So today I went to a concert here in Shanghai and it was a harsh reminder of how dangerous china's expansionism is becoming around the world. I'll connect the dots later. But first, time to rant live I've never ranted before.

About ten years ago I went to Video Games Live concert in England, probably one of their first. It was amazing, memorable, played all the best game soundtracks that I loved and grew up with. It was a big orchestra with big names - Nobuo Uematsu was actually there! (Composer of all the final fantasy series music up to 10-11 ish and one of the biggest rockstars in the gaming world, not only the musical gaming world).

So obviously when I saw it was coming to Shanghai I immediately messaged my friend and within hours four of us were going. When we turned up, bright eyed and young again, we couldn't find our seats. This is because our seats were 4 'extra' seats presumably found somewhere outside, shoved into the free space behind the back row of the real seats. We were also separated 2 by 2. Not what our booking order said, but whatever, VGL is gonna start soon!

That is, after this Chinese guy comes on and talks for over 10 minutes, possibly trying to get the Chinese gamer geeks all hot and excited.

Now, before I entered, we were talking about it and I expressed my concern that, like so many other things around the world, what if VGL pandered to the Chinese audience and just played music from Chinese games. It was a joke, obviously, this is a global organisation playing hundreds of shows and hundreds of games, they wouldn't sit around learning Chinese games just for one or two concerts, surely?

Well, no. But when they came on stage I noticed it was rather... small in size. Not like advertised at all:

No. In fact, I was quick to notice the woodwind section was missing entirely; no flutes or piccolos, oboes or clarinets. It looked closer to a chamber orchestra of high school amateurs. But fine, as long as the performance is good, It's not an issue.

On comes the conductor: An American guy wearing scraggly jeans and TWO loose T-shirts, like he just left his bedroom after a long session on Starcraft.

The first song they play is a theme from World of Warcraft. that's an odd opener, I thought to myself. I mean, it's not special or memorable, it's not known for its famous music really at all with a couple of exceptions. Then I remembered we were in China, a country that loves WOW so it made sense.

After the first song, the lights come up, the Chinese speaker comes back and speaks for a few minutes. Then the Conductor talks and gets translated for a while. Kind of jarring, why are they breaking the performance up with conversation? This was getting very suspect. The conductor continued: This next World of Warcraft piece is unlike any other, because rather than being rewarded in the game with gold or weapons, you are rewarded with this song'

And they start to play this one with an Irish opera singer. Nice, but why are there TWO World of Warcraft songs? Perhaps just to transition through the games smoothly, I dunno.

The next song comes on and it's a 'Heroes of the Storm' song. What? I've never even heard of that game, but I knew it was a Blizzard Entertainment game, because this was the 7th time I saw the Blizzard logo come up on screen since the start of the show. At this point, we understood what was going on.

This was not a Video Games Live concert. This was a 1.5 hour Blizzard commercial.

During the Intermission we ranted and hoped that they were simply celebrating 10 years or something and the second part would go back to normal VGL. But I knew it wasn't true because I searched the Shanghai performance and found a result saying this:

But VGL is not Blizzard's! They may have several Blizzard games but they also have Sonic, Mario, Zelda, Final Fantasy, Pokemon, God of War, Metal Gear Solid, even TETRIS. You know, the classic, memorable tracks everybody has grown up loving. Where were they?

As the show went on, we started picking up on certain... idiosyncrasies.

For example, not only was the woodwind section amiss, but there was suddenly a bagpipe playing from somewhere, and a spanish guitar, and a piccolo. Upon closer inspection, the orchestra WASN'T EVEN FUCKING PLAYING.

They were PRETENDING to play. Granted, SOME songs they were obviously playing but i'd say about half of the tracks they were either playing UNDER the original soundtrack or pretending. We knew this because when there was a snare drum playing, the player was pretending to his the bass drum.

When there was a dramatic film score glissandi, the type you hear screaming before a dramatic silence in thriller movies, the music suddenly went very quiet and you heard it being played from speakers instead of the orchestra, who presumably were unable to play such a complicated thing as moving their finger up the strings.

During those quiet moments and before songs, and actually throughout the whole performance, there were other annoyances; we could actually hear a metronome - the tik-tik-tik of a timed click track - that the conductor was playing in time with. Was he deaf and needed it on super loud the whole time?

The lighting was blinding, with a constant rotation of white and red lights forcing us to close our eyes routinely or hold our hands up every 5 seconds or so, and end up with headaches and dazed vision regardless.

The audible crackles and glitchy, laggy video that was being played from some old laptop that couldn't keep up was becoming infuriating. This made it even more obvious that it wasn't the orchestra playing because the music took a few millisecond steps back every now and then.

Towards the end, after at least 8 World of Warcraft songs, Hearthstone, Overwatch, Diablo and at least 20 minutes of being stopped in between tracks to hear some Chinese guy interact with the audience - presumably to fill up the time because they clearly had a very limited set list working purely on Blizzard games - the finale was to be played. Naturally we needed the conductor to make the left side cheer, then the right side, then the Chinese guy to interview the Irish singer with inane questions like 'so what made you come here?'. After that, the conductor started to explain the Starcraft track that he composed (surprise surprise).

Paraphrasing but staying true to form: 'The director had something challenging for the new Starcraft game, he wanted me to bring all three (groups?) in the game together in one theme song. He might as well have asked Beethoven to do it! Well whatever anyway, I guess this is the track'

He did not like his own material, he sounded embarrassed. Why on earth it had to be the finale was beyond me. As it played, his disdain made sense. It was awful. Not necessarily the music itself - though that was also awful - but the performance was like throwing cats at trash cans. They once again played only parts of the track, the majority being the out-of-sync recording, it was weak and poorly mixed and just not memorable or exciting at all.

In fact there was barely any music now I think about it, it was mostly two guys arguing during their fight and sound effects of that fight. It reminded me of the first movie soundtrack I composed for some German guy, where they basically turned it all down really far so nobody could complain about how bad it was.

After that piece of shit, the conductor walked off stage and we were begging for no encore. Why are encores guaranteed nowadays? Encores were for if the audience loved it, not expected it.

Anyway they came on and played some crappy encore (A World of Warcraft song, if you wanted to know), then the Chinese guy came back, talked a bunch and then a SECOND encore. We were just desperate for things to end by this point.

Eventually it ended We boo'd and mocked at the back where nobody could realistically hear us; the Chinese LOVED it. in China, pretty much the only games they play are either Blizzard games or cheap knock-off Blizzard games. And this I think was the problem at large:

A) Chinese don't know any better than just blizzard games
B) Chinese don't know any better when it comes to concert performances.

Remember, this was a poor, undeveloped country not long ago. 30 years ago only 10% of people owned a fridge. Now it's something like 93%. But these people don't know what a good orchestra is, they don't know what a good game or a good movie studio or a good luxury is, really. They're just happy to be doing middle class stuff.

But if you have ever been to a real concert before, this was an embarrassment. This was a shameful experience. For some reason, Video Games Live decided to skip out on China - On SHANGHAI, the biggest, most significant international hub city in the country and possibly in Asia - and decided instead to hide a bunch of idiots, the composer of Blizzard and an amateur crew to throw together a bunch of garbage and slap their logo on top.

Here's a Suggestion, VGL:

Don't call it Video Games Live. Call it Blizzard Music Live. In fact, it wasn't even live, so call it 'Blizzard Music Partly Live'. Then don't perform, just go home. I never want to see you again. You ruined my memories of a fantastic experience.

How pathetic. I was going to post a happy blog with cool photos of the Concert hall and say funny stuff but I'm just too angry.

I'm not just angry about this performance. I'm angry about the grander scheme, how this is just another piece of evidence of what China has been doing, how the world is kowtowing to every demand, pandering to every audience with a Chinese person involved.

That's what I'm going to expand upon in the second part. I need to write about something else to cool off first, though. Argh!