The rumble on the beach

In 1966, Jun Fukada made his first Godzilla movie titled Ebirah, Horror of the Deep. It's rated as one of the worst of the entire Godzilla series, but for anyone who's seen it, it should resonate with the Ho-Hi-Yan Indie Music Awards and Festival set to take place at the beach in Fulung, Taipei County, next weekend.

In the movie, a band of dastardly international terrorists is making nuclear bombs on a remote island. We are led to surmise that their nuclear research has had the unexpected side-effect of creating the horrifically mutated and vengeful monster Ebirah, which resembles a 20-storey lobster with a high-pitched voice patrolling the waters around the island.

Unbeknownst to the militants, Godzilla is sleeping off battles from a previous movie in a cave only a stone's throw from their island base. When the human heroes of the movie make a lot of noise trying to free the slave laborers held captive by the terrorists, they rouse Godzilla from his sleep. Angered by this, Godzilla stomps out of his cave to smash everything in sight, but while doing that Ebirah lands on the beach and taunts the gigantic lizard into a fight. Godzilla doesn't finish off Ebirah in their first bout, but does so later in a climactic rumble before Mothra shows up and wants a piece of him.

So, what does this have to do with Fulung? Well, the tiny town is bracing for a major rumble on its popular resort beach next weekend at the second annual Ho-Hi-Yan Indie Music Awards that will resemble a clash of the titans of Taiwan's underground music scene. And everyone knows that Turtle Mountain Island, just out of sight but not far offshore from Fulung, has a mysterious military history that with a little imagination could have included research into just about anything. Who knows then what or who will wash up onto the beach looking for a fight.

What is certain is that the music awards will be contended over the course of next Saturday as a battle of the bands between 10 groups. The bands were selected from among 124 demo submissions by a committee established by the indie label Taiwan Colors Music (角頭音樂) and headed by music critic Joy Topper (豬頭皮).

The competing finalists at this year's event are Reproduction (複製人), Won Fu (旺福), Chicken Leg Rice (強力雞腿飯), Mirror Mirror (魔鏡), Viva La Tuna, Banji (鈑機), KBN (凱比鳥), Tizzy Bac, Swing and Mr. 78 & Black Tempo Family.

The competition is the only event established specifically to recognize the work of Taiwan's independent music scene, which has exploded over the past several years.

To put some perspective on the huge leaps independent music has made in the past year, Chen Rui-kai (陳瑞凱), lead singer of the band 1976 and spokesman for the team of judges said the number of applicants this year was double that of last year and that the quality of music had skyrocketed.

"It's a competition between independent bands, but a huge number of the applicants had professional-quality demos," he said.

As further proof that underground music in Taiwan is coming out of the garage, finalist band Tizzy Bac has a video that plays regularly on MTV.

Chen added that the applicants for the competition displayed a greater variety of musical styles than in last year's competition, which is evident in the 10 finalist bands. "We didn't set out to get different kinds of music for the competition. It just happened that way when we tallied up the points to determine the winners. There's rock, punk, funk, electronica, really there's a bit of everything," Chen said.