The sad thing is that they have been forced to go head to head, time-wise, in most cases asking the limited pool of acts for exclusivity. They are also both largely taking place indoors – Modern Sky in Haidian Exhibition Hall and Midi in The Olympic Centre – making for an all the more surreal and stilted affair.

Modern Sky have already announced a full line up which is conspicuously free of foreign acts, as has been rumoured for some time now, namely :

While Midi, who have actually yet to officially receive a license (they said in a statement on Sept 12th that the government had ‘approved’ and that they would be getting their license on Sept 16th ie. Yesterday), have erred on the side of caution and gone for the more austere promotional flyer, without line-up, below:

This cautious, patient approach may have paid off as it looks like Midi have secured a license for their international bands this year. The obvious excitement here being the inclusion of downtempo-maestros Air in the line-up. The French duo already have two Yugong Yishan shows here in Beijing with the oft asked question being ‘why don’t they just stay on and play Midi’. Well, it looks like they are:

Here’s looking forward to what should be a really entertaining month of live music. Good luck to both festivals. Real lessons in persistence.

© Ed Peto 2008

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The big question is where do those 20,000 indie music fans (and people like them) go for the rest of the year? Midi costs £3.50 per day, so is a cheap way for these fans to see pretty much every rock band in China in one sitting. Outside of the festival, a similar ticket price is essential if you really want to reach the ‘Midi crowd’. £3.50 obviously isn’t enough to pay for an international band to fly into China on ticket sales alone. Sponsorship is the only way to pick up the slack. Slowly you are starting to see brands become interested in the idea of forking out for an opportunity to market to this hip, new music crowd. Getting brands to bite for global names like The Rolling Stones, The Black Eyed Peas and Eric Clapton is a no-brainer but the idea of sponsoring emerging artists is fairly new and may take some time to develop.

The truth is that the domestic live scene is in a glorious shambles – Fragmented but bursting with potential. In any major western city worth its salt you can’t move for well promoted live nights, from pretty much any genre, making it easy to find a promoter with a ready-made, genre-specific crowd to work with. Not so in China. I was standing next to a Chinese girl at a gig in D-22, a Beijing underground rock venue. She was dressed as a goth, with crazy hair, blackened eyes, torn clothing and black finger nails. I asked her what sort of music she was in to. ‘Backstreet Boys’ was her immediate reply. Genre awareness is a real problem, leaving music marketers and promoters in a real pickle when it comes to introducing new international bands to anyone but the most well-versed of Chinese music fans.

Good mid-level acts have started to come over in recent months eg. Go! Team, Maximo Park, The Roots, Ziggy Marley, The Infadels. While all have been well received gigs, the crowds have predominantly been expats, with door prices ranging from £25 for The Roots, through to £5 for The Infadels (a ticket price that still did not guarantee a crowd). As with everything else in China it’s early days. None of these promoters are going to retire on their earnings any time soon and the dream of the West’s finest new bands playing to packed theatres of their chanting Chinese fans is still a fair way off. It’s all part of the slow education process. Western acts are generally way ahead of most of their Chinese counterparts in terms of performance discipline and showmanship so every international gig will be a small step in the right direction.

If you decide to pay for yourself to come over here, there are gigs to be had but do not expect to play to hordes of people who are just thrilled to have a western band playing. The Chinese are slightly harder to impress than that. Especially in Shanghai, which is predominantly a DJ city, boasting, as it does, roughly four decent small/mid-size rock music venues for a city of 18 million people.

Then there is the issue of performance permits. All performances require permits from the local cultural bureau as well as the national Ministry Of Culture. These permits have to be obtained by a government approved ‘performance company’ who will provide the application service for a fee. The permits themselves vary in price according to size of band and venue. Materials required include scanned passports, band biog (in English and Chinese), set list with lyrics and live show footage on DVD and the whole process tends to take 30 days. Nathaniel Davis from Spli-t Works says of the whole permitting nightmare that ‘foreign band shows promoted by the smaller, “underground” clubs are typically overlooked by the authorities. For bands performing at licensed live venues or government-owned performance venues, however, performance permits are a must. Once performance permits are received, the local foreign affairs bureau will issue a visa letter for the bands to take to their country’s respective China embassy to apply for official Z class work visas.’

So there you have it. You need a friend on the inside – ie. be invited to perform in China – if you want to be legit. In truth though, most small bands turn up here on tourist visas without too many problems.

© Ed Peto 2007

NOTE: This is an extract from ‘Access China’ report commissioned by UK Trade and Industry Department and British Underground.

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