Pop Stop

Tomorrow evening is the Golden Melody Awards (金曲獎) so Taipei's teeny boppers will start swarming Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall some time in the next few hours to secure a prime location to see their favorite stars walk the red carpet into the ceremony hall. And outside the hall is where the fans will have to stay tomorrow evening, as the ceremony is almost exclusively a TV event for industry insiders and those lucky enough (depending on your outlook) to work at the Government Information Office (GIO), which gave itself 947 of the available 2,500 tickets, according to The Great Daily News (大成報).

Not surprisingly, fans are livid over the bureaucrats' generous apportioning of tickets to themselves and their friends. The GIO has said the portion of tickets it kept for itself was based on precedent, but the paper noted that last year the GIO kept only 800 of the available 4,000 tickets. So, when the question was asked, `What year served as the precedent?' no response was forthcoming.

Anyway, the red carpet could be where the most excitement takes place. Pop Stop will be on the lookout for boy bands 5566 and Energy, who reportedly share a profound and mutual contempt for each other and in the past year have done a lot of trash talkin' about the others' talents. Last year Energy made an impressive entrance at the ceremony in matching white suits doing flips and cartwheels down the red carpet. This year, perhaps, we can look forward to a spectacular kung-fu match-up between the two boy bands.

More red-carpet madness to watch out for will be the ever-lascivious TV host Zhang Fei (張菲) cozying up to special guest Shu Qi (舒淇) and pop diva Faye Wong (王菲). He's already insisted on walking the carpet with them and he's not one to take rejection lightly.

As for the awards, the local media has engaged in a fair bit of speculation as to the winners of the big prizes tomorrow, with most predicting that David Tao and Jolin Tsai (蔡依林) will take the best male and female singer awards, respectively.

Pop Stop's prediction in the best singing group category will be for S.H.E., who've been the hottest thing in Mando-pop all year. In the best band category, fingers are crossed for Tizzy Bac even though they don't stand much of chance against Mayday (五月天). But then again, Chthonic (閃靈) won the award in the same category last year, proving that at the Golden Melody Awards, where the judges are notoriously fickle (not to say swayed by political or commercial pressures), truly anything is possible.

The Golden Melody Awards will be shown tomorrow on Azio TV starting at

5:30pm.

Meanwhile, SETTV last week stopped collecting on-line votes for its own pop-music awards. With 60,000 votes cast Jay Chou (周杰倫) garnered 33,000 votes, making him far and away the favorite male singer, while Sun Yanzi (孫燕姿) and Jolin Tsai shared the honors in the female singer category. Mayday and Shin (信樂團) shared the award for best band.