Festivals Season, again

As lineups are announced at music fests around the world and as summer music festival season encroaches, a look China-ward reveals that it’s just about festival time. In glorious China-fest fashion, lineups are only just being announced, at t-minus barely a month to the big fests – e.g. Midi and Modern Sky’s Strawberry Music Festival, both of whom are doing Beijing and Shanghai versions. Meanwhile, new-ish-comer China Music Valley Festival is set to have some big names, though not yet officially…

Worth a read-through, if one may say so oneself, is this old thing I posted last summer, an overview of the Chinafest landscape and a trip backwards through its colourful history. For more of a scoop on the now, Beijing Daze breaks down Modern Sky’s 2012 lineup here while China Music Radar has a general festival rundown.

The biggest international names at this year’s festivals are Marky Ramone (Midi, who comes to China for the second time after a 2007 appearance at the Beijing Pop Festival) and Blonde Redhead and DJ Spooky (Strawberry), at least, as of right now, which could all change any day now – for the better or the worser. As for the biggest Chinese names, well, they don’t tend to change much from year to year, festival to festival.

I leave you with an image of one of my favourite festivals ever. Not so much for the music, the vibe or, even, the legitimacy of the use of the word ‘festival.’ This one’s more for the “interesting” category.

Suffocate (set to perform at Strawberry Festival 2012) at The First Annual Lattetown Music Festival, 2003

“We’re trying to show that Lattetown is a fashionable and modern place,” said the saleslady for the eponymous condominium complex I talked to as she tried to hand out brochures to a mix of rock fans confused over the setting and nouveau riche confused as to why their search for a new house had to be so loud.

 

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