| rocknation |
10-10-2015 04:50 PM |
Megadeth's First Chinese Concert Abruptly Censored?
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The Beijigner: Megadeth's opening night of its Dystopia tour ended abruptly after only an hour...(T)he performance at the MasterCard Center's Huiyuan Space may have been shortened or stopped by officials...For a band with a 30-year career, there seemed to be an inordinate number of instrumentals and extended guitar solos.
"Thank you for leaving so that we can come back and play again,"...Megadeth founder and lead singer Dave Mustaine said...as the band waved to the crowd after performing Peace Sells...But Who's Buying? Audience members departed without incident, despite disappointment and surprise at the show's brevity.
Megadeth is set to play Shanghai on (October 8 ) before heading to Japan for the annual Loud Park metal festival...
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Quote:
InsideHeavy.com: The members of Metallica revealed in 2013 that they were asked to send the lyrics to their entire discography to the Chinese government for approval before they were given permission to play in the country.
“We had to give them a whole set of songs and they went through all the lyrics and okayed which ones we could play, which ones we couldn’t play,”...guitarist Kirk Hammett said. “They see a lyric like Master Of Puppets being so subversive that they’re not allowing us to play it. It’s kind of scary.”
...(But) they never considered cancelling...“There were 40,000 kids over those two nights that were, I mean, they were really responding to what we were doing,” said METALLICA drummer Lars Ulrich. “It was insane.”
“What I did is, I had an open guitar solo thing where I just sit there and riff,” said Hammett. “I played the riff for Master Of Puppets and a couple of other songs that weren’t allowed to be played. I played just the music, so I kind of snuck it in there.”
Ulrich also explained that (their) Chinese fans were fully aware of the restrictions..."They published it on government web sites — what songs we could play and what we couldn’t...”
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Sounds like the Ministry of Culture still doesn't make it a uniform policy to review all song lyrics -- how the heck did Peace Sells But Who's Buying get past them? And at a venue named after an American credit card company? How pro-communist can you get?
P.S. Ticket prices ranged from RMB 680 -1,280 RMB (107 - 202 USD). |
