MTV music festival avoids washout

Late afternoon rains didn't spoil MTV's Taipei Music Festival Saturday night, but MTV's VJs almost did. Deployed to hype a crowd estimated between 60,000 and 80,000, the best Katherine Wang (王凱蒂), George Chang (張兆志) and Andy Chen (陳正飛) could muster was to chant the name of each upcoming performer. The lesson of the evening: VJs don't make good MCs.

Having already spent several minutes chanting Stanley Huang's (黃立行) name in Chinese, MTV's Wang decided to chant his English name. She did so by herself.

Huang was understandably reluctant to take the stage following an opening salvo fired by Canadian singer-songwriter Avril Lavigne. She played the five songs she was scheduled to sing, accepted an "award" designed to give various local figureheads photo time with the young superstar -- in this case Taipei City Deputy Mayor Yeh Jin-chuan (葉金川) -- then flew away.

Not surprisingly, the media besieged Lavigne's every move during her stay in Taiwan. They met her at the airport Thursday night, followed her to Snake Alley night market that night, then met her officially at a Friday afternoon press conference where she wowed them.

She performed a two-song acoustic set with the help of one of the members of her band and showed that she's much more than just her mascara. Though provided a microphone, she didn't need one. Her voice was heard clearly even in the back of the Grand Formosa ballroom where the press conference was held. She was given an award -- surprise! -- and sat to answer some hard-hitting questions from Taiwan's media: Did she like Chinese food? Had she ever heard of spicy hot pot and would she be interested in trying it? Was she really as cool as she seemed, or was it just an act? Answers: "Sure," "No, so, dunno," and "Hunh?"

No wonder that by the time she took the stage Saturday night, she looked ready to get out of Taipei. Her face had a pinched expression, as if she'd maybe left something in her hotel room. Or it might have been the look of someone who'd just tried spicy hot pot for the first time.

But by all accounts, her Saturday night show and her press conference went off better than anyone else's. Japan's Naohito Fujiki (藤木直人) showed real pop-star personality by demanding that all questions asked at his press conference be submitted beforehand and then insisted that no one except his translator speak Japanese to him. He had his few minutes of stage time and was gone. No matter, he wasn't ka-wa-ii like the other Japanese stars that played, AI and Hitoto Yo (一青窈), and hardly anyone understood any of the songs anyway.

Likewise, no one understood what South Korean soap-opera-star-cum-pop-singer, Rain, was crooning about, but he was at least much better looking than Fujiki and didn't demand to be addressed in a certain way. He garnered screams from the tens of thousands of 13-year-old girls in the crowd, then had to head home early to shoot his soap opera.

For the local acts, Jay Chou (周杰倫) and S.H.E. won the audience, but it was the more photogenic boy band 5566 that MTV was promoting. It was the last act to take the stage, but the four of them didn't have the same impact on the audience that Jay had on his own. Kids may want their MTV, but they can still recognize musicianship when they hear it (or don't). In their post-event press release, MTV said that spectators gave 5566 "their undivided attention." It's a nice way of saying they didn't all leave before they were done.