Coco Lee (
Since releasing its first album late last year, the group of four classmates at Taichung's Providence University has become one of Taiwan's top-selling indie bands, racking up sales of around 5,000 CDs.
Reached at a friend's house in Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn, New York, the band's bass player and vocalist Allen Liu (劉培倫) said that their coolest stateside gig so far came last Saturday when they played for a bunch of "anarchists and socialists" as part of the Hardcore Punk Matinee at ABC No Rio, a club on Manhattan's Lower East Side.
PHOTO COURTESY OF TRA
"We only got to play for about 20 minutes," said Liu, "and most of the people just kind of stood and watched, because they didn't really know us. But it was still fun."
What impressed Liu and other band members most was seeing other bands, both at ABC No Rio and the next night as spectators at CBGB's, the 27-year-old venue known as the seedbed of New York's punk scene.
"Technically, the bands were all so good. It was like they were all professionals," said Liu. "And the slam dancing, it was ? you know, terrifying."
For Anarchy, this American rock odyssey began earlier this year with the group's participation in the "Say Yes to Taiwan" movement, a series of concerts involving DPP sponsorship and supporting Taiwanese identity. Upon writing the theme song, Anarchy became both the movement's poster children and its ambassadors. While playing at a March 18 demonstration in front of the Presidential Palace, the band was noticed by members of the Taiwan Association of America (
Taiwan's last garage band to pull off such an American tour was Ladybug (
Though Anarchy hasn't managed to swing their way into such high powered lineups ? their most famous stage partners so far have been local New York talent like What Happens Next? and Viper Fantastic ? they have managed to learn a few things from their stint in America's little big time.
Humility is chief among them. "After seeing all these awesome bands, we just think we suck," said Liu, with a touch of self-deprecating irony.
If only Coco Lee were as honest.
A few weeks ago I found myself at a Family Mart talking with the morning shift worker there, who has become my coffee guy. Both of us were in a funk over the “unseasonable” warm weather, a state of mind known as “solastalgia” — distress produced by environmental change. In fact, the weather was not that out of the ordinary in boiling Central Taiwan, and likely cooler than the temperatures we will experience in the near-future. According to the Taiwan Adaptation Platform, between 1957 and 2006, summer lengthened by 27.8 days, while winter shrunk by 29.7 days. Winter is not
Taiwan’s post-World War II architecture, “practical, cheap and temporary,” not to mention “rather forgettable.” This was a characterization recently given by Taiwan-based historian John Ross on his Formosa Files podcast. Yet the 1960s and 1970s were, in fact, the period of Taiwan’s foundational building boom, which, to a great extent, defined the look of Taiwan’s cities, determining the way denizens live today. During this period, functionalist concrete blocks and Chinese nostalgia gave way to new interpretations of modernism, large planned communities and high-rise skyscrapers. It is currently the subject of a new exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Modern
March 25 to March 31 A 56-year-old Wu Li Yu-ke (吳李玉哥) was straightening out her artist son’s piles of drawings when she inadvertently flipped one over, revealing the blank backside of the paper. Absent-mindedly, she picked up a pencil and recalled how she used to sketch embroidery designs for her clothing business. Without clients and budget or labor constraints to worry about, Wu Li drew freely whatever image came to her mind. With much more free time now that her son had found a job, she found herself missing her home village in China, where she
In recent years, Slovakia has been seen as a highly democratic and Western-oriented Central European country. This image was reinforced by the election of the country’s first female president in 2019, efforts to provide extensive assistance to Ukraine and the strengthening of relations with Taiwan, all of which strengthened Slovakia’s position within the European Union. However, the latest developments in the country suggest that the situation is changing rapidly. As such, the presidential elections to be held on March 23 will be an indicator of whether Slovakia remains in the Western sphere of influence or moves eastward, notably towards Russia and