If you notice an influx of teenage girls in the capital this weekend, you can thank Mayday (五月天), the punk rock pack-cum-pop idols that will be playing the Taipei Athletic tomorrow night.
A favorite of Taiwan's nascent rock scene in the mid to late-1990s, Mayday catapulted to fame following their Golden Melody nomination for Best Band in 2000. Though they lost the award that year, a contract they inked with Rock Records, the nation's largest label for rock music, gave them the marketing muscle they needed to start selling records on the same scale as perennially favorite pop stars like Lee Hom Wong (王力宏), Eason Chan (陳奕迅) and David Tao. They've since become one of Taiwan's only million-selling rock bands, behind Wu Bai and China Blue, and they've taken home their own Golden Melody awards for Best Band and Best Video and even had a Taipei City Honor award bestowed on them by Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九).
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
But along with fame came a change in the style of the band's music. Songs that once had a harder edge to them softened, started fitting a more standard three-minute format and generally became more KTV-friendly. Their love ballad Chun-chiao and Chih-ming (春嬌與志明) was the No. 1 most-requested song in the nation's KTVs for over 50 weeks following their 2000 Golden Melody nod, according to their label.
Their lyrics now typically deal with love, where they once sang about teen angst and even gay rights -- a topic their music hasn't broached in recent years. Their more melodic pop sound has garnered them comparisons with the early Beatles -- one of Mayday's admitted idols. They even emulated the Fab Four's famous Apple Studios rooftop gig, playing a few songs atop EMI studios in downtown Taipei in December of 2003.
It was a far cry from their early gigs played in smoky Taipei pubs or in the fields of Spring Scream in the late 1990s, where they came up with bands like Sticky Rice (糯米團) and Luantan (亂彈). Some say the changes they've undergone over the past five years are tantamount to selling out, others dispute the charge. For their part, the band is now concerned with selling out in a much different meaning of the term.
In August of 2003, Mayday broke a Taiwan concert attendance record long held by Michael Jackson, surpassing the gloved-one's 40,000-ticket benchmark. Three months later, David Tao broke that record again by selling 50,000 tickets.
Reached by phone earlier this week, Mayday's publicity agent seemed confident the band would again get 40,000 fans into the house, but explained that it wouldn't be possible to get any more.
"We can't sell any more than 40,000 because that's the capacity of the Taipei Athletic Stadium," she said. "But I'm sure we'll sell out."
She suggested that anyone trying to get a ticket at the door arrive as early as possible. Alternatively, tickets are still being sold at the National Concert Hall (兩廳院), the only outlet which hasn't sold out. Nosebleed seats cost NT$500 and sitting front-row-center will set you back NT$1,500.
Performance notes:
What: Mayday concert
Where: The Taipei Athletic Stadium (
When: Tomorrow night, 7:30pm
Tickets: NT$500 to NT$1,500, at the door or at National Concert Hall (兩廳院)
Towering high above Taiwan’s capital city at 508 meters, Taipei 101 dominates the skyline. The earthquake-proof skyscraper of steel and glass has captured the imagination of professional rock climber Alex Honnold for more than a decade. Tomorrow morning, he will climb it in his signature free solo style — without ropes or protective equipment. And Netflix will broadcast it — live. The event’s announcement has drawn both excitement and trepidation, as well as some concerns over the ethical implications of attempting such a high-risk endeavor on live broadcast. Many have questioned Honnold’s desire to continues his free-solo climbs now that he’s a
As Taiwan’s second most populous city, Taichung looms large in the electoral map. Taiwanese political commentators describe it — along with neighboring Changhua County — as Taiwan’s “swing states” (搖擺州), which is a curious direct borrowing from American election terminology. In the early post-Martial Law era, Taichung was referred to as a “desert of democracy” because while the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was winning elections in the north and south, Taichung remained staunchly loyal to the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). That changed over time, but in both Changhua and Taichung, the DPP still suffers from a “one-term curse,” with the
Jan. 26 to Feb. 1 Nearly 90 years after it was last recorded, the Basay language was taught in a classroom for the first time in September last year. Over the following three months, students learned its sounds along with the customs and folktales of the Ketagalan people, who once spoke it across northern Taiwan. Although each Ketagalan settlement had its own language, Basay functioned as a common trade language. By the late 19th century, it had largely fallen out of daily use as speakers shifted to Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese), surviving only in fragments remembered by the elderly. In
Lines between cop and criminal get murky in Joe Carnahan’s The Rip, a crime thriller set across one foggy Miami night, starring Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. Damon and Affleck, of course, are so closely associated with Boston — most recently they produced the 2024 heist movie The Instigators there — that a detour to South Florida puts them, a little awkwardly, in an entirely different movie landscape. This is Miami Vice territory or Elmore Leonard Land, not Southie or The Town. In The Rip, they play Miami narcotics officers who come upon a cartel stash house that Lt. Dane Dumars (Damon)
RSS