More warm-up parties on tap

As the collective jonesing for Spring Scream becomes ever more unbearable, show organizers around the island are trying to provide some quick fixes in the form of pre-event parties. The Bachungjou (八重洲) Live House in Kaohsiung will host warm-up shows for bands predominantly from southern Taiwan every day from April 2 to April 4 at 6pm. Starting March 26, Taipei's Underworld will offer music every night for a week, primarily featuring Spring Scream bands. Taipei's Zeitgeist also has two more pre-Spring Scream Parties to go. The next is tonight, and it includes the following bands:

Reproduction

They're young, loud and not too good. So for you purists out there, Reproduction is punk rock at its best. "The first time we saw them [in Taichung] a couple years ago," said Wade Davis, Spring Scream cofounder, "they were playing their instruments in school uniforms. Then, like a year later, they all had piercings and mohawks." The band is headed up by two 17-year-olds -- high school dropout Hsiao-hsin (小鑫) on guitar and Ah-wei (阿維) on bass. The drummer, Shu-yeh (樹葉), is 22. "We sing about the dark side of reality," said Hsiao-hsin. "We sing about money and power."

Anarchy

Clueless, useless and lame, anarchy pretty much is what Anarchy advocates. Fortunately for them, Taiwan's youth is right there with them. The four man group, all classmates at Taichung's Providence University, has made a small splash in Taiwan's indie music scene since releasing an album Dec. 31. In less than two months, the CD, titled Anarchy, went into a second run after selling out its initial Crystal Records release of 2,000 copies. It doesn't matter much to their fans that they sound a lot like Rage Against the Machine. "We're a political protest band," said bass player Allen Liu, age 25. At Providence University, Liu said he majors in Spanish because "it's easy." That was about the most useful thing he could say. For example, to the question: what's your band's political platform, Taiwan independence? he could only say: "Yeah right."

After other equally evasive answers, he began to talk about the time he dropped his pants on stage and his mother saw him. Then he said, he wants to be a rock star -- as a career.

Smoove

Taichung's music scene can be like a bowl of primordial rice porridge, teeming with musicians, sweet potatoes and other complex proteins. It is a seminal mix, and it is constantly stirred with a pair of primordial chop sticks. It was there that Smoove congealed about a year and a half ago, finally becoming a band. According to the band, Smoove is little more than bass player Steve Taylor's first full-fledged post-Dribdas group, and guitar player Will Zuckerman's latest attempt to shake drugs. Joined by three other Taichung multi-purpose groovesters, they believe themselves to be "snot punk," as in "it's not punk," or "punk with mucus" -- you choose. According to Taylor, they're also not rockabilly. "We're more rock than country, and more punk than billy," he said. But late at night when their audience is drunk, they will more likely than not forget their originals and pull out some Johnny Cash, often in the form of a sacred rag doll which they purport to be his avatar. Sometimes they also play his songs.

What Shenjing Yuedui (神經樂隊), Reproduction (複製人), Anarchy (無政府) and Smoove