Text/Octopus
Editor/Miriam
At the beginning of this month, the day the tickets for the Mayday concert opened, almost everyone in the circle of friends was grabbing tickets. Each concert has no less than 30,000 tickets, and the number of people who want to see it has already exceeded one million.
The level of competition can be imagined.
Seven years have passed since Mayday's last concert at the Bird's Nest, and this time, Mayday grabbed three hot search terms on the first wave of ticket sales alone.
But then, the news that the #Mayday concert scalper premium was more than doubled# also appeared on the hot search, and the ticket with the original price of 1855 rose to 3531, and some people even listed the price of 18888, just asking for a Mayday.
In the past month, fans who did not grab tickets, even looking for scalpers to buy tickets, had to write a small essay first to highlight their fan books and try to impress scalpers with their hearts.
Yesterday, when the stage was set up for the Bird's Nest site, the organizers found that a small number of seats could be used unobstructed. As a result, the Mayday concert was ticketed for the second time.
However, it is still difficult to find a vote. How can there be so many people who want to go to see Mayday!
Become a Mayday
On April 30, 2012, Mayday held its first concert at the Bird's Nest, and 100,000 tickets were sold out in 3 minutes.
When entering the bird's nest for the first time, the five people checked the equipment separately, bassist Martha rode an electric car around the venue, guitarist Stone ran to all corners to check the stereo, and drummer Guanyou was so nervous that his hands were shaking.
On the night of the concert, lead singer Ashin snorted several times to the audience:
"How long did it take for everyone to come to the nest today?"
"Someone is fast, 20 minutes; Someone is a little longer, two hours; I also know a lot of people who come by train from far away and it took three days. ”
"But I'll tell you that it took 13 years for Mayday to come to the nest."
In 1998, Mayday was still an unknown underground band.
The best "performance" to receive is the warm-up performance opened by the Texas fried chicken restaurant, there is no appearance fee, the remuneration is fried chicken, and you have to eat while performing.
Martha skipped class riding "Little Sheep" and sent the carefully prepared demo to Rolling Stone Records on Guangfu South Road.
Since they didn't know who to send it to, they wrote "Record Producer Receive" and put a note on the package: "Even if you want to throw it in the trash, please listen to it and throw it away!" ”
There are many producers at Rolling Stone, and the mailroom staff saw that there was no clear recipient on the package and threw it in the trash.
Soon after, Mayday received a call: "Hello, I'm Li Zongsheng. ”
The regiment leader monster thought it was a call from a fraud group: "You Li Zongsheng? I'm still Luo Dayou! ”
Unexpectedly, it was really Li Zongsheng on the other side, and fate really let Li Zongsheng see this package and the line of notes on it in the trash.
Ashin and Martha believed the call and went to the 5th floor, No. 3, Lane 290, Fu Nan Road, to make an important decision: to join Rolling Stone Records.
The following year, Mayday released his first album after joining the Rolling Stones - "First Creative Album", "Crazy World", "Embrace", "Zhiming and Chunjiao" and other songs, all in it.
No one expected that the sales of this album would exceed 300,000, which is the same as the sales of Jay Chou's first album. Subsequently, they released two albums "Long Live Love" and "Life in the Sea" one after another.
After the spread of the Asian financial turmoil, Taiwan's economy fell into a downturn, and many people entered the trough of life.
"I know that after the tide falls, there must be a tide, what is great", Ashin hummed in "The Sea of Life", the freedom and courage that people needed most were the things that people needed at that time.
In 2001, Mayday won the Golden Melody Award for Best Orchestra. In 2004, Mayday entered the mainland and performed for the first time in the unnamed heights of Sanlitun, Beijing.
At that time, Mayday was poorly known in the mainland. In terms of the coffee position in the music industry, Mayday at that time had to be ranked behind Xin Shuang, the director who made "The Long Season" this year, Xin Shuang was once the guitarist of the band Joyside.
On the propaganda board at the door, in the last line, a parenthesis was also noted, which said Taiwan.
When Mayday first appeared, most of the dozens of spectators in the audience leaned over and looked at the strange band with their arms folded.
After the singing begins, slowly someone lets go of their hands and raises them above their heads.
On April 30, 2012, when the melody of "Stubborn" sounded, 100,000 fans took out rainbow paper cards from under their seats and said the words "MAYDAY" and "NOWHERE" with the lyrics.
This time, 100,000 people raised their hands.
At this time, Mayday's song has begun to deeply participate in the youth of the 80s and 90s.
Mayday, the youth memories of a generation
"Suddenly miss you so much, where will you be, have a happy or aggrieved life."
The first time I listened to "Suddenly I Miss You", Wang Qiao of the 90s had just gone to college and broke up with her ex because of a different place, and the other party was her tablemate.
During recess, Wang Qiao likes to sleep on the table, and the boy always fills her thermos cup with hot water, but also takes the opportunity to hide her pen bag or notebook to watch her wake up and turn over the desk.
At first, Wang Qiao was always deceived, and then he directly pulled the boy's school uniform to ask him to "hand things over".
Wang Qiao, who is 32 years old, summed it up as a "very typical campus love."
More than ten years have passed, she can't remember exactly how the two got together, and she even "can't remember what the boy looked like."
But every time he hears this song, Wang Qiao still thinks of the same table who is fighting.
For Wang Qiao, this song is the finale of a school love affair, and it is also the valve that opens her memories of her youth.
In fact, open any Mayday love song video, and the hot comments are always with regret, relief and blessings.
Someone sees free love from "I Don't Want to Let You Be Alone"; Someone reads respect from "Contentment".
Mayday can become a generational youth memory not only because of love songs.
"The adult world is good, if sometimes there is a little bit of bad, it doesn't matter, when you put on your headphones to listen to Mayday, you have to remember that Mayday will always be with you 20 years old."
On May 31, 2020, Ashin told fans in an online concert that his voice was very soft and slow.
Li Fan believes that he is not a fan of Mayday, and clicking on the online live video originally wanted to be the background music during the break.
He "used to think that Mayday's lyrics were chicken soup", but the phrase "the adult world is good" crashed into his heart.
At that time, Li Fan's graduation certificate was about to arrive, but his job had not yet been settled. He participated in the national examination that year and ranked second in the written test, but the interview time that year was postponed again and again, and he didn't know that the waiting for the end was difficult.
Li Fan's father will carefully read the tweets of various recruitment announcements every day, and once Li Fan's major is available, it will be sent to him.
Li Fan's family lives in Weihai, and at first Li Fan's father only sent recruitment in Weihai Yantai, and later this range became larger and larger, and even recruitment information in Xinjiang and Guizhou would appear in their family groups.
"Me and my last stubbornness, clench my hands and never let go, whether the next stop is heaven, even if I am disappointed, I can't despair." Li Fan hummed "Stubborn" along with Mayday, and the increasingly intense melody made Li Fan "suddenly ignite fighting spirit and hope".
On June 6, Li Fan's long-awaited interview date was finally announced. He got the first place in the interview and stayed in his hometown, and Li Fan's father also began to send a recommendation video to the family to buy a car.
Unlike Li Fan, the first time Xuanzi listened to Mayday's concert was in Shanghai.
At that time, she was still in college and "could only afford tickets to the outfield." When the prelude to "Stubborn" sounded, I don't know who in the crowd said, "It's time to take a taxi, otherwise you'll have to queue up for a while." ”
Xuanzi opened his mobile phone and found that there were more than a hundred orders lined up in front of him.
Soon, Ashin sang the first word of the song - "Dang", and almost subconsciously, Genko sang with the audience - "I am different from the world, then let me be different".
Xuanzi, who was still thinking about taking a taxi for a second, was immediately infected by the atmosphere of the scene: "Wow, sing my true heart."
After the scene, Xuanzi wiped her tears, but her heart was still "surging", and she couldn't wait for Didi, she canceled the order and walked to the nearest subway station with the flow of people.
Looking back on this scene, Xuanzi had a new understanding, ""Stubbornness" seems to be a watershed, after singing this song, everyone returned to the real world. ”
The "big war" between fans and scalpers
It's just that it's not easy to see a Mayday concert.
At 10:55 a.m. on May 9, the alarm clock of self-media blogger Lin Xue's mobile phone went off.
She interrupted the podcast she was recording and told the showmates, "Sorry, I'll grab the tickets later."
Who knew that the guests were even more anxious than her, urging her to grab it quickly, "otherwise she can't grab it."
Lin Xue originally bought a fan group ticket for Mayday, but 3 days ago, she received a notice that the group ticket was canceled and the money returned the same way, due to "force majeure".
"Mayday Group Ticket" is a traditional event of Mayday concerts.
In order to allow old fans to have a higher probability of watching the live concert, Mayday's three fan groups reached an unwritten agreement with performers around the world to reserve a part of the tickets for the fan group to do group purchases before the concert.
The basic principle of group purchase is to buy at the original price, transfer at the original price, and cannot be sold at a higher price.
On the evening of May 6, the Mayday fan group operator found that there were a large number of abnormal orders created in 0 seconds in the background, and it was suspected that scalpers mixed into the fan group to grab tickets.
Subsequently, the fan group was also anonymously reported for "illegal fundraising". Fans suspected that the whistleblower was operated by scalpers and the interested parties behind them, and questioned the rules of the platform's distribution of votes.
Some fans pointed the finger at the concert organizers, believing that scalpers could get tickets so easily because the organizers sold them to scalpers, but there is currently no factual basis.
At the same time, a screenshot of a group chat circulated on the Internet as a scalper went viral on the Internet.
The group of 270 people called on members of the group to grab tickets, and said that they would buy out at a higher price.
The second-hand trading market began to emerge with a large number of "Mayday Group Ticket Auction" trading products.
Scalpers are rampant, and fans really can't buy tickets.
Soon, fans began to take joint action to boycott scalpers. The entry "I'd rather stand at the gate of the bird's nest than let the scalper earn" appeared in the first hot search.
As of press time, Beijing police had investigated 29 scalpers who sold Mayday tickets.
But even so, there are still fans who have not been able to grab tickets.
So, they all turned to a Weibo post posted by Mayday frontman Ashin in 2017:
Where are people, and what does it matter? Anyway, Ashin will definitely "sing a little louder" tonight!
Resources:
1. Past Char Siu "Da Zhang Wei: Mayday is Great"
2. Yangtze Evening News "Boycott scalpers at high prices, the traditional Mayday concert group ticket channel announces the cancellation of broadcasting for ten years"
3. Stinging Youth "As long as I still listen to Mayday's song, I won't be defeated by life"