the Beijinger

Last night Avril Lavigne became the first performer to give the Wukesong Stadium a work out as a live music venue and, according to reports in today’s Beijing papers, the Olympic Basketball venue saw quite a show. Lavigne kicked off the performance, the last of her six-city tour of China, with her popular “Girlfriend” and the audiences responded by rushing forward to the VIP area in front of the main stage. Three songs in to the 70-minute performance, things became a little chaotic with barriers in front of the stage being bent out of shape by crazed fans. The stage lighting was turned off and the concert was forced to pause for eight minutes as staff standing on the stage asked the crowd to return to their seats. After fans had returned to the stands, the Canadian punk-pop princess continued on with the show. Reports suggest that the crowd control problems stemmed from more than just excitable fans but were also exacerbated by the poor lay out of the venue. The crowd simply filled the large amount of empty space at the center of the stadium and little security had been set up to prevent them from doing so. You can take a look at a video of the chaotic scenes here.

Flick through any guidebook to Beijing, and you're unlikely to find Maliandao, Beijing's tea district, listed in the must-sees. It's a wholesale area for one (look at the photo) - not exactly wispy-bearded old men weighing out bunches of priceless dahongpao in back alleys. It's also in south-west Beijing. Where? Exactly. Nevertheless, Maliandao is a must for any Beijingers wanting to take the next bold step beyond Jasmine tea, Lipton with milk and that pot of pu'er you had at the dim-sum buffet.

Update: It's official, Linkin Park have announced that they've cancelled all five dates of their Asia tour. This includes the concert that was to have taken place in Beijing on Oct 19.

Rumors are spreading that Linkin Park are going to be the next big international act to cancel their Beijing show in a year already chock-full of high profile no shows. A call to the Emma ticketing office was met with the ominous response that "ticket sales have been temporarily suspended" and a refusal to give any more details. A note on the band's official site also mentions the cancellation of a show on Oct 6 "as lead vocalist Chester Bennington has sustained a back injury and is under doctor's orders to rest."
 

French duo AIR will perform two shows at Yugong Yishan over the next two nights. To get you in the mood for the electro-pop group’s show, we’ve decided to post Lisa Liang’s profile of the band that first appeared as a feature article in the September issue of the Beijinger magazine.

Sep 26-27
AIR
RMB 700, advance RMB 550.
8pm, 11pm (after party). Yugong Yishan (6404 2711)

If you've lived in Beijing long enough, or at least for the past year, you've come to find the uncertainty of major international acts performing in the capital endearing. Well, no. That's not true. It's still annoying as hell. Take Celine Dion, for example, whose show cancellation due to a throat infection earlier this year sunk who-knows-how-many a heart among devoted Beijing fans.

And now, the latest to fall victim to this tiresome trend is rapper/producer Kanye West. Despite a firm and resolute confirmation from organizers China West weeks prior to the show that all the kinks for Kanye to come to China had been worked out, we are now being told that both his Beijing and Shanghai performances in September will be postponed, most likely until November but possibly until December.

Update: Despite an earlier announcement, looks like the tickets to see Oasis in Beijing are still in the "booking available" stage, though Shanghai tickets are available. You can pre-book the Beijing tickets and they'll call you when they become available - which according to the guy on the phone, should be sometime in the next week. According to one source, all the RMB 200 tickets have already been booked.

As part of their Dig Out Your Soul World Tour, Oasis will be playing three shows in China. Tickets to the Beijing show (Apr 3 at the Capital Gymnasium) were supposed to go on sale at 9am this morning but are still only able to be "pre-booked". Tickets can be booked through Emma/Ticketmaster and prices range from RMB 200-1,600. You can call the ticketing hotline on 400 707 9999. More details here.

Oct 19
Linkin Park and Mayday
RMB 100-1,600 (On sale on Aug 11 through Emma-Ticketmaster)
Beijing Workers' Stadium (6501 6655 ext 5033)

We first heard rumors about it back in January and now we finally have confirmation that Linkin Park will be playing both Beijing and Shanghai in October. The two concerts are presented as fundraisers for Linkin Park's Music For Relief charity as part of the proceeds will be used, as the ticketing website notes, to "raise international and domestic awareness of the needs of the post-earthquake Sichuan area and to contribute financial and social support to people affected there."

The concert will see Linkin Park perform along with Taiwanese rockers Mayday (五月天 Wǔ Yuè Tiān) with both bands playing sets of at least 90 minutes each. However, there might be a few other guests set to perform too, as the show will go on for about 4 hours. Tickets for the Shanghai show (Oct 12 at Shanghai Stadium), go on sale at 10am on August 7.

However, if the previously reported Avril Lavigne concert is anything to go by, a cloud of doubt still hovers over the Beijing show. Despite tickets to the Oct 4 Avril Lavigne show in Shanghai being on sale for more than a week now, details of the Beijing stop of the Canadian pop star's world tour are still not up on the Emma Ticketmaster site. When we called to ask about when tickets would be available, the person who answered the phone at the ticketing agency confirmed that the show has still not been confirmed. However, this seems to be down to yet another inexplicable Olympic-related rule of some kind and both the Avril Lavigne and Linkin Park shows seem likely to go ahead as planned.

Those already in the know about DJ Shadow don't need a reminder that he is a living legend in the world of instrumental hip hop/turntablism/electronica (yes, all three). Or that he was one of the seminal players in the founding of the California Bay Area hip-hop collective Quannum/Solesides Crew. Or that his musical wizardry – which will be only display this Friday night at Angel Club – landed him in the Guinness Book of World Records (2001). Or that he is amongst a very select few who’ve had their music brought to color by Wong Kar Wai - see “Six Days” music video below.

Update: Dates for Kanye West's China concerts have been rescheduled, this time with a "100-percent certainty" from organizers China West (which means about a 50-percent certainty from us here at the Beijinger).
The new show dates will indeed be in November: Kanye will be coming to Beijing on Nov 1 and performing at the upgraded location of Wukesong Olympic Basketball Gymnasium. Kanye's Shanghai date has also been rescheduled to Nov 3. Prices are still to be determined.