Stone Cold: CMVF Headliner Gets Chilly Response

China Music Valley Festival 2012 ended on Sunday with a sparse crowd staying to catch the headline act. UK pop diva Joss Stone looked decidedly less than impressed that revelers left in their droves as she gave the final performance of the three-day extravaganza in Pinggu district’s Yuyang International Ski Resort on Sunday night.

In her defence, Stone was excellent, and manfully continued to try to rouse the quickly thinning audience. But she decided against giving an encore performance to the bemusement of some of her backing artists, and gave a curt “thank you” before trudging from the stage. There were no calls for an extended performance after the songstress had gone.

In mitigation of the early-leavers, it was almost 11pm before Stone’s set concluded and of course, Beijing has to work today. Traveling back downtown from Pinggu took around one hour, as long as you managed to get one of the earliest shuttle buses.

Most people I spoke to seemed to agree that the festival was a success and crowd numbers were up on last year. UK band Friendly Fires preceded Ms. Stone and gave a rousing exhibition of dance punk to an enthusiastic crowd.

The site itself was easy to navigate, the sound quality was good, and alcohol and chuan’r were plentiful.

Perhaps Stone should hold the festival organizers to task over the scheduling debacle which saw her performing to a stubborn handful as her set drew to a close.

Photos: Screened & Eklektx.com