Before I get to this saga, let me just mention that we at Fujirockers.org have been brainstorming about how to drive more traffic to this blog, so without further ado, let me toss out a few popular key words: Sri Lanka, Obama, lesbian gang bang.
Now, what would I have people otherwise interested in Sri Lanka, Barack Obama or lesbian gang bangs know about Noel Gallagher, the lead singer of the British band Oasis? Only this: For playing a Tibetan Freedom Concert in 1997 he says he barely remembers, Oasis was banned from playing April concerts in Beijing and Shanghai earlier this year. It may be possible that they and dozens of other huge rock bands – including Radiohead, the Beastie Boys and the Red Hot Chili Peppers to name a few – will never be able to play China. Here’s the entire history:


June 1997 – Noel Gallagher plays a Tibetan Freedom Concert in New York City. As he remembered it to the Asian Wall Street Journal:

“I just happened to be in New York on that day, and the gig–U2 were doing it, Radiohead were doing it, even the f—ing Beastie Boys were doing it. The rest of the band wasn’t even there, and I said ‘F— it yeah, I’ll play a few songs. I didn’t know twelve years later it would cause all this trouble.”

March 2, 2008 – At a concert in Shanghai, Bjork says “Tibet, Tibet” at the end of her song “Declare Independence.” Check this video + report from the Guardian. Years before, Bjork had also played a Tibetan Freedom Concert, but that was no big deal at the time. Two weeks after her concert, major riots started in Tibet, though there is no evidence that this had anything to do with Bjork’s gesture. Fearing that mass protests would erupt in advance of the Olympics, major concerts throughout China, especially featuring foreign bands or rock music, were shut down until around October, when the games were well past.
February 28, 2009: Oasis is banned in China. The band posts this message on their official website and Myspace page:

Oasis were informed Saturday, the 28th of February by their Chinese promoters, (Emma Entertainment/Ticketmaster China) that representatives from the Chinese Government have revoked the performance licenses already issued for the band and ordered their shows in both Beijing and Shanghai to be immediately cancelled[sic]….
According to the show’s promoters, officials within the Chinese Ministry of Culture only recently discovered that Noel Gallagher appeared at a Free Tibet Benefit Concert on Randall’s Island in NY in 1997 and have now deemed that the band are consequently unsuitable to perform to their fans in the Chinese Republic on 3rd and 5th of April, during its 60th anniversary year.

April, 2009: For the aforementioned AWSJ story, the reporter makes it backstage to an Oasis concert in Hong Kong and gets this statement from Noel Gallagher:

Basically, somebody from the Chinese Ministry of Culture had a problem with the fact that I’d done a gig for the Tibetans twelve years ago, a f—ing gig I don’t even remember. But these Communists clearly have long memories. They weren’t going to allow us to play. And the sad thing is, people had bought tickets. I’ve never been to mainland China, and now I’ll probably never get to go and enjoy all that it offers. This is probably the closest we’ll ever get. It’s a shame–international politics is a strange thing.

Now if playing a Tibetan Freedom Concert is enough to get a band banned from China, here are groups that will never play the middle kingdom based on the same 1997 event that got Noel Gallagher in trouble:

Noel Gallagher, Foo Fighters, U2, Sonic Youth, Biz Markie, Alanis Morissette, Patti Smith, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Radiohead, Yungchen Lhamo, Ben Harper & The Innocent Criminals, A Tribe Called Quest, Beastie Boys, Rancid, Björk, Pavement, Blur, Michael Stipe & Mike Mills, Taj Mahal and Phantom Blues Band, De La Soul, Dadon, Chaksam-pa, Nawang Khechog, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Eddie Vedder & Mike McCready, KRS-ONE, Porno for Pyros, and Lee Perry featuring Mad Professor & the Robotiks Band

It reads like a good year at Fujirock. And that’s just the lineup of one out of a half dozen Tibetan Freedom Concerts. The movement, guided largely by the Beastie Boys, began to taper down in 2001-2002.
-dave