Sources at MTV said that Burning Brides, the latest and greatest band in America's rock revival, may join the list of foreign bands to play the Ho-Hai-Yan Rock Festival (
This year, MTV is involved in the four-year-old Ho-Hai-Yan for the first time and has taken responsibility for inviting foreign acts to play on the event's final day, Sunday, July 13. Invitees include the Burning Brides and three heavily produced pop acts: The Perishers from Sweden, Jaurim from South Korea and Mob Squad from Japan.
"We're very close to confirming everything, but we can't make a formal announcement until some time next week," said Oscar Lin (
The Burning Brides are a three piece rock band from Philadelphia. Their lead singer and guitarist, Dmitri Coats, takes a pro sex' n drugs view of rock n' roll, has compared his band to Nirvana, and thinks his music better than that of the Vines, the Hives and the Strokes.
Formed in 1999, the band early last year reportedly inspired a bidding war at America's largest indie rock festival, South by Southwest, in Austin, Texas, for the release of its first full-length album, Fall of the Plastic Empire. The band is currently touring Europe.
Part of the Burning Brides' success includes an MTV video in the US, but Lin said that MTV Taiwan was not introduced to the band through its US parent.
We contacted MTV Korea and MTV Japan for some of the bands. For the others we went to concerts like Spring Scream and asked a lot of people in the local recording industry for suggestions," she said.
Ho-Hai-Yan was started in 2000 by Taiwan Colors Music, an indie label in Taipei that has produced locally important albums by the Clippers, Panai, Back Quarter and others.
TCM has not yet appeared in the press materials for this year's concert but will still orchestrate performances by local bands on the first two days of the concert.
"We wanted to add an international aspect," said Lee Hou-ching (
"MTV has more international channels."
Lee said talks between Taipei County and MTV began in February when the two cooperated on an unrelated event.
The final competition of Taiwan's indie music awards will take place as part of Ho-Hai-Yan on Saturday, July 12. The ten bands to compete will be selected from a preliminary field of 31 contestants. These 31 bands will play first-round competition concerts tomorrow and the following two Saturdays. First prize is NT$200,000.
Tomorrow's performances will include Relax One (
The two remaining qualifier concerts will showcase the remaining 21 bands over the next two Saturdays also between noon and 5pm. Next week's will take place outside the Mitsukoshi Department Store in Taichung, and the final preliminary will be outside the Hsin-yi Mitsukoshi location in Taipei.
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