The new episode of Summer of the Bands ushered in a collaboration competition, where guests had to choose one of the very obscure guest information cards to collaborate with, and the final ranking was based on the number of votes for the collaboration.
This is actually a game that was played last season.
This system, if you want to make a splash, you have to be careful with your guest selection. A guest who is not professional enough will find it hard to work with the band in the true sense of the word, and a guest who is too strong to participate will reduce the band to a backing group, and the guest will overpower the band.
The first season of the show did a proper job of inviting guests, basically people in the circle, with a high degree of recognition, such as Luo Qi, Cindy, and Kaiqi Xue, who were both professional and didn't steal the band's thunder.
The collaboration also reached a few bejeweled scenes, such as New Pants and Cindy's collaboration on "Ere Batty," which was loved by many fans and directly made the song one of last year's top hits.
But this season's guest appearances have to be considered eye-opening.
The first guest to appear on the show was De Yun She's "fresh meat" comedian Qin Xiaoxian, with whom he collaborated with the new wave rock band Big Wave.
Unsurprisingly, as a comedian, Qin Xiaoxian knows nothing about rock, little about bands, and not even live house.
In the singing, Qin Xiaoxian became a complete accompaniment, originally Big Wave and Qin Xiaoxian expected to add elements of songwriting attempts, and finally was forced to give up, did not adopt the final performance, so the whole cooperation into a big wave of their own play, Qin Xiaoxian accompanied by the side of the singing, as a taste of a fresh.
The latter also has Shangguan favorite as well as Yamy two female members of the group to join, the two are very enthusiastic to the original song to add the rap, but the final rendering of the effect, a lot of netizens also do not buy.
For example, Yamy and HAYA orchestra chorus of the "Kunlun Mountain Story", originally this is a Mongolian flavor of the world music, but Yamy added a section of abrupt rap, many netizens immediately heard the flavor of the Phoenix Legends, the style of the square dance and the style of the world music, the string of flavors string simply do not be too awesome.
It's not that Phoenix Legends is bad, but it's the result of jamming with guest collaborators, which obliterates the band's signature style and makes the quality of the music drop dramatically.
Artistic collaboration, in fact, is extremely dependent on fate, even if the recognized "God" such as Zhou Shen auxiliary, encountered in the wrong partner will not be satisfactory, as earlier this year in the "Singer" finals with the new pants, which led to the second round of the second round of the direct cause of him not to get.
So the program, it is not difficult to imagine a serious mismatch, such as Liu Wei and the Chair Orchestra's cooperation, there is a very big problem. Zhang Yadong bluntly said that this scene is not good, not because the chair orchestra or Liu Wei is not good, just because the two sides are really not suitable.
More than three hours of the program, the village head Jiang Liang and Mandarin cooperation, as well as 6-year-old talented guitar girl Miumiu and Joyside's cooperation process is to produce a 1 + 1 greater than 2 effect.
It can be seen that Jiang Liang, the village head, went to work with Mandarin with an idea, so in the end, Mandarin delivered one of the best performances in the hearts of many netizens since the beginning of the program; and 6-year-old Miumiu added a lot of fraternity to Joyside's work with her childish voice, which accidentally sublimated the original meaning of the song.
The rest of the performances either defied the norm or didn't play up to the band's usual normal standards.
I'm sure the showrunners anticipated these situations. But if they knew that the quality of the music on the show would be degraded by these arrangements, why did they choose to do them anyway?
From a more utilitarian point of view, most of the guests are newcomers who need to be promoted. Guests in addition to Li Yundi, Su Yunying, Wang Su Taki reputation, the rest are basically artists who need the program to give the opportunity to notice. Considering that it is less expensive and profitable for the show to invite them, it is not difficult to understand.
And considering the show itself, it's also clear that this arrangement achieves a programmatic effect, which is to present a picture of the bands being tossed around under the weight of the show's problems and trying to break through the barriers to win the competition.
Such a picture satisfies the viewer's desire to see how these bands can survive, how they can be transformed into a miracle, and how they can stand out in the midst of all the contradictions.
Just ask yourself, will fans really buy this kind of picture? Is it really what the bands involved in the show hope to experience?
So far in the second season of Summer of Bands, the show has experienced profound highs and lows, with heat and word-of-mouth dropping again and again.
For example, the show's Douban rating is currently on a downward spiral, having dropped from 8.4 at the beginning to a low of 7.6 today.
It's not hard to understand fans' disappointment.
But this season of "Le Summer" hasn't managed to retain the charm of the show itself, with very limited effort put into the music itself, and a lot of effort put into how to toss the bands and how to make the show work.
This was most evident in the second round, when the show provided a controversial song list.
The second round was the remix competition, in which the bands had to pick one of the ten sets of songs assigned to them by the show, and then choose songs from the set list to remix.
There was such an adaptation competition last season, and it worked well, with the show producing gems like the Traveling Band's cover of Fan Xiaoxuan's "Oxygen" and New Pants' cover of Wang Feng's "Flower Fire". The reason for this is the quality of the song list and the buy-in from the fans.
This season, however, the songs on offer were all the usual fare like "We're Different," "Love for Sale," and "Teenager. The bands were helpless, the fans were speechless.
So there were a lot of "famous scenes":
The Sharks were disgusted when they heard "Love for Sale" and "Dumbala", and guitarist Wang Zi said he never thought he'd be sitting around listening to these songs until he heard "Teenage Mothers", which was a bit of a relief. "It's still like a song".
There are also wild children who open their chosen "national style song list" with great anticipation, but with a skeptical look on their faces, and when they listen to the songs, "The Rope Players" and "Mango" one by one, the feeling of helplessness simply forms a picture of the world.
Such an arrangement suggests at least one thing: the show is irrefutably stale.
In fact, the look on the bands' faces of "hopelessness" in the face of a cheesy song is something that, despite the ire of fans of Rolling Stone, the programmers have no compunction about doing because of the contradiction it implies, and because of the conversation it generates.
For example, didn't Big Wave's remix of the song "Love for Sale" get that effect? Perhaps in the showrunner's opinion, it's no fun at all to change a song that's already a 100 into another 100, and it's more dramatic to be able to change a 30 into even a 70 to attract attention.
So in the face of profit, the purity of the show, the quality of the music, and the respect for the band can all be conceded. The band was simply invited by the show to play a game.
So it's very understandable why Wildchild would rebel against the rules of the game, preferring to be eliminated or withdrawn from the competition, rather than accepting the songs on the program's list of national songs, and insisting on singing the real national song, "Bamboo Branch Lyrics," which they had decided to sing on the show.
Although many viewers have questioned Wildchild's arrogance, lack of adherence to the rules, and taking themselves too seriously, what Wildchild did was undoubtedly a silent protest against the show's contempt for the quality of music.
Perhaps in their attitude, like the general public, there is a hint of regret for the show's fall from grace.
For now, Lexia 2 will continue to be a "game of chance".
The next installment of the show is still an adaptation contest, where the top ten bands will work together in pairs to choose one of the five film and TV songs from "Waiting for a Thousand Years", "Sister, You Boldly Go Forward", "Heroic Colors", "Outside the Window", and "The Light Chasers" to be adapted.
Of these five songs, I'm afraid that only the theme song "Outside the Window", originally sung by Dou Wei and covered by Zhou Xun, is more suitable for a rock band to adapt.
So in the trailer, we hear Mongolian band HAYA throw away all their spirituality to sing "Waiting for a Thousand Years", and we hear Big Wave's KTV-like rendition of "Sister, You're Boldly Going Forward".
If it wasn't for the program, I don't think these bands would have ever thought they'd give up the most spiritual part of their style, their musical independence, to sing these market-driven songs.
But the show has a knack for tossing the bands around with these games in order to get more buzz.
Even before the show aired this season, Zhou Yunpeng spoke out in an interview, saying that the existence of Summer of Bands was prematurely overdrawing the music market, creating a monopolistic platform that would make it difficult for more and more independent musicians to survive.
In fact, Zhou Yunpeng warned the situation has been produced.
For good bands wanting to make a name for themselves, participating in Le Xia is not just a shortcut, but is slowly becoming a springboard that must be experienced.
A lot of bands see the big picture, and bands like Back Sea Sharks, who said they wouldn't come in the first season, have been very active in the second.
It's also because of the status of "Summer of Music" that its attitude is no longer to fulfill bands, but to arrange a lot of "bullying terms" like the system, and the bands have to bow to the capital.
And in this situation, it's hard to guarantee the fairness and purity of the program.
Previously, the band's off-site resurrection vote cut off the list, and the Back Sea Sharks in the last two days with the unpredictable speed, from the eighth place to the second place, successfully among the ranks of the resurrection, people can not help but speculate on the back in the end what happened.
As watchers we can't break the case, but the disappointment was unquenchable, as the new installment of the show has netizens brushing up on their pop-ups, never again hoping for a next season of this show.
It's hard to predict where "Summer of the Band" will end up, but the only thing we know for sure is that the pure, authentic, audio-visual feast that was "Summer of the Band" is getting farther and farther away from fans.