The Chinese A Cappella Center (現
The Pickets will treating local audiences to a cappella cover tunes from its recently released album, Live in Hamburg -- the first release with the current line-up of Andrea Figallo, Dylan Foster, Andy Laycock, Henrik Wager and Michael Henry -- as well plenty of other pop and rocks classics.
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE CHINESE A CAPPELLA CENTER
They are tunes that over the past 20 years have established the combo as one of the world's leading pop/rock a-cappella, or popapella-cum-rockapella acts.
Originally formed in 1982 by members of the socialist fringe theater group, 7:84 Theatre, the group took its name from the protesters who traveled the UK to man picket lines during the minor's strike of early 1980s. From its early days spent trawling the clubs and pubs of London the group went on to become a household name in the UK in a remarkably short period of time.
In 1983 the group released its debut record, Live at the Albany Empire, sales of which were impressive enough to warrant the attention of Virgin Records. Signing the group the same year, Virgin released the Flying Pickets' first single, a cover version of the Yazoo hit, Only You in Nov. 1983. The tune went straight to number one in the UK pop, where it remained for five weeks and brought a cappella into the mainstream, turning the Flying Pickets into singing socialist superstars almost overnight.
Although continuing to play to full houses throughout the UK, the group never again repeated its initial chart success. The closest it came was in April 1984, when the group's a cappella version of The Marvelettes' When You're Young and In Love, reached number seven in the UK pop charts.
Along with touring extensively and releasing nine more albums throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the combo also wrote a musical for the London-based Theatre Royal and penned the score for the popular BBC television adaptation of Tom Sharpe's, Porterhouse Blue.
The Flying Pickets' most recent album was recorded at the Fliegende Bauten in Hamburg last year and was released earlier this year. It is the first since 1989's Vox Pops and features a selection of atypical Pickets' popapella covers. It includes Michael Jackson's, Billy Jean, Ricky Martin's Livin' la Vida Loca Robbie Williams's Let Me Entertain You and of course, Yazoo's Only You, among others.
The Flying Pickets will perform at 7pm this evening at the Family Theatre (台北市政府親子劇場), on the second floor at Taipei City Hall (台北市市府路一號二樓). Tickets cost from NT$400 to NT$800 and are available at the door.
Taiwan has next to no political engagement in Myanmar, either with the ruling military junta nor the dozens of armed groups who’ve in the last five years taken over around two-thirds of the nation’s territory in a sprawling, patchwork civil war. But early last month, the leader of one relatively minor Burmese revolutionary faction, General Nerdah Bomya, who is also an alleged war criminal, made a low key visit to Taipei, where he met with a member of President William Lai’s (賴清德) staff, a retired Taiwanese military official and several academics. “I feel like Taiwan is a good example of
“M yeolgong jajangmyeon (anti-communism zhajiangmian, 滅共炸醬麵), let’s all shout together — myeolgong!” a chef at a Chinese restaurant in Dongtan, located about 35km south of Seoul, South Korea, calls out before serving a bowl of Korean-style zhajiangmian —black bean noodles. Diners repeat the phrase before tucking in. This political-themed restaurant, named Myeolgong Banjeom (滅共飯館, “anti-communism restaurant”), is operated by a single person and does not take reservations; therefore long queues form regularly outside, and most customers appear sympathetic to its political theme. Photos of conservative public figures hang on the walls, alongside political slogans and poems written in Chinese characters; South
Institutions signalling a fresh beginning and new spirit often adopt new slogans, symbols and marketing materials, and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is no exception. Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), soon after taking office as KMT chair, released a new slogan that plays on the party’s acronym: “Kind Mindfulness Team.” The party recently released a graphic prominently featuring the red, white and blue of the flag with a Chinese slogan “establishing peace, blessings and fortune marching forth” (締造和平,幸福前行). One part of the graphic also features two hands in blue and white grasping olive branches in a stylized shape of Taiwan. Bonus points for
Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) announced last week a city policy to get businesses to reduce working hours to seven hours per day for employees with children 12 and under at home. The city promised to subsidize 80 percent of the employees’ wage loss. Taipei can do this, since the Celestial Dragon Kingdom (天龍國), as it is sardonically known to the denizens of Taiwan’s less fortunate regions, has an outsize grip on the government budget. Like most subsidies, this will likely have little effect on Taiwan’s catastrophic birth rates, though it may be a relief to the shrinking number of
RSS