You've probably not noticed, but this week has seen a bunch of
NOTCH events going on in Shanghai. NOTCH is the Nordic + China festival or art, music and other creative stuff that's been happening in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou since 2006. They were the ones who did those gigs in the greenhouse with Neocha a few years back. Generally what happens is, they bring in some acts from the Nordic countries and pair them with local bands for some pretty decent gigs. As I say, this year was their fifth time doing this, so it's not just another Expo bit on the side event.
Why do I mention all this? Well it's been a bit of a mess. On Wednesday, they brought over electronic pop princess Annie. She's pretty well known and has an accessible sound that audiences in China would get into andit should have been a pretty big deal. Except there was no publicity. We ran an interview with her in the magazine because we happened to find out she was coming, but otherwise there was hardly any promotion done at all.
Unsurprisingly then, hardly anyone showed up on Wednesday night. Worse, most of those who did show up missed Annie's performance. She was the only act on that night - there were no support bands or artists, meaning there was no CH part of the event at all. Not only that, but she went on at 8.30pm. Most people (logically) had assumed the doors were at 9pm and that the headliner wouldn't be on for a while after that - pretty standard for gigs here. Anyone who turned up at 9.30pm, caught the end of the last song.
So what happened? Annie and the band were, understandably, pretty pissed off about the whole thing. The NOTCH people too, were not best pleased apparently, pointing the finger at MAO Livehouse for not promoting the event properly. MAO Livehouse, in turn, are unimpressed with how the organiser (apparently different to the one used in previous years) has handled the whole thing and blamed them for the lack of publicity.
It all seems a bit of a shame, with the upshot of all these recriminations being that NOTCH are pulling the show scheduled at MAO for Saturday and neither party are keen to work with the other again.
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