Talking Tunes: Ben Folds to Visit Beijing as Lao Cui Returns and New Kings are Crowned

The big event this week is the return of Cui Jian to Beijing on his "Blue Bones Tour". Lao Cui has been busy with other projects in recent years – he's set to release his directorial debut next year - but on Saturday, he's back to doing what he does best. The pioneer of Chinese rock music plays the MasterCard Arena (Wukesong).

Incidentally, a day later (Sun Dec 16) this year's rock kings will be crowned when the fourth annual Midi Music Awards take place in the MasterCard's sister venue, M Space. Awards will be doled out for accolades such as Album, Song and Performance of the Year. BeijingDaze have given their take on the nominations. As usual there are some areas of controversy.

Canadian witch house artist (she hates being called that) Grimes was confirmed as the first of the big names to take part in March's JUE Festival. But today the first round of performance confirmations was given to us by organizers Split Works. Another noteworthy act we'll get is Ben Folds Five. No further details have been given yet, but they will be here at some point in February. Look out for a post on the blog soon with details of some of the other early confirmations.

If you want to be involved in March's JUE Festival, shoot the organizers an email at beijingjue@spli-t.com. Be warned: the deadline for initial submissions is December 21, so you don't have a lot of time to get your event, gallery, exhibition or band in order.

Elsewhere, American pop punks The Ataris have been confirmed to perform at Yugong Yishan on Jan 11 as they embark on an Asian tour.

To some more upcoming music:

Finally, remember Stiletto? They were the band we got together for our New Music Showcase earlier this year. Well lead guitarist, the quite brilliant Fan Zhai has now moved on to a new project, and his new band Monster 11 will play their first show on Dec 21.

Don't forget, there are loads more gigs to check out in the events section.

To play us out this week we'll go with the awesome Ben Folds and "Landed" as we begin to get excited about his Beijing jaunt in February.

Photo: Popbytes.com