Not quite NO PUBLICITY

But next to none.

I noticed the other day that a poster for this weekend's KAMA Love Music Festival in Beijing's Olympic Park is on display in the entrance to my local subway station (and probably has been for the past month, at least). However, it's really not a very eye-catching design - with no photos, no familiar logo, and almost no text in English, it's just not the sort of thing that any foreigner is likely to look twice at. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that subway posters in general here have very low consumer impact on anyone, foreign or Chinese (the ones in the access tunnels, anyway; the ones on the platforms you can find yourself staring at for a few minutes as you wait for a train).

Apart from the isolated flyer I found in a bar a few days ago, I've seen no other advance publicity for this event anywhere - no handbills or posters in any of the music bars, for example. And, of course, there's the usual curse of the beginning of the month: the new editions of the various monthly expat magazines have only just come out, and many people haven't yet got around to picking up a copy (the bi-weekly City Weekend sometimes steals a march on its rivals, but this time its new fortnightly edition is coming out at exactly the same time as the monthlies); listings for events like this are never promulgated more than a month in advance, so anything slated for the opening few days of the month happens in a black hole of almost zero awareness (I missed Norah Jones playing at the Workers' Gymnasium a few years back because of this phenomenon; I'd clocked posters for it some way in advance, but hadn't paid much attention to the date because I'd felt sure I'd see something about it in the listings magazines to remind me - uh, NO). And Time Out (the first of the magazines I picked up this month; CW started appearing a day or two later; and The Beijinger doesn't seem to have any significant bar distribution any more - what's with that?!) carried a listing that was almost invisible. Really - there was no feature story at all, just a small entry buried in the midst of all the small bar gigs! The notice about it on their weekly events roundup e-mail was slightly more prominent, but.... didn't mention the Cowboy Junkies as being one of the headliners!!!  WTF??!! This is starting to feel like a conspiracy....

The music websites I usually rely on weren't any better on this occasion - only wising up to this event at the very last moment (and Beijing Daze being rather snootily dismissive of it at first).

Oh well, I believe this Festival has received some attention in the Chinese media. And given that it's a long holiday weekend (Duanwu, the Dragon Boat Festival), the Olympic Park is going to be thronged with people anyway (they just may be a little confused and resentful as to why they're being charged 200 rmb to come in!). So, I hope there'll be a decent-sized crowd turning out for this.

And it should be a pleasant change, just for once, to go to a music festival with a minimal laowai contingent. I'm off in an hour or two. See you there??