Helen Feng is one of the more influential people in China’s music scene. She combines educating (she is a DJ at one of Beijing premier radio stations) with expressing (she fronts two Beijing bands – Ziyo and rising stars Pet Conspiracy) with helping, giving her time and expertise to anyone with their heart in pushing forward the music scene in China.
She was recently involved in the Voice of a New Generation that we have featured on this blog a bit recently. This is what she had to say about it:
Do you like Rock Music?
ShareSun 7:39pm
After three hellish days MC-ing a terrible soda event (one hint it’s brown in a blue can and it’s not Coca Cola) I finally found out that I had been fired from the position due to not putting enough emphasis on the product itself. The excuse they told me was “I didn’t have enough knowledge about the product.”
Really, was there anything to know. First off, it was a knock off product created in the 40’s or 50’s to take away Coke’s market. The founder of the company was best known for marrying a movie star Joan Crawford who inspired the horrifying bad parenting story “Mommy Dearest”. And oh yeah, it’s spent it’s last six years pushing pop stars the likes of Jay Chow and teeny weeny (seriously anorexic) Jolin.
But suddenly, with the rise of Rock N’ Roll in china, it made the decision to switch from Taiwan based Mando-pop to Rock N’ Roll. Suddenly P—- Soda was heading a battle of the bands competition cause bands were becoming the new hot Sh*t. Companies like Red Bull, whose has already been an international music festival sponsor for more then a decade, had already sponsored a successful battle of the bands competitions in China. So had other companies like Lee and Converse who had made very visible sponsorship deals with many of China bands. Motorola had flipped a significant part of the bill for the 2007 Modern Sky Festival. It seemed like everyone wanted to be on the Rock bandwagon.
But for all of Converse, Redbull, Nike, and Lee’s sponsorships, the emphasis was still put to the music. Not so for the soda company (whose name starts with a P).
After hearing about the line-up, I thought this is shaping up to be an interesting event. The hefty prize of 20,000 Euros and a trip to L.A. had gotten a lot of big name bands to sign up for the competition. Thinking that this could be good, I cut my usual MC fee down to a laughable amount and decided to come over and do the event.
When I got to the venue, however, I knew this was going nowhere but downhill. Unlike other sponsored events, the P—- soda company apparently was seriously afraid that the audience wouldn’t get their name right. Therefore, they had covered every single available space and human being with their logo and made the stage behind the band look like a supermarket isle stacked sky high with soda cans with a “blue” flaming guitar in the background. Apart from the in your face branding that made us dizzy, we were also shocked by their serious lack of taste. In the back were a few skinny models in hot pants and a halter-tops also adorned with said logo stretched tight against none existent boobs selling the soda at the bar. Even the people working there had to have said logo painted on their face.
Having never done a battle of the bands before, said soda company had forgotten that unlike other talent contests, bands don’t usually come with a back-up tape in hand so had allocated no time for stage changes. In between the bands, the MC (namely me) was suppose to interview the lead singer. This was a bit ridiculous as the lead singer was usually down on the floor plugging in equipment. When I expressed this to the sponsor, the responded by saying “well just tell them to hurry up.”
Still with one minute allocated for stage changes, even the speediest of musicians could not get their equipment plugged in on-time. The head of said Soda company came charging backstage screaming at the staff saying things like “tell these kids if they don’t get their equipment plugged in less then three minutes they will have points deducted from their total score.”
When I protested saying it was impossible, the events company reminded me that “I wasn’t watching out for the interests of the sponsors.” But wasn’t this competition about the bands? But in retrospect. . . absolutely not!
Through the top prize was worth a few raised eyebrows for the 1000’s of bands who signed up for this competition, the end result for everyone but that lucky winner are several days of being cramped into what basically amounts to free commercials for the Soda Company. There are no consolation prizes. After watching these young bands, I wanted to take them aside and remind them a few things about Rock N’ Roll.
First off, with truly creative music, you are your own judge for there is no standard to measure you against.
2ndly, respect your music and respect your fans. Don’t let asshole sponsors push you around, your responsibility is first to the audience. . . so get your sound right before you start.
3rdly, don’t compromise or kiss ass. . . let’s not forget, this is Rock N’ Roll.
The sponsors wanted to remind me to stop talking about the bands and start talking about how great they were. Several scripts were handed to me which talked about the qualities of said soda and how they always been ahead of the trend bring good quality (sugar water) and culture to the youth of China. I roughly said that, but apparently it was said with not enough feeling from the heart. The sponsor wanted more frequency (before and after every band) and with more enthusiasm. Unfortunately. . . I just couldn’t muster the enthusiasm.
One day before one of these MC gigs, I asked ” Do you likerock music?” The answer was “No not really, but I read a book about it.” I just smiled and said, “well that’s good.” Suddenly I wanted to shout drink Coca Cola.
Helen
a.k.a. Ex Soda MC