A little bit of politics

Following up on my post last week about the last-minute prohibition on local band Carsick Cars doing the warm-up for Sonic Youth when they played in Beijing 7 days ago, I have now learned that the Chinese government's beef was not - as I had idly speculated - with the Cars at all, but with Sonic Youth.

Apparently, the Ministry of Culture belatedly found out (via a post on their BBS!) that Sonic Youth had played at the big 'Free Tibet' concert in San Francisco 10 years ago, and were not at all happy about that. (Had they really not done their due diligence on the band's application to perform here? Would they have remained in blissful ignorance but for some 'anonymous informant'? It seems absurd, but.... this is China.) They didn't feel able to deport the band or cancel their scheduled Beijing and Shanghai shows (that's progress of a sort, I suppose), but they did wish to express their displeasure somehow - and Jeff Zhang's little band was in the firing line.

It looks like this could be a continuing problem for them: I am told that the Carsick Cars have also been banned from appearing in the same venue this week (one of the satellite shows accompanying this week's open-air Midi Music Festival; I'm not sure if they're going to be able to play the festival itself during the day).

I very much doubt if Jeff and his bandmates had any idea of Sonic Youth's views on the Tibet issue (as, indeed, it seems the government itself did not until the 11th hour); and it seems amazingly petty to discipline them merely for having the temerity to seek to share a stage with a well-known American band who they regard as an important musical influence. But then, The Ogre is petty, very petty indeed.