Bands sharpentheir axes forHo-Hai-Yan fest

PHOTO COURTESY OF TCM

The wheels will get in motion this weekend for the annual Ho-Hai-Yan Rock Festival's indie band competition with the first of three elimination round battles of the bands set to be held over the coming three weekends. Tomorrow's competition between 11 bands will start at 11am at Tainan's Shanhua Wine Factory.

Of the 33 bands that were selected for the first-round competition, between 10 and 12 will be chosen by a committee of music critics and music professionals to take part in the final competition at the Ho-Hai-Yan festival between July 16 and July 18 on the beach at Fulong, in Taipei County. The winners of the competition are handed a check for NT$200,000.

The finalists will get to share the stage this year with festival headliners the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, as well as some of Taiwan's better-known acts like Chang Chen-yue (張震嶽) and Sandee Chen (陳珊妮), who have also been confirmed to play the event.

The festival is in its fifth year and has gone from a tiny gathering of local indie bands organized by the music label Taiwan Colors Music to a full-blown three-day festival with international bands paid for by a budget from the Taipei County Government and major corporate sponsors. The big budgets of the past couple years allowed the festival to invite international acts last year like the Perishers from Sweden came and attract up to 20,000 over the weekend, making it the biggest rock festival in Taiwan.

Poster for the Ho-Hai-Yan Rock Festival PHOTO COURTESY OF TCM

Booking Jon Spencer, who's almost a legend in American indie rock and famous for his collaborations with blues great R.L. Burnside, also confirms the organizers' ambitions to make the Ho-Hai-Yan festival a major regional music event.

Sandee Chen PHOTO COURTESY OF TCM

This year's competing bands, according to organizers, run the gamut from hip hop to rock to electronica, and in a break from the norm, bands fronted by girls make up almost half of the competing groups.

Next Saturday's round of competition will take place in Taichung in front of the Mitsukoshi Department Store and on Sunday, June 27 at Taipei's Red Playhouse (紅樓劇場). Tainan's Shanhua Wine Factory is located at 2 Chengkung Rd, Shanhua Township, Tainan (台南善化鎮成功路２號). Entrance is free to all shows, and incidentally, it's also free for the festival between July 16 and July 18.