The atmosphere and weather conditions that greeted music fans at this year's Formoz Festival (
And hot it was, both on and off stage, but the humidity certainly didn't deter the roughly 10,000 festival-goers who turned up on the opening night from enjoying the fantastic line-up of bands at the Yuanshan Children's Recreational Center (
Although the increase of the ticket price to NT$1,500 and the close monitoring of ticket sales had raised some questions regarding the success of the festival, organizers needn't have worried. Actual attendance figures have yet to be calculated, but it's safe to say that Formoz 2005 proved to be both the best organized and most attended in the festival's 11-year history.
PHOTO: TAI HSIANG, TAIPEI TIMES
With hundreds of people still patiently standing in line at the venue's entrances for tickets and wrist bands at 5:30pm on Friday evening, large crowds had already begun to gather at all of the festivals six stages in order to catch the opening acts.
The focus of attention for large numbers of festival-goers on the opening night, however, were the Wind and Wood stages, where some of the big-name bands were slated to perform.
On the Wind stage Taiwan's FOTC (
PHOTO: TAI DA-HSIANG, TAIPEI TIMES
Taking to the stage after a lengthy delay due to sound-check problems, Kemuri wasted no time in rousing the crowd. Thanks to the band's energetic lead singer Fumio Ito, the combo had the audience eating out of its hand by the second number. His jokes regarding the audience being "too tired to dance" were not taken lightly by the predominantly late-teens/early-twenties crowd and the band's brass section infused Fishbone-like salvo of ska-punk had incited the first mosh pit of Formoz 2005 long before the sun had set.
Following Kemuri's blistering set, the action and attention moved to the Wood stage, where local expat punk combo, The Deported wowed the crowd with its Dead Kennedy's/Discharge-like barrage of noise.
Their performance might not have been to everyone's liking and the lyrics of the band's politico-punk songs might have been lost on large numbers of the audience, but one overly exuberant member of the audience was so taken by the set that he leapt on stage, removed his pants and began simulating sex with an equally boisterous male friend.
PHOTO: AP
Local psychobilly combo Chicken Rice (
It was Moby, however, that a majority of people had come to see on Friday and he didn't disappoint. Organizers still don't known the exact number of people who came solely to see Moby, but, according to head of Taiwan Rock Alliance (TRA) Freddy Lin (
In a pulsating non-stop 90-minute set Moby performed a wide range of tunes from his latest release Hotel, several older more dance-oriented tunes as well as two fantastic cover versions of AC/DC's You Shook Me All Night Long and Billy Idol's Rebel Yell.
PHOTO: AP
Saturday got off to a slower and less frenzied start, with crowds gradually filtering into the venue from about
4:30pm. The first crowd puller of the second day was local rock combo, Back Quarter (四分衛).
The long-serving yet sadly often overlooked and underestimated four-piece might not have managed to get the crowd as enthused as several of the other acts that performed on the Wind stage over the weekend, but the group pulled off a tight set which included a good selection of material from its upcoming album as well as plenty of favorites from previous releases.
PHOTO: TAI HSIANG, TAIPEI TIMES
The highlight of Saturday night's performances was Japanese pop act Kishidan. Even before the comedic six-piece power-pop combo appeared the atmosphere in front of the Wind stage was charged with emotion. Young teenage girls sporting Kishidan patches and waving their arms wildly in the air rubbed shoulders with twenty-something beer-swilling males in eager anticipation of what was to come.
Always a crowd-pleaser when it performs in Taiwan, Kishidan's performance at Formoz 2005 was memorable. Littered with camp and comedic dance routines and blistering guitar hooks and riffs, the J-rock combo's performance had the audience hooked from the get-go. Even though the band's translator was temporarily missing in action and lost amid the crowds, the between-song, Japanese-language banter still had the audience transfixed, regardless of whether they understood a word of it or not.
As Sunday's performances began the crowds at Formoz hadn't dwindled, but the numerous Taiwan Beer sales girls were having more difficulty in persuading festival-goers to purchase beer than on Friday and Saturday nights. With the three-day festival drawing to a close, as of press time revelers were eagerly anticipating performances by mainstream rocker Lisa Loeb and local anarchists LTK (
PHOTO: CHEN JUNG-LIANG, TAIPEI TIMES
Although police presence at the festival was greater then in previous years, according to organizers, no arrests were made for either violent or drug-related offenses. From an audience perspective the festival went forward without any problems. The flow of people between the six stages that were located around the park was surprisingly smooth. Ambulance crews were on standby over the weekend, but no injuries were reported at Formoz 2005.
With the events of this weekend still fresh in the minds of the thousands who attended Formoz 2005 and cleaners still removing litter from the venue, organizers have already begun making plans for next year. According to TRA, Formoz 2006 will be bigger and better than this year and boast more stages, more international acts and an even greater variety of music.
“Why does Taiwan identity decline?”a group of researchers lead by University of Nevada political scientist Austin Wang (王宏恩) asked in a recent paper. After all, it is not difficult to explain the rise in Taiwanese identity after the early 1990s. But no model predicted its decline during the 2016-2018 period, they say. After testing various alternative explanations, Wang et al argue that the fall-off in Taiwanese identity during that period is related to voter hedging based on the performance of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Since the DPP is perceived as the guardian of Taiwan identity, when it performs well,
The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on May 18 held a rally in Taichung to mark the anniversary of President William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20. The title of the rally could be loosely translated to “May 18 recall fraudulent goods” (518退貨ㄌㄨㄚˋ!). Unlike in English, where the terms are the same, “recall” (退貨) in this context refers to product recalls due to damaged, defective or fraudulent merchandise, not the political recalls (罷免) currently dominating the headlines. I attended the rally to determine if the impression was correct that the TPP under party Chairman Huang Kuo-Chang (黃國昌) had little of a
At Computex 2025, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) urged the government to subsidize AI. “All schools in Taiwan must integrate AI into their curricula,” he declared. A few months earlier, he said, “If I were a student today, I’d immediately start using tools like ChatGPT, Gemini Pro and Grok to learn, write and accelerate my thinking.” Huang sees the AI-bullet train leaving the station. And as one of its drivers, he’s worried about youth not getting on board — bad for their careers, and bad for his workforce. As a semiconductor supply-chain powerhouse and AI hub wannabe, Taiwan is seeing
Jade Mountain (玉山) — Taiwan’s highest peak — is the ultimate goal for those attempting a through-hike of the Mountains to Sea National Greenway (山海圳國家綠道), and that’s precisely where we’re headed in this final installment of a quartet of articles covering the Greenway. Picking up the trail at the Tsou tribal villages of Dabang and Tefuye, it’s worth stocking up on provisions before setting off, since — aside from the scant offerings available on the mountain’s Dongpu Lodge (東埔山莊) and Paiyun Lodge’s (排雲山莊) meal service — there’s nowhere to get food from here on out. TEFUYE HISTORIC TRAIL The journey recommences with