dates and also locations and the festival will indeed be returning to Tongzhou for the 4th year <the Radar hangs head in shame>. Strawberry will also be coming to Shanghai to the same Expo-side venue that JZ christened in 2011.

According to the press release, there will be 160 bands over 8 stages including 50 international bands. The theme is “Great Escape on Doomsday”

Finally, SMG have managed to get in on the act. In exchange for a lot of coverage (we imagine) the Shanghai Media Group are co-organizers of Strawberry Shanghai.

We’ve heard some of the international bands that will be playing, but we’re not sure they are out in public yet, so best not to say :-)

Strawberry Festival Shanghai with SMG

MIDI

Midi have actually put out their lineup for Shanghai already. They will be heading back to Century Park a full week before Strawberry and the May holiday. Midi is once more supporting a cause (remember last year’s bear bile?). In 2012, it’s the turn of clean air to come under the Midi microscope

Midi Festival Shanghai announces

Not much to shout about on the lineup – Marky Ramone will be back after his (relatively) successful outing at Beijing Pop Festival in 2007. Then it’s the usual collection of cultural exchange students.

CHINA MUSIC VALLEY

Remember this one? In Pinggu near Beijing, the Mayor put on a big Livenation partnered jamboree last year with the likes of Avril Lavigne, KT Tunstall and Ladytron.

There have been rumours abounding – we have heard some fairly concrete names – expect flamboyant hip hop, pretty English pop and a high ticket price.

2 very different awards ceremonies

A trio of years ago, Midi Corp. launched China’s first rock music awards in Beijing.

In the last few days, there have been two very conflicting awards in Shanghai. The first was Mao Livehouse Shanghai’s inaugural award ceremony, simply their opinion on a variety of categories related to the venue.  Smartshanghai have written up the list of winners here, There were some strange categories (Best Live Music Venue Partners??) and some strange winners (Da Fresh as best new local band – haven’t they been around for like 5 years?). Apparently the night was packed with Chinese fans waiting for folk singer SuYang. There was quite a lot of disappointment when Da Fresh played for longer.

On the other side of the spectrum, and highlighting the difference of opinions between the expat and Chinese local music communities. Shanghai 24/7 published today the third (unofficial) Shanghai Grammies. You can check that out here.

Xtep Music Marathon

China’s first music festival featuring marathon elements

Would that be the world’s first music festival with marathon elements? Chinese footwear and apparel brand Xtep organized this sports and music spectacular in Xiamen last weekend. It was in the Xiamen Conference and Exhibition Centre and featured UK rock band Young Guns, Beijing rock outfit Miserable Faith, Taiwan electro-punkers Go Chic, French electronic music producer Yuksek and Taiwan rock musician Chang Chen-yue.

You can check out the photos HERE.

 

Pinggu Festival

A few weeks back, we talked a little about the Gehua-Livenation tie up with the Beijing suburb of Pinggu to put on a music festival to compete with existing May holiday festivals MIDI and Strawberry.

Well, they seem to be spending a little bit of money in order to try and get people down to Pinggu rather than heading to the more usual Tongzhou Canal or Haidian Parks. According to Last FM, the following artists are going to feature:

  • Avril Lavigne
  • KT Tunstall
  • Hot Hot Heat
  • Editors
  • Ladytron
  • Negative
  • Little Boots
  • Juliette Lewis

The lineup is probably on a level with last years Music Funhill and Pilot Records Festivals, neither of which managed to steal critical mass from Modern Sky’s incumbent. It will be interesting to see if Pinggu fares better.

What do you think? Would you go to Pinggu to see these acts?

More festival expansion

According to a leaked Q&A, Strawberry Festival will continue its expansion, but rather than going to Xi’an as they did in 2010, Modern Sky will hold two events consecutively in Beijing’s Tongzhou Park (as usual) and a town called Wujiang, near Suzhou.

Midi and Modern Sky have been head to head in Beijing during the May holiday for the last 3 years. Now the South will experience the same as the two festivals happen an hour away from each other.

We’re pretty sure lineups will follow soon: the only confirmed act so far is Mr. Big for Midi.

Midi Shanghai

Yeah, we heard the rumour today too, from the same source. The same rumour that circulates every year. That Midi will come to Shanghai. Every year. And it never has.

Anyway, we were going to ignore it until there was a little more clarity. But hey, festivals are getting more organized, and so the rumours start earlier. Jake Newby has it all.