Carsick Cars Play Workers Gymnasium, Ninth Anniversary at 2 Kolegas, Mos Def Canceled

Kipp Whittaker | May 22, 2014 5:00 pm | Add a comment | 1853 reads

In this week's Talking Tunes we cover Carsick Cars's big outing, 2 Kolegas's bound-to-be-wild ninth anniversary bash and Mos Def's continued poor track record with coming to Beijing.

Carsick Cars to Play Workers' Gymnasium on May 23

The Carsick Cars will be having a gigantic show this Friday (May 23) at Workers Gymnasium. The new series featuring these local rock idols, is titled New Flowers in Full Blossom. China Daily reports that this new traveling concert series, created by Rockforward Entertainment, will bring seven indie acts to the iconic venue, including singer-songwriter Hao Yun and rock band Escape Plan.

Carsick Cars have already toured the world, becoming quite popular abroad and have been instrumental in developing the current sense of intrigue towards the musical happenings of China. This new series of shows is attempting to bring these developing acts to stadium level venues across China, and allowing them to reach the popularity they deserve at home.

These opportunities usually present themselves when large music companies realize that there's money to be made from these important emerging artists. It will probably lack the vinegar of their more grass roots shows at the mid size venues, but the press that goes along with these large venue tours is never a bad thing. Who knows, maybe this will put their foot in the door for the 2015 CCTV Spring Gala, which is obviously the pinnacle of any young musician's career. Let's hope they are all still Jenny from the block by the time they roll back into town.

2 Kolegas Ninth Year Anniversary Party

One of Beijing’s greatest music venues turns nine, and you can bet that they will be celebrating the occasion all weekend with plenty of live music, food and drinks. The lineup tomorrow (May 23) includes WHAI, Re-TROS, and Buyi, followed my by an after party with DJs Master Ray and Mickey Zhang.

Saturday will feature high octane rockabilly and rock n’ roll, dancing, mojitos, beer, chuan’r, clay oven pizza and drunken shenanigans until the early morning. The lineup includes DH & The Chinese Hellcats, indie rockers Residence A, Northwestern folk rockers Lidong and DJ Niu Mu will be keeping the celebratory vibes jumping. Help this venue celebrate 9 years of promoting live music and counter cultural activity to the masses. 

Mos Def (Yasiin Bey) Cancels ... Again!

We try to stay positive over here at the Beijinger, but unfortunately Tuesday's news via Time Out of Mos Def's indefinite postponement/cancellation wasn't much of a surprise. While his DJ set was planned for May 30 at Cicada Ultralounge, the reason now for this month's cancellation is that he has been blocked from entering America. There are no other details regarding Yasiin's immigration troubles, or why he has been refused entry to his birth country.

But it gets even worse for Mos – thanks to a tip from reader troublemaninbeijing, it now seems that he might not even able to make it back into the States.

Oh well, there was obviously a lot of excitement about this show due to Mos Def's undeniable talent (though not known primarily as a DJ) coupled with his cancellation on us shortly before his scheduled appearance at the 2012 MIDI Fest.

For every big name act about to perform in the capital there is always a menagerie of things that could go wrong, but you have to wonder what's up with an artist that when you Google cancellation next to their name and there is a list about five pages deep of scrapped gig listings.

In 2011, Mos Def committed a series of nasty touring faux pas for promoter Sam Speaight during an Australian tour that left the company, Peace Music, bankrupt.
 

More live music that's worth your time and money this week:

Photos: brooklynvegan.com, sundaylovers.wordpress.com, waaw.fr