Those already in the know about DJ Shadow don't need a reminder that he is a living legend in the world of instrumental hip hop/turntablism/electronica (yes, all three). Or that he was one of the seminal players in the founding of the California Bay Area hip-hop collective Quannum/Solesides Crew. Or that his musical wizardry – which will be only display this Friday night at Angel Club – landed him in the Guinness Book of World Records (2001). Or that he is amongst a very select few who’ve had their music brought to color by Wong Kar Wai - see “Six Days” music video below.

Kanye West
RMB 280-2,000.
7.30pm. Workers' Gymnasium (6501 6655 ext 5033)

So Kanye West finally got his act together and made it to Beijing this past weekend, putting on an energetic, fantasmic, hour and a half light-show of a set at Workers’ Gymnasium Saturday night. The evening started off promptly at 7.30pm, with a rap group from Taiwan opening for his Westness, and receiving adequate applause at that. From what we’ve gathered here at the Beijinger, that group was not the originally advertised Will Pan.

Update: Ticket prices for the Kylie Minogue show have been announced. RMB 280-1,680. VIP 1,980 and VVIP 2,580. Keen fans can leave their contact details with either piao.com or mypiao.com and they'll call you when tickets become available.

We've just got confirmation that Kylie Minogue will be performing in Beijing in December. The date of the concert (Dec 1) had been set long ago, but organizers held back until last week to announce the venue and ticket prices. Unfortunately, the morning after they announced these details, they quickly retracted them. The pop princess was to follow in Avril Lavigne's footsteps and perform at the Wukesong Indoor Basketball Stadium. However, it seems that the managers of the venue were worried that the chaos that marred the Avril Lavigne concert earlier this month might be repeated and decided to pull the plug on the event.

Today we just received word that the concert will now go ahead on the same date (Dec 1) at the Workers' Gymnasium -  the same venue that Kanye West will be performing at this Saturday. Still no information on when tickets to the Beijing show go on sale, but you can check this site or call 6585 5755 for more information. Tickets to Kylie's show in Shanghai on Nov 29 went on sale last Friday.

Update: It's official, Linkin Park have announced that they've cancelled all five dates of their Asia tour. This includes the concert that was to have taken place in Beijing on Oct 19.

Rumors are spreading that Linkin Park are going to be the next big international act to cancel their Beijing show in a year already chock-full of high profile no shows. A call to the Emma ticketing office was met with the ominous response that "ticket sales have been temporarily suspended" and a refusal to give any more details. A note on the band's official site also mentions the cancellation of a show on Oct 6 "as lead vocalist Chester Bennington has sustained a back injury and is under doctor's orders to rest."
 

Last night Avril Lavigne became the first performer to give the Wukesong Stadium a work out as a live music venue and, according to reports in today’s Beijing papers, the Olympic Basketball venue saw quite a show. Lavigne kicked off the performance, the last of her six-city tour of China, with her popular “Girlfriend” and the audiences responded by rushing forward to the VIP area in front of the main stage. Three songs in to the 70-minute performance, things became a little chaotic with barriers in front of the stage being bent out of shape by crazed fans. The stage lighting was turned off and the concert was forced to pause for eight minutes as staff standing on the stage asked the crowd to return to their seats. After fans had returned to the stands, the Canadian punk-pop princess continued on with the show. Reports suggest that the crowd control problems stemmed from more than just excitable fans but were also exacerbated by the poor lay out of the venue. The crowd simply filled the large amount of empty space at the center of the stadium and little security had been set up to prevent them from doing so. You can take a look at a video of the chaotic scenes here.

Sep 26-27
AIR
RMB 700, advance RMB 550.
8pm, 11pm (after party). Yugong Yishan (6404 2711)

With their first ever shows in China, Air also happened to be a very fitting, along with the equally placid Benson and Jarreau, choice of first foreign act to perform in the post-Olympics, post-Bjork era: relaxing, intimate and ever uncontroversial.

French duo AIR will perform two shows at Yugong Yishan over the next two nights. To get you in the mood for the electro-pop group’s show, we’ve decided to post Lisa Liang’s profile of the band that first appeared as a feature article in the September issue of the Beijinger magazine.

Sep 26-27
AIR
RMB 700, advance RMB 550.
8pm, 11pm (after party). Yugong Yishan (6404 2711)

After a series of “It’s On “, “No It’s Off”, “No It’s On Again” posts back in April, we resolved not to write about the Midi Festival again until all the details had been 100% confirmed. For the past two or three weeks we’ve been following the drama on the Midi school’s BBS as organizers reported about their efforts to get official permission to hold the event at the National Olympic Sports Center over the National Day Holidays. Despite some other websites going ahead and announcing that it would be taking place, we decided to hold back and wait and see. I’m glad we did. Last night we received a call from one of the organizers to let us know that the Midi Festival has been delayed yet again. It will now (probably) be taking place at Haidian Park over the Oct 10-12 weekend and possibly the following weekend too. According to a note on the Midi School BBS, just as the organizers were about to receive the long awaited permission from the Chaoyang governent’s cultural bureau, during a meeting with officials from the National Olympic Sports Center they were informed that there might be some complications.

The venue for Kanye West's Beijing show has been changed again. As we reported earlier, the show was originally planned to take place at Fengtai Stadium on Sep 25 and then later, with a guarantee of "100-percent certainty" from organizers China West, was moved to Nov 1 at the Wukesong Olympic Basketball Gymnasium. The latest news is that the show will still take place on Nov 1 but at the Workers’ Stadium Workers Gymnasuim not the Wukesong Stadium.

Sep 4
George Benson & Al Jarreau
RMB 380-1,280.
8pm. Beijing Exhibiton Theater (6835 4455)

Jazz legends George Benson and Al Jarreau put on a fantastic and energetic show for a full house last night at the Beijing Exhibiton Theatre. Al Jarreau started the show by singing Elton John’s Your Song, before living up to his reputation of being the Acrobat of Scat and wowing the crowd with his scat routines - including a nice little riff on the word Beijing. He also won applause by dropping a few lines of Chinese into his on stage banter and charmed them even more when he invited them to start scatting along with him.