The Chinese A Cappella Center (現
The Pickets will treating local audiences to a cappella cover tunes from its recently released album, Live in Hamburg -- the first release with the current line-up of Andrea Figallo, Dylan Foster, Andy Laycock, Henrik Wager and Michael Henry -- as well plenty of other pop and rocks classics.
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE CHINESE A CAPPELLA CENTER
They are tunes that over the past 20 years have established the combo as one of the world's leading pop/rock a-cappella, or popapella-cum-rockapella acts.
Originally formed in 1982 by members of the socialist fringe theater group, 7:84 Theatre, the group took its name from the protesters who traveled the UK to man picket lines during the minor's strike of early 1980s. From its early days spent trawling the clubs and pubs of London the group went on to become a household name in the UK in a remarkably short period of time.
In 1983 the group released its debut record, Live at the Albany Empire, sales of which were impressive enough to warrant the attention of Virgin Records. Signing the group the same year, Virgin released the Flying Pickets' first single, a cover version of the Yazoo hit, Only You in Nov. 1983. The tune went straight to number one in the UK pop, where it remained for five weeks and brought a cappella into the mainstream, turning the Flying Pickets into singing socialist superstars almost overnight.
Although continuing to play to full houses throughout the UK, the group never again repeated its initial chart success. The closest it came was in April 1984, when the group's a cappella version of The Marvelettes' When You're Young and In Love, reached number seven in the UK pop charts.
Along with touring extensively and releasing nine more albums throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the combo also wrote a musical for the London-based Theatre Royal and penned the score for the popular BBC television adaptation of Tom Sharpe's, Porterhouse Blue.
The Flying Pickets' most recent album was recorded at the Fliegende Bauten in Hamburg last year and was released earlier this year. It is the first since 1989's Vox Pops and features a selection of atypical Pickets' popapella covers. It includes Michael Jackson's, Billy Jean, Ricky Martin's Livin' la Vida Loca Robbie Williams's Let Me Entertain You and of course, Yazoo's Only You, among others.
The Flying Pickets will perform at 7pm this evening at the Family Theatre (台北市政府親子劇場), on the second floor at Taipei City Hall (台北市市府路一號二樓). Tickets cost from NT$400 to NT$800 and are available at the door.
The unexpected collapse of the recall campaigns is being viewed through many lenses, most of them skewed and self-absorbed. The international media unsurprisingly focuses on what they perceive as the message that Taiwanese voters were sending in the failure of the mass recall, especially to China, the US and to friendly Western nations. This made some sense prior to early last month. One of the main arguments used by recall campaigners for recalling Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers was that they were too pro-China, and by extension not to be trusted with defending the nation. Also by extension, that argument could be
Aug. 4 to Aug. 10 When Coca-Cola finally pushed its way into Taiwan’s market in 1968, it allegedly vowed to wipe out its major domestic rival Hey Song within five years. But Hey Song, which began as a manual operation in a family cow shed in 1925, had proven its resilience, surviving numerous setbacks — including the loss of autonomy and nearly all its assets due to the Japanese colonial government’s wartime economic policy. By the 1960s, Hey Song had risen to the top of Taiwan’s beverage industry. This success was driven not only by president Chang Wen-chi’s
Last week, on the heels of the recall election that turned out so badly for Taiwan, came the news that US President Donald Trump had blocked the transit of President William Lai (賴清德) through the US on his way to Latin America. A few days later the international media reported that in June a scheduled visit by Minister of National Defense Wellington Koo (顧立雄) for high level meetings was canceled by the US after China’s President Xi Jinping (習近平) asked Trump to curb US engagement with Taiwan during a June phone call. The cancellation of Lai’s transit was a gaudy
The centuries-old fiery Chinese spirit baijiu (白酒), long associated with business dinners, is being reshaped to appeal to younger generations as its makers adapt to changing times. Mostly distilled from sorghum, the clear but pungent liquor contains as much as 60 percent alcohol. It’s the usual choice for toasts of gan bei (乾杯), the Chinese expression for bottoms up, and raucous drinking games. “If you like to drink spirits and you’ve never had baijiu, it’s kind of like eating noodles but you’ve never had spaghetti,” said Jim Boyce, a Canadian writer and wine expert who founded World Baijiu Day a decade
RSS