Only a few years ago, the so-called "underground" bands of Taiwan like the Clippers, LTK and Sticky Rice were largely defined by their cult followings and gigs played in basement pubs. In the last 12 months, they've been releasing CDs and showing up on MTV. Live music in Taiwan, especially rock, it seems, is finally coming of age. Next weekend Taiwan's youth will celebrate this phenomenon with the seventh Spring Scream, the music festival that has both accompanied and supported this movement from a time when it barely existed.
Spring Scream Snake, the name of this year's festival, will be held from April 5 through April 8 in Kenting at the Liufu Ranch (六福山莊), the same venue as in the last two years. Like live music in Taiwan, the festival continues to grow, this year adding a third stage and hosting 155 bands and solo performers.
The new three-stage format will be more democratic than in years past, as top acts won't play back-to-back sets on the same stage. "We'll try to keep things rotating, so there won't be bands of the same style playing one after the other," said concert organizer Jimi Moe.
In addition to non-stop musical performances, Spring Scream will offer a film festival, art displays, a half-pipe for skateboarding, a ping pong center and athletic club, an intra-band basketball tournament, the usual line-up of vendors and food stalls and a geodesic dome.
The festival's main thrust, however, continues to be live music. Below is an introduction to a select few of the bands that will play.
FOREIGN BANDS
Guardian Alien (USA: eastern ragtime hip pop rock)
In a previous incarnation, Guardian Alien was known to Spring Scream as Banjovi, that hip-swaying mama of a banjo band that has awed Kenting crowds in years past. Then last year the group's banjo virtuoso, Guy Davis, showed up at Spring Scream to sit in with Q, but was cheated from interpreting the guitar solo from AC/DC's You Shook Me All Night Long when a wind gust tore loose a banner and nearly carried the drummer off stage. Davis later made up for it with some incredibly trippy electric banjo on the second stage, playing a surreal Flamenco type scale. In addition to Davis' phenomenal skills, Guardian Alien fuses the vocals of Christina Honeycutt (also formerly of Banjovi), percussion and the often huge and billowing sound of the chromatic concertina. This is definitely not a band to miss.
Mimie-chan (Japan: ska, cosplay)
Last year Mimie-chan amazed and bewildered the Spring Scream crowd with the entrance of Daiper, a sumo-esque and non-instrument playing band member who finished the set wearing only a pair of too-small spandex underwear. The year before, the band played in silver stretch briefs, stuffed full of things they found in their hotel bathroom. But that's just them being Mimie-chan. The band was born when a male punk trio added a horn section of three cuddly women and started playing red hot ska, much of it put together by Maru, the bass player. The music is as outrageous as the stage antics, and if it doesn't move you to dance, you are probably dead.
Miracle Saru (Japan: psychedelic rock, trance)
Miracle Saru showed up at last year's Spring Scream on a whim after someone in Thailand told them that the festival was a good party. So they showed up in Kenting and blew everyone away. Their jam moves from 1970s power guitar riffs to drum beats that are so deep they are almost electronic. One minute you are swimming in the music, the next you are pulsing with it. The six piece ensemble is from Tokyo, where they play a couple gigs a month. The band's lead guitarist, Kazz, is an accomplished studio guitarist who has played with everyone from drummers in Niger to Japanese pop idol Sayuki.
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