After five and a half years as the wackiest live act in Taiwan, the Clippers (夾子電動大樂隊) have finally come out with an album. Titled Spiritual Service Team -- Turn on the Disco Ball, the CD was released island-wide on TCM records Dec. 15.
A few days ago in a Taita (
SOURCE: TAIWAN COLORS MUSIC
His hair is yellow these days, which seems to be more an emblem of his kitsch and camp stage persona than his daily life personality. One-on-one, he's reserved and introspective -- the kind of guy who sips his coffee and doesn't say anything too outrageous. By his mannerisms, he could easily be taken for the biomedical engineer he once studied to become. In live shows, however, it's a completely different story.
SOURCE: TAIWAN COLORS MUSIC
The stage is where Hsiao Ying wears turd-shaped hats, stage dives, makes sexual innuendo to his dancers and rattles off esoteric jokes one after the other. For many fans, the stage is where the Clippers truly exist, with some even considering the group to be as much of a performance art ensemble as a rock band. "Performance is what we're really all about," said Hsiao Ying. "We even conceive a lot of our music in terms of how it will be performed live."
To a large degree, the band's reputation for "performance art" came in its early days, in the two or three years after Hsiao Ying met American guitarist Stan Blewett and founded the group. In one 1996 show at Scum, a Taipei club that went out of business not too long afterwards, the music seemed to be little more than an atmospheric accompaniment to Hsiao Ying's repressive and constipated rants and satirical antics directed against the money-loving drones of contemporary Taiwan.
SOURCE: TAIWAN COLORS MUSIC
Hsiao Ying acknowledges his band's has a conceptual art aspect to it, saying that this was already apparent in the group's very first show at a noise music fest in an empty warehouse in Sanchung and eventually got them two gigs in a Tamsui (
But in the end, he also believes that the conceptual aspect is not the main thing, because the Clippers aren't really about being arty. After all, there is another side to the band. It's the cheezy, tacky and Vuadville side. It relates more to Hsiao Ying's variety show-style performances and nakashi -- a type of Japanese organ music based around those annoyingly simple melodies you just can't get out of your head. "One time the Clippers played a show with a real nakashi MC," recalls Nikita Wu, a band supporter and the new album's covergirl, "and that guy was, like, oh my god! This is really great!"
Yet even that anecdote doesn't cover the full extent of the Clippers' low side. Almost in mockery of the intellectual underpinnings the group seems to maintain, the Clippers have also slaved away as a Taiwan version of a wedding and bar mitzvah band. "As a matter of fact," said Hsiao Ying, "we just played our first wedding recently. It was kind of weird. We played the same songs, just toned down."
And instead of bar mitzvahs, which don't happen much in Taiwan, the Clippers play political rallies. In the last election, they played for both KMT and DPP, and in 1998, they played at two events as part of Chen Shui-bian's
Ironically, the same year the Clippers played for A-bian, Hsiao Ying also parodied the politician and his A-bian hats (
As for the newly released album, it is a compilation of everything the Clippers have done to date, including several songs from 1996 and 1997. Though TCM said that sales of the new Clippers album have been middling since its release last month, the CD has generated no shortage of media attention. In addition to radio and print media coverage, the Clippers have made five television appearances on variety shows, which seems to suit them just fine.
At present, the band's schedule reads like a non-stop promotional express. Of the first twenty days in January, fourteen were taken up with everything from cable TV segments to chat room appearances on local rock music Web sites. According to Hsiao Ying, the promotions will continue up until the Chinese New Year. After that, he says he'll go back and work on some new material.
Though Hsiao Ying said he's not sure yet what the next direction the band will take next, he has vowed to uphold certain fundamental principles. "We've always been about being crass," he said. "Right now, Taiwan's music industry is over produced. We like being crass better."
What The Clippers
When Tomorrow night, 9pm
Where Changhua Train Station (彰化火車站)
Ticket Free
The album Available at Eslite, Rose Records and other local outlets
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