Dubbed "the king of live music" by both the Asian music press and a multitude of fans scattered across the region, homegrown guitar hero, Wu Bai (伍佰), and his band, China Blue will be bringing their 2002 Ninth Heaven Tour to fans across Taiwan over the coming month.
The tour, which is the combo's first such large-scale venture in Taiwan for nearly two years, comes hot on the heels of the band's recent sell-out Pub High sojourn around the nation.
While the mini-tour saw Wu Bai and his hard-playing band -- bassist Ju Jian-hui (
PHOTO: MAGIC STONE RECORDS
Beginning at Taipei Municipal Stadium (
Since hitting the local music scene in the early 1990s with its self-titled debut album, Wu Bai and China Blue have appeared on top music charts across Asia with a string of hit albums. The most recent of which, Dream River (夢的河流), although released late last year, is still riding high on pop charts in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and China.
While the Asian music scene is hardly short of heroes, the meteoric way in which the local rocker and his combo made the big time differs radically from many of their peers.
The phenomena that has become Wu Bai and China Blue was not created by record company executives with an eye on a quick profit. In fact, with the exception of popular indie rockers, Quarter Back (
"We all played for different bands up until about 1991, after which [Ju Jian-hui] and I began jamming together with the eventual idea of forming a newer, fresher, and original rock band," Zavolta said. "Then one day, he called me up and asked me if I would mind filling in for a one-off gig with himself and a guitarist named Wu Bai."
According to Zavolta, the trio hit it off almost immediately and China Blue fell into place shortly thereafter.
"Something just clicked between us. Both the music and the mo chi (
By the mid-1990s, the band had conquered the hearts and minds of a Taiwanese audience sorely lacking guitar heroes. With its eclectic brand of very Taiwanese rock `n' roll enjoying an all-time high the length and breadth of the nation, the combo branched out and began replicating this success across Asia. The band's high-octane gigs in China, Hong Kong and Singapore are now guaranteed sellouts.
A major factor of the popularity of the bands' live performances is the ability of the four-piece combo to continue to create original and exciting material. Material that not only has the capability to appease fans with a hunger for guitar-laden rock, but also charm fans with an ear for less raucous vibes.
"Although our styles may vary, our sound remains the same. Our most recent album is a good example of this. [The album] is extremely versatile. If you are a rocker, Broken (
Although the back-clad, helmet hair-styled Wu Bai has become one of Asia's most instantly recognizable rock icons and has would-be rockers emulating his low-slung guitar playing stance from Beijing to Bangkok, China Blue is far more than a backing band. Wu Bai is as much a part of China Blue as are China Blue a part of Wu Bai.
"Wubai is part of China Blue. He is the lead singer and guitarist of China Blue. Just as Hsiao Ju is the bassist, [Yu Dai-ho] the keyboard player and I'm the drummer," Zavolta said. "Although he writes the music and lyrics, we arrange each song as a band. Wu Bai makes a rough version of a song he has written and then we collectively arrange it together. Which is the crux of our contrasting styles."
What: Wu Bai and China Blue: 2002 Ninth Heaven Tour (伍佰 and China Blue: 2002巡迴演唱會 -- 九重天)
Where & When: Saturday, May 11 Taipei Municipal Stadium (台北市立體育場) Saturday, May 18 Changhwa Municipal Stadium (彰化縣立體育場) and Saturday, May 25 Kaoshiung (高雄澄清湖棒球場). All shows begin at 7pm
Tickets: Cost NT$1,000 or NT$800 and are available from ERA ticket outlets nationwide
The problem with Marx’s famous remark that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, the second time as farce, is that the first time is usually farce as well. This week Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chair Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) made a pilgrimage to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) “to confer, converse and otherwise hob-nob” with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials. The visit was an instant international media hit, with major media reporting almost entirely shorn of context. “Taiwan’s main opposition leader landed in China Tuesday for a rare visit aimed at cross-strait ‘peace’”, crowed Agence-France Presse (AFP) from Shanghai. Rare!
What is the importance within the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) of the meeting between Xi Jinping (習近平), the leader Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), the leader of the KMT? Local media is an excellent guide to determine how important — or unimportant — a news event is to the public. Taiwan has a vast online media ecosystem, and if a news item is gaining traction among readers, editors shift resources in near real time to boost coverage to meet the demand and drive up traffic. Cheng’s China trip is among the top headlines, but by no means
A recent report from the Environmental Management Administration of the Ministry of Environment highlights a perennial problem: illegal dumping of construction waste. In Taoyuan’s Yangmei District (楊梅) and Hsinchu’s Longtan District (龍潭) criminals leased 10,000 square meters of farmland, saying they were going to engage in horticulture. They then accepted between 40,000 and 50,000 cubic meters of construction waste from sites in northern Taiwan, charging less than the going rate for disposal, and dumped the waste concrete, tile, metal and glass onto the leased land. Taoyuan District prosecutors charged 33 individuals from seven companies with numerous violations of the law. This
Sunflower movement superstar Lin Fei-fan (林飛帆) once quipped that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) could nominate a watermelon to run for Tainan mayor and win. Conversely, the DPP could run a living saint for mayor in Taipei and still lose. In 2022, the DPP ran with the closest thing to a living saint they could find: former Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中). During the pandemic, his polling was astronomically high, with the approval of his performance reaching as high as 91 percent in one TVBS poll. He was such a phenomenon that people printed out pop-up cartoon
RSS