It was during the last song by Monkey Insane (
Monkey Insane edged out 10 other bands that competed through the sweltering Saturday afternoon heat to walk away with the top honors in Taiwan's only music awards to recognize amateur bands that have yet to release an album.
PHOTO: MAX WOODWORTH, TAIPEI TIMES
The competition was hard fought, according to the judge panel, with exceptional sets put in by the other participating bands, especially Mango Runs, Spunka, Relax One (
Stone ended up walking away with the Jury's prize, while Mango Runs and XL together shared the Indie Music Award.
The competition is held as part of the three-day Ho-Hai-Yan festival, which began on Friday and continued yesterday with a lineup of bands from Taiwan and abroad.
"There are far more people this year than any previous year," said Zhang 43, head of Taiwan Colors Music, which organized the first two days of festivities. "We've never seen this many people out here for a show before."
Indeed, the popular beach-side town of Fulong took on a carnival atmosphere throughout the weekend as thousands of concert-goers flooded in from Taipei and beyond for the annual event. Students, young office workers and even families with grandparents and tots in tow flooded the beach, turning it into a patchwork of towels and pick-up games of beach volleyball.
In previous years the bands performing on both stages tended toward the garage-band style that could impress with their raw energy if not their musical abilities. This year, however, the bands were of remarkably higher caliber.
"All the bands are really tight compared with last year. They can all really play their instruments and put together a set of solid music," Zhang said.
The music was set to get even better yesterday when MTV took over the reins of the festival "to put on its own lineup of groups from Taiwan and abroad. By yesterday afternoon crowds were swelling on the beach again to catch local favorites Sticky Rice (糯米團) and to see the headliners Jaurim from Korea and the Perishers from Sweden.
By any measure the festival was judged by organizers and concert-goers alike to be a smashing success. Even traffic was kept under control in the town as a heavy police force restrained crowds from swarming the coastal highway and extra trains carried the throngs into and out of town without much hassle.
Since their leader Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) and others were jailed as part of several ongoing bribery investigations, the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) has risen in the polls. Additionally, despite all the many and varied allegations against Ko and most of the top people in the party, it has held together with only a tiny number of minor figures exiting. The TPP has taken some damage, but vastly less than the New Power Party (NPP) did after it was caught up in a bribery scandal in 2020. The TPP has for years registered favorability in the thirties, and a Formosa poll
While global attention is finally being focused on the People’s Republic of China (PRC) gray zone aggression against Philippine territory in the South China Sea, at the other end of the PRC’s infamous 9 dash line map, PRC vessels are conducting an identical campaign against Indonesia, most importantly in the Natuna Islands. The Natunas fall into a gray area: do the dashes at the end of the PRC “cow’s tongue” map include the islands? It’s not clear. Less well known is that they also fall into another gray area. Indonesia’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) claim and continental shelf claim are not
Nov. 4 to Nov. 10 Apollo magazine (文星) vowed that it wouldn’t play by the rules in its first issue — a bold statement to make in 1957, when anyone could be jailed for saying the wrong thing. However, the introduction to the inaugural Nov. 5 issue also defined the magazine as a “lifestyle, literature and art” publication, and the contents were relatively tame for the first four years, writes Tao Heng-sheng (陶恒生) in “The Apollo magazine that wouldn’t play by the rules” (不按牌理出牌的文星雜誌). In 1961, the magazine changed its mission to “thought, lifestyle and art” and adopted a more critical tone with
Chiayi County is blessed with several worthwhile upland trails, not all of which I’ve hiked. A few weeks ago, I finally got around to tackling Tanghu Historic Trail (塘湖古道), a short but unusually steep route in Jhuci Township (竹崎). According to the Web site of the Alishan National Scenic Area (阿里山國家風景區), the path climbs from 308m above sea level to an elevation of 770m in just 1.58km, an average gradient of 29 percent. And unless you arrange for someone to bring you to the starting point and collect you at the other end, there’s no way to avoid a significant amount
RSS