Greed Takes Dylan Away From Beijing?

Honestly, none of us expect Bob Dylan can actually play in Beijing when Oasis became cool enough to be banned to play here. But sometimes the story is more complicated than raging against the machines, here are the latest updates for the expected Bob Dylan show in Beijing on April 4.

This is from Taiwan Radio International: “It is known that local promoter Brokers Brothers Herald (BBH) has agreed with the Dylan team at USD two million for a tour in Seoul (Mar 31), Taipei (Apr 2), Beijing (Apr 4), Shanghai (Apr 6) and Hong Kong (Apr 8). However, due to the difficulty of getting a permit to play in mainland China, the Taipei concert on April 2 is also postponed to an indefinite date.”

Before you get all pissed off with the government again (we don’t), here’s some other voice. Sun Mengjin, one of China’s most well-known music critics, published such statement in his blog post titled Greed Destroys Dylan's Shows in China: “There’re people working their ass off to pull off a show and not making any money, and there are also scalpers who only care about making money from music; Business is business, but there’s a bottom line. Dylan’s agent asked for USD 250,000 per show in mainland China, and some Taiwanese promoter sold it to a mainland company for USD 400,000 – I mean, how money-driven can you be? Don’t they know about the international standard of maximum 15% for agent fees? 400,000 dollars for the 8,000 seated Shanghai Grand Stage, it’s impossible to make the money back by selling tickets. Those people are whistling ‘blowing in the wind’ while their black hearted money are also blowing with the shit out of their ass. FYI, there will be a day when Dylan is too old to sing.”

Wow, easy man...Not sure what he means by that last statement, but you get the gist - he's angry. For our side, we'll just wait and see, stay with us for more updates.

Source (all in Chinese):
美國搖滾巨匠巴布狄倫將來台開唱 時間未敲定: http://news.rti.org.tw/index_newsContent.aspx?nid=233248 (need proxy)
贪婪毁掉了鲍勃·迪伦的演出: http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_48374be40100haqf.html