Never mind the Bollocks, here's Taiwan's Wasted Youth

Sometimes it can be kind of hard to get any information out of Allen Liu (劉培倫). It's not like he's trying to hide anything, it's more in the way he answers questions. A few years ago, Spring Scream music festival co-founder Wade Davis said people used to call him "`Beavis.' ... Because that's what talking to him was like."

You could say there's a certain genius in the way he doesn't say anything. For example, trying to find something out, like how many people are in his punk rock gang, I ask him, "How many people are in your punk rock gang?" And he says, "I dunno." So I ask if there are more than 10. He says "probably." Around 20? He shrugs. Around 50? He doesn't know. Around 500? "No way man! What, are you crazy? That's way too many."

Allen, as he's pretty much universally known, plays bass in a band called Anarchy and is, more importantly, the leader of the Feirenbang (廢人幫) -- a group of punk rockers, mostly from Taichung, mostly between 15 and 25, and oddly yet cohesively organized according to a system that's impenetrable to anyone who's not one of them.

Most of the time, they're pretty easy to spot because they show up en masse at rock shows, have punk rock haircuts and wear t-shirts that have a big character fei (廢) on the chest, which means "waste" or "useless."

The first time I saw those shirts was about a year ago. There were 15 or 20 guys wearing them at a weekend show at the Taipei rock club, Zeitgeist. I asked one of the kids what it was all about, and he answered in English: "We're the Useless Motherf***ers! We show up at every show and slam!"

In addition to the slam dancing minions, the group also includes no less than eight bands: Anarchy, Show Girls, the Clones, Salesemen, Nerve Band, Freestyle, Land of Mess and Silly What. Many of them are known island wide.

They call themselves a "gang" (幫) in Chinese, because like Allen says, "in Taiwan, you know, a group of people is just called a `gang.'" It's also less geeky than calling themselves a shih hui (社會), like college clubs do, and less formal than something like a tuan (團, group) or lian meng (聯盟, alliance).

So for months of bumping into them at rock shows, that's what they were, a bunch of happy-go-lucky useless motherf***ers. It was only about a month ago, after a Sunday night performance in Taichung Park, when Allen, whom I was hardly paying attention to at the time, finally told me something about them that was, well, useful.

"Do you know why I'm the leader?" he said.

I had no idea.

"I'm 26, I haven't done military service, I don't have a job, and I still get money from my parents. That's why I'm the leader!"

The origins of the Feirenbang go back about six or seven years to when Allen and some of the other founding members were starting their own punk rock bands while still in high school. Davis remembers Allen's first band, No Reason, showing up almost six years ago at the second Spring Scream where they "rocked the house. They only had four songs ... but all original."

Against all reason

But how, in the middle of Taiwan, with no appreciable influences other than the fact that one guy's mother used to listen to Led Zeppelin, did they happen upon punk rock?

Allen, grinning, answers this one: "Yeah, we love punk rock! And hardcore, and thrash, and metal!"

Or to put that another way, the punk shoe fit, so they wore it.