I mentioned four bands as being influential and durable — DFG, Carsick Cars, Hedgehog, PK-14 — and posited that since they write great rock songs and don’t set out to be political activists, then we have to judge AWW by that same framework:

Since he isn’t setting out to write great rock songs, then the record can’t be compared to their output.

Not sure what Hanggai has to do with any of that.

I know of the aforementioned bands, by the way, not due to record label involvement, but rather because I’ve seen them all grow up and flourish since moving to the country in 2005 several years some of these record labels even existed.

I mention the mismanagement of record labels only to illustrate that it if the AWW record *does* manage to generate the most publicity of any record this year, blame the indies for not having better international outreach — not AWW.

If the labels had staffers, even part-timers, sending press kits to the influential English-language music world in order to review their records, then more media outlets would be reviewing their output because this is the primary way in which they’d be aware of this music in the first place.

But since this isn’t happening — and the Western music press is giddy about Chinese content whenever I talk with them and usually ask for more information — I really have to question how they run their PR departments.

Thanks again for your comments.

Though to be honest, his actual works in question that are to my taste aren’t exactly political. I wonder if all the people defending his freedom actually have an interest in his Sino-centric art that doesn’t have to do with politics.

If the CPC didn’t pick a fight with him they wouldn’t have a fight with him. People in China make ‘interesting’ art pieces all the time, the difference is Ai speaks English so the CPC takes offense and the western world kowtows to his outbursts.

“Saint Ai, The Musician: The Divine Comedy, Reviewed” deliberately overstates its case in order to get attention. What I do take issue with are his derision of China’s independent music labels (“mismanaged, short-sighted, and engage in virtually zero international outreach”) and musicians (“even those in this country’s punk rock scene are guilty of utilizing formulaic flag-waving lyrical bullshit because they’re unwilling to wrap their liberty-spiked heads around anything specific”). Worse than these things simply being not true, they suggest that the standards of good music are having success in the West and being political outspoken in the most crude way. “Maybe Ai can help with that,” writes Pete DeMola. I hope not.

The bands that DeMola “consider[s] to be the country’s most durable and influential”, namely Duck Fight Goose, Hedgehog, Carsick Cars, and PK-14, further testify to his Anglocentrism, literally in about half of the songs of these bands. These are great bands (I especially like PK14), at the same time there’s more to rock in the PRC than Maybe Mars (incidentally, that DeMola knows these bands is a sign of this label’s international outreach). Hanggai is an example of a Beijing-based band with prolonged international success, but maybe that doesn’t count because they are Mongolian-themed and not New Wave but World Music…?

Then about Zuoxiao Zuzhou. I wouldn’t call him “a well-respected founding father who helped popularize avant-garde rock music in the early-1990s”. As far as I know Zuoxiao became successful around 2008 because of a relatively more mainstream sound (I like his 2009 album Big Deal 《大事》　best), but also because of his outspokenness on microblogs and by association with Ai Weiwei.

Zuoxiao Zuzhou and Ai Weiwei started working together when they both lived in the East Village in Beijing in the mid-1990s. Zuoxiao used Ai’s artwork as cover art of his first solo album in 2001 (Zuoxiao Zuzhou at Di’anmen 《左小祖咒在地安门》 ). Zuoxiao was with Ai when he was injured by the police in Chengdu and composed all the music for the documentaries that Ai Weiwei made. Divine Comedy seems to be a natural next step in their collaboration.

As far as I can judge on the basis of the one song that I’ve heard, the album also fits Zuoxiao’s musical development, which, as I have argued elsewhere (http://norient.com/academic/groenewegen2011/), moves from sincere avant-garde through somewhat detached ‘musical commentary’ towards the clownesque. Zuoxiao’s recent talk at Berkeley is a good example of how Zuoxiao Zuzhou is sometimes deliberately superficial, silly and 无厘头 and sometimes critical by suggesting depth behind his parody (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naJ4ZZbxZ2c). The video also shows some of the challenges this poses to well-meaning translators and event organizers, who in their attempt to invest the institution with prestige and decency water down Zuoxiao’s “pissing against the idealist wind” somewhat.

Anyway: AWW does horrid art, he does not create. You didn’t get it because you don’t understand art. AWW does horrible music as well. and thanks god people understand music better than art, so hopefully he will be worshipped a bit less. Please stop this kind of rehabilitation of the unrehabilitablable.

Actually, no. He begged to be involved, contributed garbage that was ignored, and then tried to claim credit for something. He’s a joke.

He was a complete and total joke in the US, came to China and did fun things like tax fraud to make a name for himself. He’s a talentless hack and nothing more.

1.) Doesn’t matter, the point remains the same — Ai co-curated an exhibit featuring Zhu Yu’s work. The fact that it was pulled at the last minute is irrelevant because the intent remains unchanged;

2.) You’re right: They were two different exhibitions. The conflation of the exhibits wasn’t included in the original submission, which was much longer and pared down by BJC’s in-house editorial staff. We’ll get better at ensuring better communication exists between the contributors and the editorial department.

3.) Okay. Again: What’s your point?

I especially liked your point about how Chinese indie record labels do a lot more harm to themselves than Ai has by stealing the spotlight. That is absolutely dead-on, and it remains a mystery to me how they continue to be so incompetent in getting the world interested in something that should be a piece of cake. Rock music in and of itself suggests rebellion (whether or not it actually does), and should serve as a panacea to the “gray-colored dystopia rife with baby-aborting drones and entire cities of enslaved assembly-line workers.” Perhaps the reason why Chinese rock hasn’t taken off abroad is precisely because this image remains so steadfast in people’s minds.

I believe though that your main point (if I understand it), that the record is forgivable – even good – is way off. The fact remains that if it were any other artist, it would be shelved and that would be the end of it. But here you have written many, many words about something whose sole existence is to be written about for the fact that it exists.

“These people, who endlessly criticize without creating anything of value themselves”

Was that really neccesary? That’s not true, nor fair. Plus, don’t you contradict yourself when you later say:

“And while the country has no shortage of dedicated participants involved in the music biz — musicians, promoters, writers, venue managers, bloggers, DIY labels, retailers, graphic designers, and other starry-eyed idealists”

Sounds like quite a bit of value being created to me.

1) Zhu Yu’s Eating People was a private performance and pictures were meant to be exposed in an exhibition co-curated by Ai Weiwei. However, Ai decided with Zhu not to include the pictures in the exhibit and they were not shown.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhu_Yu_%28artist%29#Significant_Works

2) Fuck Off was the English title of the exhibition, which took place in 2000 in Shanghai as alternative event to the Shanghai Biennale. The work you cite is called Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, and is dated 1995.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturepicturegalleries/8004485/Ai-Weiwei-and-The-Unilever-Series.html

3) You say he’s an artist and he is supposed to create… Well, he is present at the Venice Biennale this year with 3 works, Straight, SACRED (Disposition 1 and 2), and Bang (German pavillon). Have you seen them? I have.

http://www.designboom.com/art/ai-weiwei-straightens-150-tons-of-steel-rebar-from-sichuan-quake/

Having said that, the songs suck. No surprise from somebody who once declared that he even doesn’t listen to music.

But this doesn’t change the fact that you’re out of your depth when writing about art. And you know, you are writing about an artist.