Here's Part 2 of our big, bad FESTIVAL SEASON primer. If you're more of a gin & tonic two-stepper than a beer-braised moshpit type, check out our electronic music festival guide. But if you love that old time rock'n'roll, you came to the right place. Here's what's going down with the punks, the skins, the rocka-Billies and their Betties, the EXTREME METAL GUYS, the crunchy folk drum circlers, the jam bands, their followers, and all other worshippers of the guitar in the month of May and beyond.

Monday, April 29-Wednesday, May 1, 12pm-11pm each day Location/Transport: Tongzhou Canal Park, which, as the name suggests, is way out in Tongzhou (southeast of Beijing). To get there you wanna ride the subway all the way out to the Batong Line (Line 1 ends on the east side at the Sihui stop, from which point you do the "Batong shuffle" to get on a continuation of Line 1 that proceeds on to Tongzhou). Get out at the Tongzhou Beiyuan stop (通州北苑), get out at exit A, walk north to the big crossroads, turn right onto Xin Hua Xi Jie (新华西街), and walk for about 50 meters until you see a bus stop for the 322 or 342 bus. Take either bus going east to the Dong Guan Da Qiao stop (东关大桥) and you're there. You can also take a couple of express buses from Guomao (667 and 808), which blast through eastern Beijing and don't start stopping til Tongzhou. You still get out at the Dong Guan Da Qiao stop. If you want to take a taxi, show the driver this: 通燕高速→耿庄出口→南走到十字路口→西走（1站公交路程）→东关大桥东 But good luck finding someone who will want to take you all the way out there… Strawberry is also working with Chinese map app AutoNavi to make the trek easier. If you have an iPhone, get that for free here. Tickets: If you're buying your tickets day-of, it's 150rmb for one day or 400rmb for a three-day pass. You can grip pre-sale tickets at a discount (120rmb for one day, 320 for all-access), and get them delivered to your door to boot. Do that here. Coldplay Travis, headlining Strawberry 1999 2013 Run-down/Line-up: Basically, Strawberry is Beijing's biggest rock festival. They have eight themed stages (plus tents and other kind of event areas), including a main one, a college one, a metal one, an electro one, etc. The main headliner is Travis from Glasgow, who have been explained to me in recent weeks as a band that basically kept the British rock charts warm between Oasis and Coldplay. I don't know, I was 13 at the time. Probably listening to Slipknot. Besides that we've got an Australian singer-songwritier called Lenka, and Deerhoof, who are pretty cool but hard to imagine as a festival headliner alongside Travis and Lenka. They actually played Strawberry a few years ago, when festival authorities tried to stop frontwoman Satomi Matsuzaki from using her distortion pedals: "They thought the noise was accident!" But they got invited back, so, that's cool. The domestic lineup is far and away Strawberry's strength. Yes, it's pretty similar year to year, and, yes, it's mostly bands you can see in smaller clubs in Beijing. But there is plenty of excellent local rock to be seen at Strawberry. The festival is organized by indie label Modern Sky, so of course there are many bands from their 15+ year roster: veterans like New Pants, Reflector, and Sound Fragment; mid-'00s heavyweights like Hedgehog, Re-TROS, and Queen Sea Big Shark; plus more recent signees like Omnipotent Youth Society, Brain Failure, Mr. Chelonian, and Fuzzy Mood. And many, many more. Peruse the full lineup at your leisure here: Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 After-party: School Bar is hosting the more-or-less official Strawberry after-parties, which makes sense because the guys who run School also manage Robust Husband, an artist management arm/imprint label/subsidiary of Modern Sky. On April 29 they're hosting drunk punks from three different Chinese cities: Sad Sack from Chengdu, Dreamki from Handan, and Bedstars from Beijing. Then on April 30 they host a special encore for Xi'an's Black Head. As with most big Modern Sky events, School Bar is the place to be when the main event is over.

Monday, April 29-Wednesday, May 1, 12pm-12am each day Location/Transport: This year MIDI goes down at China Music Valley, a re-purposed segment of the Yuyang International Ski Resort. That's in Pinggu, a suburb waaaaay further out than Tongzhou. MIDI is arranging a bus for festival-goers. Find that in the public square just outside the A exit of Beitucheng stop on subway line 8/10 (just across from the Bird's Nest Olympic Stadium). The bus starts at 9:00am and will run every half hour until 2:00pm. The return trips start at 8:00pm, running every half hour until 11:30pm. The trip will cost you 20rmb each way and will take about 1.5 hours in either direction. Alternately, you can take the 852 express bus from the Dongzhimen bus station. That will cost 15rmb and will take about an hour to drop you off at Shiji Guangchang (世纪广场站), the big public square in Pinggu. From there head to the southwest corner of the square, where you can buy a MIDI ticket (if you haven't already) and, ticket in hand, jump on a free shuttle to the festival grounds. To get back to Beijing, you can take the free shuttle back to the public square and get back on the 852. Be aware that the Beijing-bound 852 stops running at 6:30pm, so if you want to stay out later than that you're pretty much limited to the MIDI bus (or staying the night in Pinggu). Tickets: Tickets are 120rmb per day at the door, or 280rmb for a three-day pass. You can get pre-sale tickets online, though they're only 20rmb cheaper. Do that at Damai, Douban, or Mosh Live. Presumably those all require Alipay and/or a Chinese bank account, so if you don't have that but do rock an iPhone you can also grip your tickets virtually via this MIDI app. Miserable Faith have headlined pretty much every MIDI since 1901 2001 Run-down/Line-up: Though smaller in scale, MIDI is the longest-running large-scale Chinese music festival. The original. This year they're celebrating the 20th anniversary of their MIDI School, which has been minting young rock musicians and producers since 1993. Many alumni of the MIDI School are on this year's bill, along with the same handful of bands that headline the festival every year. Subs, Yaksa, Miserable Faith, Escape Plan, and Wuhan's SMZB can all be relied upon to ride for MIDI, and share more than a few MIDI graduates between them. The MIDI stages are less "curated," which means random and kind of awesome mashups, such as street punks Brain Failure leading into technical deathers Suffocated leading into straight reggae from Long Shen Dao on the afternoon of May 1. There aren't really any big international names in the MIDI lineup this year, but there are some smaller foreign acts worth checking out. Darkwave duo Cold Cave plays on April 30, which will be interesting to see on the big stage. (Check back later for SmartBeijing's Cold Cave interview.) So So Modern from New Zealand plays the same day, kind of early 2000s Dischord-style post-punk stuff. Pretty cool. Check it out here. But in general it's mostly local bands. Check out the full lineup here: Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 After-party: Technically those two School parties on April 29 and April 30 are not specific to Strawberry. In fact, two of the bands playing on the 29th are also playing MIDI Festival. So by all means, party at School after that MIDI bus dumps you back in Beijing! While not technically an after-party, Cold Cave and So So Modern also play on April 29 at Temple Bar. That starts at 10pm so I guess you could go to MIDI (or Strawberry) in the afternoon beforehand.

Saturday, May 11-Sunday, May 12, 2pm-9pm each day Location/Transport: This goes down at 2Kolegas. Pretty convenient! Take a cab or take a bus or stalk Cu Ju until the owner heads out and jump on the back of his motorbike. Tickets: Tickets are 100rmb per day or 150rmb for a two-day pass. You can get a pre-sale ticket for 80rmb (or 60rmb if you're a student) by going to #206 Gulou Dong Dajie, Room A103DE. I tried looking this up on Google Maps and it points to a place called Puke World. I have walked up and down the entirety of Gulou Dong Dajie hundreds of times and I've never seen this place. Am I missing out? Run-down/Line-up: This is a miniaturized version of the annual Dong Party/Ditan Folk Festival, though they obviously aren't holding it at Ditan this year. Hence the "Mini" on the front of the name. The festival organizers wisely avoiding calling this a Mini Dong Party, opting for the much more tasteful Mini Beijing Dongpai Folk Festival. Yeah, that's less likely to incite crude jests. So, the lineup is folk. Folky rock, rocky folk, that kind of thing. Taking advantage of 2Kolegas' massive courtyard, the bands will be split between outdoor and indoor stages. Lots of Chinese minority folk on this one, including Inner Mongolian grooves from Ajinai and Miao jams from Deel Guik. Plenty of laowais as well, such as the unstoppable French folk/electro hybrid Djang San and the indefatigable whiskey drinkers of the Randy Abel Stable. Plus plenty of 2K regulars, like Li Dong and Hoochie Coochie Gentlemen. After-party: It's 2Kolegas on a weekend, and everyone will have been drinking since 2pm at the latest, so even though the event nominally ends at 9pm each night, expect a non-stop party til early Monday morning. *** Well, those are the main ones. We've already gotten word that La fête de la Musique will happen for the second year running on June 21. No hard data on this yet but last year they had free events at over a dozen venues, so if you're going out on June 21 this year you pretty much can't NOT go to it. Also, probably in June Beijing Daze will possibly host his third annual DazeFeast, maybe. I emailed Daze for confirmation but he's still keeping a lid on it. Careful Twitter investigation reveals that it will not only happen, but will feature BBQ chicken from Not There's Jonathan Heeter. You heard it here first(ish).