It seems that Beijing’s Modern Sky Festival may have found a new home. After the recent difficulties with Haidian Park, Modern Sky have decided to flex their guanxi that bit harder by taking on the mother of all public spaces – Chaoyang Park.
Chaoyang Park is in central Beijing and hosted the now extinct Beijing Pop Festival from 2004 – 2007. The Pop Festival always had incredible problems with the Park – from the “Golden Circle” which meant spectators could rarely get within 100m of the stage, to security restrictions and PSB insanity – that festival boss Jason Magnus spent 90% of his time “walking the walk” (although to give him credit, he did manage to get Public Enemy, Nine Inch Nails and Marky Ramone to play there). It will be interesting to see how it all pans out for Shen Lihui and his crew. Let’s hope it works out, because Beijing desparately needs a decent music festival of its own.
