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.
July 1 to July 7 Huang Ching-an (黃慶安) couldn’t help but notice Imelita Masongsong during a company party in the Philippines. With paler skin and more East Asian features, she did not look like the other locals. On top of his job duties, Huang had another mission in the country, given by his mother: to track down his cousin, who was deployed to the Philippines by the Japanese during World War II and never returned. Although it had been more than three decades, the family was still hoping to find him. Perhaps Imelita could provide some clues. Huang never found the cousin;
Once again, we are listening to the government talk about bringing in foreign workers to help local manufacturing. Speaking at an investment summit in Washington DC, the Minister of Economic Affairs, J.W. Kuo (郭智輝), said that the nation must attract about 400,000 to 500,000 skilled foreign workers for high end manufacturing by 2040 to offset the falling population. That’s roughly 15 years from now. Using the lower number, Taiwan would have to import over 25,000 foreigners a year for these positions to reach that goal. The government has no idea what this sounds like to outsiders and to foreigners already living here.
Lines on a map once meant little to India’s Tibetan herders of the high Himalayas, expertly guiding their goats through even the harshest winters to pastures on age-old seasonal routes. That stopped in 2020, after troops from nuclear-armed rivals India and China clashed in bitter hand-to-hand combat in the contested high-altitude border lands of Ladakh. Swaths of grazing lands became demilitarized “buffer zones” to keep rival forces apart. For 57-year-old herder Morup Namgyal, like thousands of other semi-nomadic goat and yak herders from the Changpa pastoralist people, it meant traditional lands were closed off. “The Indian army stops us from going there,” Namgyal said,
A tourist plaque outside the Chenghuang Temple (都城隍廟) lists it as one of the “Top 100 Religious Scenes in Taiwan.” It is easy to see why when you step inside the Main Hall to be confronted with what amounts to an imperial stamp of approval — a dragon-framed, golden protection board gifted to the temple by the Guangxu Emperor that reads, “Protected by Guardians.” Some say the plaque was given to the temple after local prayers to the City God (城隍爺) miraculously ended a drought. Another version of events tells of how the emperor’s son was lost at sea and rescued