Well-Loved Mumbler Of Standards Gets Shanghaied

So we’ve already learned that the recent hubbub over Bjork’s onstage shout-out to Tibet while in China has carried over into stricter performance guidelines for international performers playing on Shanghai stages. And first up for censure is, um, Harry Connick Jr.!

Recently, the New Orleans crooner/actor played a Shanghai stage, and in order to gain permission to hold the show, Connick’s handlers gave Chinese authorities an expired set list. Despite his band’s repertoire having moved on, and despite the band’s not knowing how to play those old songs, or even having sheet music for them, the Chinese authorities insisted Connick perform the earlier set list.

J.Q. Whitcomb, a musician living in Shanghai, said the concert mostly featured Connick playing piano by himself, with the band sitting on stage doing nothing. “Other people there said, ‘Wow, that was pretty mellow,'” he said. Embarrassed last week by Icelandic singer Bjork shouting “Tibet!” at the end of a Shanghai concert, Chinese authorities have promised to be stricter on foreign performers. The Culture Ministry said last week that Bjork’s outburst in support of Tibet’s independence movement “broke Chinese law and hurt Chinese people’s feelings.” “Foreign artistic troupes and artists should voluntarily observe relevant laws and regulations of China when they come to perform on the Chinese soil,” Vice Minister of Culture Zhou Heping said of the incident in a media conference Thursday.

How do you make the Debbie Downer “wah-wah-wah-waaaaah” sound on this thing, anyway?

Harry Connick Jr.’s China show goes flat [Yahoo via AP]