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.
The entire saga involving the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) and its Chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) continues to produce plot twists at such a rapid pace that fiction publishers would throw it out for being ridiculously improbable. This past week was particularly bizarre, but surprisingly the press has almost entirely ignored a big story that could have serious national security implications and instead focused on a series of salacious bombshell allegations. Ko is currently being held incommunicado by prosecutors while several criminal investigations are ongoing on allegations of bribery and stealing campaign funds. This last week for reasons unknown Ko completely shaved
Gabriel Gatehouse only got back from Florida a few minutes ago. His wheeled suitcase is still in the hallway of his London home. He was out there covering the US election for Channel 4 News and has had very little sleep, he says, but you’d never guess it from his twinkle-eyed sprightliness. His original plan was to try to get into Donald Trump’s election party at Mar-a-Lago, he tells me as he makes us each an espresso, but his contact told him to forget it; it was full, “and you don’t blag your way in when the guy’s survived two
The self-destructive protest vote in January that put the pro-People’s Republic of China (PRC) side in control of the legislature continues to be a gift that just keeps on giving to the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). Last week legislation was introduced by KMT Legislator Weng Hsiao-lin (翁曉玲) that would amend Article 9-3 of the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) to permit retired and serving (!) military personnel to participate in “united front” (統戰) activities. Since the purpose of those activities is to promote annexation of Taiwan to the PRC, legislators
Nov. 18 to Nov. 24 Led by a headman named Dika, 16 indigenous Siraya from Sinkan Village, in what is today’s Tainan, traveled to Japan and met with the shogun in the summer of 1627. They reportedly offered sovereignty to the emperor. This greatly alarmed the Dutch, who were allies of the village. They had set up headquarters on land purchased from the Sinkan two years earlier and protected the community from aggressive actions by their more powerful rivals from Mattau Village. The Dutch East India Company (VOC) had been embroiled in a bitter trade dispute with Japan, and they believed
RSS