Everything is supposed to shut down during the Lunar New Year, but Canadian troubadour and prairie poet Scott Cook has decided the holiday is the perfect time for a tour. He will play almost a dozen dates between tonight and Feb. 13.
Born in West Virginia and calling Edmonton home, Cook lived in Taiwan in the mid-2000s, playing roots reggae with a band called The Anglers. In 2007, he left to go on the road and pursue a career as a solo musician in North America, playing 160 shows a year and living in his van, save two months a year he is off the road. He has played for crowds as large as 2,000 at the Edmonton Folk Festival or as small as a couple dozen in “living room concerts” organized in private homes throughout Canada and the American Midwest. He has also done two tours of the UK and says this past summer “was the summer I would have had when I was 22, if I’d had the same access to credit I do now.”
His music is not as raucous as that might sound. In July, Cook released his fourth album, One More Time Around, an alternately cheerful and wistful mix of finger picking, nostalgia and stories from the road. The guitar picking is light, yet the songs highlight Cook’s growing ability as a storyteller and lyricist.
Photo courtesy of Frande
“I’m more about the words these days,” says Cook. “Here people like to party and talk when a band plays, and I’ve done that before. But now I really like it when people sit and listen. Every set I play has an arc, with one song leading into another, and they weave together with a story to tell.”
Listening to the album’s title track, you can almost imagine Cook in the early summer, climbing up into his van and heading off to some faraway gig. “Magnolia in the mild breeze, roadway stretching south. My thoughts scatter like wild geese, and the words fall from my mouth. I’m missing where I’ve been, and yearning for where I’m bound. Spin the wheel again, one more time around.”
Scott Cook plays tonight in Jhongli at Hide Out, 76-10 Chunghua Rd, Jhongli City (中壢市中華路76之10號), admission is NT$200. Tomorrow he will be in Zhubei City at Titty Tea, 2, Jiafeng 2nd St Sec 2, Chubei City, Hsinchu County (新竹縣竹北市嘉豐二街二段2號), admission is NT$250. And Sunday in Greater Taichung at Retro Coffee House, 116, Wucyuan W Rd Sec 1, Greater Taichung (台中市五權西路一段116號), admission is NT$300. For info on other dates, go to: www.scottcook.net.
Photo courtesy of Scott Cook
FESTIVAL NEWS FROM DOWN SOUTH
The Megaport Festival (大港開唱), held annually in Greater Kaohsiung every March since 2006, will not take place in 2014. Though the festival had its most successful year yet in 2013, drawing around 20,000 fans to see acts like Grizzly Bear and Boris, the festival is going on hiatus this year, and will possibly reboot in 2015, though most likely under a different name. Megaport has been organized for the last two years by The Wall Music, which runs live houses in Taipei, Greater Kaohsiung and Yilan and two large music festivals, Megaport and Formoz (野台開唱). However, a dispute over control of the festivals erupted following a buyout of the venue and event promoter last fall. In September, The Wall CEO Orbis Fu (傅鉛文) bought up the shareholdings of The Wall’s three founders, Chthonic lead singer Freddy Lim (林昶佐), Spring Scream founder Jimi Moe and Chairmen guitarist A-chi (阿吉). Later, Lim claimed this sale did not extend to the Megaport and Formoz music festivals. Though the Wall has taken over management of the two festivals in recent years, Lim's company Taiwan Rock Alliance launched Megaport in 2006 and grew Formoz to international prominence in the early 2000s. This is not the kind of pretty story, but perhaps one suitable to the Year of the Snake. A source at The Wall recently confirmed that Megaport would take a break this year, so that the company can retrench and prepare a big summer festival. Most likely, it will not be called Formoz.
Spring Scream will celebrate its 20th year in April, continuing as the oldest continuous music festival in Taiwan. The open-air festival recently announced its dates as April 3 to 6. It will take place in the same spot it has occupied in recent years, the South Point Campground next to the Erluanbi Lighthouse in Kenting National Park. The festival continues to follow an egalitarian, DIY ethos, requiring all bands to register, regardless of their credentials, and performers are not paid. Band registration should begin soon. Look for info on: www.springscream.com.
TOP INDIE ALBUMS OF 2013
The music Web site, Indievox.com, last week released its rankings of the top Taiwanese indie albums of 2013, according to both fan votes and sales on the site. The top selling album was the debut release by upstart rapper Soft Lipa (蛋堡), which has no English title but roughly translates as The Secret Rehabilitation of Du Zhen-xi (你所不知道的杜振熙之內部整修). In rap terms, it mines the tradition of the street autobiography (think Jay Z’s The Black Album or Lil Wayne’s The Carter III), but the music and lyrical flow are throwbacks to the jazz-sampling sound of 1990s consciousness hip hop, like Souls of Mischief or maybe the Pharcyde. Second in sales was a compilation of indie artists, No Nukes! Long Play! (不核作 — 臺灣獨立音樂反核輯), followed by Tizzy Bac’s Tonight, Tonight, Tonight (易碎物), Fire EX’s (滅火器) Goodbye! Youth (再會！青春), and A-Yue’s (張震嶽) Ayal Komod (我是海雅谷慕).
In the fan vote, last year’s top album went to Fire EX for Goodbye! Youth. The pop punk band formed by four friends at a Greater Kaohsiung high school about a decade ago, and has gone on to headline big festival stages for thousands of fans in Taiwan. Voting was conducted among Indievox’s 15,000 registered users.
FRANDE TO HEADLINE FOR GIGGUIDE
Taipei’s indie scene can fall into the rut of all the same bands playing all the same clubs. But last month, the first fundraising showcase for the event listings Web site GigGuide.tw was a huge success and a breath of fresh air, mainly because it was well curated and promoted solidly. A second installment comes this weekend at Legacy, and it is worth looking forward to. The headliner is Frande (法蘭黛樂團) which came in number five in Indievox’s fan vote and number six in sales on the strength of their second album. It was mastered by London sound engineer Simon Davey, who has also worked on music for some very big names, including Moby, the XX and Franz Ferdinand. The guys at GigGuide are billing Frande as “dream-pop.” While vocalist Fran sings in a little girl voice popular in local pop since at least Cheer Chen (陳綺貞), the music at times draws from triphop or moody electronic pop, though there are also plenty of dreamy ballads.
Frande plays with Forests, Destoyer and Slack Tide tonight at 7:30pm at Legacy Taipei, located at 1, Sec1, Bade Rd (台北市八德路一段一號). Tickets are $500 at the door.
From an anonymous office in a New Delhi mall, matrimonial detective Bhavna Paliwal runs the rule over prospective husbands and wives — a booming industry in India, where younger generations are increasingly choosing love matches over arranged marriage. The tradition of partners being carefully selected by the two families remains hugely popular, but in a country where social customs are changing rapidly, more and more couples are making their own matches. So for some families, the first step when young lovers want to get married is not to call a priest or party planner but a sleuth like Paliwal with high-tech spy
The latest military exercises conducted by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) last week did not follow the standard Chinese Communist Party (CCP) formula. The US and Taiwan also had different explanations for the war games. Previously the CCP would plan out their large-scale military exercises and wait for an opportunity to dupe the gullible into pinning the blame on someone else for “provoking” Beijing, the most famous being former house speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August 2022. Those military exercises could not possibly have been organized in the short lead time that it was known she was coming.
With raging waters moving as fast as 3 meters per second, it’s said that the Roaring Gate Channel (吼門水道) evokes the sound of a thousand troop-bound horses galloping. Situated between Penghu’s Xiyu (西嶼) and Baisha (白沙) islands, early inhabitants ranked the channel as the second most perilous waterway in the archipelago; the top was the seas around the shoals to the far north. The Roaring Gate also concealed sunken reefs, and was especially nasty when the northeasterly winds blew during the autumn and winter months. Ships heading to the archipelago’s main settlement of Magong (馬公) had to go around the west side
When Portugal returned its colony Macao to China in 1999, coffee shop owner Daniel Chao was a first grader living in a different world. Since then his sleepy hometown has transformed into a bustling gaming hub lined with glittering casinos. Its once quiet streets are now jammed with tourist buses. But the growing wealth of the city dubbed the “Las Vegas of the East” has not brought qualities of sustainable development such as economic diversity and high civic participation. “What was once a relaxed, free place in my childhood has become a place that is crowded and highly commercialized,” said Chao. Macao yesterday
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