Burning Brides may spearhead latest rock revival

A crowd packs the beach at last year's Ho-Hai-Yan concert. PHOTO COURTESY TAIPEI COUNTY GOVERNMENT

Sources 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 (台北貢寮國際海洋音樂祭), a free concert to be held at Fulung Beach from July 11 to 13. The event will also host Taiwan's indie music awards, a multistage process which gets underway this weekend in Tainan with a qualifier concert featuring 10 local bands.

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 (林華芳), manager of programming and talent relations at MTV.

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 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 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 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 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 (李厚慶) of the concert's major financial sponsor, the Taipei County Government.

"MTV has more international channels."

Lee 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 will include Relax One (輕鬆玩), Virgin Wiky, Stone, Funck, Wuran (污染), Shock, Rubinton (路邊攤), XL and Chuehban (雀斑). They take place between noon and 5pm in Tainan in front of the Mitsukoshi New Life Square (新光三越新天地), located at Hsimen Rd, Sec 1, No. 658 (台南市西門路一段658號).

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.