You may remember we had a bit of an issue with a Suzhou Government sponsored festival confirming a rather big band for their event when they really hadn’t. Green Day, Glay and Cui Jian who were all “confirmed” have now been replaced by Sinead o’Connor, Simple Plan, 张震岳, 黄家强, 痛仰, 瘦人, 许巍, 汪峰.
The organizers led the bands a merry dance though. They “offered” on a huge number of artists, most of whom accepted (the terms were pretty generous). They then went quiet for a while and when pushed, told us that the artists that had accepted the offers were being put before the Suzhou government for selection. When 90% of the bands that had received “offers” were subsequently rejected, there were plenty of peed off Western music industry folks and yet another feather in the cap of China’s international music industry reputation…
But hey, we’ve got Simple Plan. It’s gonna be one massive government organized jamboree…