Once strictly a one-day head-banging hard-rock affair, the Formoz Festival (野台開唱) has, over the past 13 years, morphed into a three-day musical mishmash featuring an eclectic assortment of sounds from both home and abroad.
Organized by TRA Music with additional assistance from corporate and individual sponsors, this year's festival will again be held at the Yuanshan Children's Recreational Center (台北市兒童育樂中心) in Taipei.
In keeping with tradition, Formoz Festival 2006 has a bit of everything for everyone.
PHOTOS COURTESY OF TRA MUSIC
Over 300 local bands applied to play at the festival and more than 100 others from Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and the US sent in demo tapes. Of these, TRA chose what they considered to be the best 100 acts.
This year's leading international performers include post-alternative band the Super Furry Animals and mod-punk combo Dirty Pretty Things, both from the UK, and Japan's ska-punk outfit Kemuri and pop-rock sensation Nanaseaikawa.
On the home front, Formoz features some great local sounds from one-time pop singer turned electronica-giant Lim Kiong (林強), retro-jangle-pop act Won Fu (旺福), downbeat trio Tizzy Bac, nu-metal combo Monkey Insane (潑猴), nakashi-punk five-piece LTK (濁水溪公社) and alternative Aboriginal rock from Totem (圖騰).
And of course, there's also a whole heap of sounds from lesser-known Taiwanese acts and several bands from Japan who enjoy what can politely be described as “a minor following” in Taiwan. These include Japanese heavy-metal groups Outrage and King's Evil.
Although some of the local bands performing this year have already appeared at other summer festivals, TRA Music has set out to ensure that the bands don't play the same material in the same format at Formoz.
And some of these bands will be sounding very different indeed. Tizzy Bac will be performing live with most of a classical orchestra, Back Quarter (四分衛) will be backed up by a brass section and Chthonic (閃靈樂團) will be throwing in a few curveballs and performing some uncharacteristic cover tunes.
However, some bands, including boring faux-Brit pop act 1976, have managed to slip through the net and will, no doubt, be playing the same old songs, again.
According to TRA founder and Golden Melody Award winner Freddy Lin (林旭佐) this is the last year this will happen. Next year he intends to ensure the lineup is fresh by only signing local acts who don't perform at any of the other summer music festivals.
“We didn't want to book quite a few local bands because they play all the time at free festivals. The only people who go to see them all the time are their friends,” Lin said. “So by not booking them we're certainly not going to lose any money. I figure more people will pay to see bands they haven't seen in a long time rather than ones they can see every week.”
Last year's event — which featured performances by electonica/rock superstar Moby — was attended by over 35,000 people. While TRA is for all intents and purposes adhering to the same tried-and-tested format — five stages offering different types of music and plenty of stalls selling everything from CDs to Mexican chow — it has made a few minor alterations.
Lin reckons the changes will make this year's event better and far more user-friendly. The music may have been faultless in 2005, but the purchasing of food, drinks and paraphernalia left hundreds of festival-goers unimpressed.
“It was a bit of a mess. The stalls were all over the place ... We got complaints about it,” Lin said. “We've reorganized them and it will now be easier to get drinks, food or information about the bands and so on without being pushed all over the place.”
According to Lin, stalls have been organized by category. Food and beverage stands will be grouped together in the “Imperial Kitchen” area. Record company and merchandise stalls will be elsewhere, as will stalls run by local non-governmental organizations.
“Obviously the festival is a great opportunity for civil action groups to stoke interest in their causes, but not many people paid them much attention because they were next to Taiwan Beer's stall last year,” Lin said. “We've created a special place for the NGOs called ‘Social Action Village' that we hope will make them more approachable.”
Along with the stall reorganization, TRA has also chosen to showcase two very different types of performance on the Fire and Wood stages.
The new-look Fire Stage will be home to an offbeat KTV. As a result of a large number of complaints about the lack of alternative music at KTVs, TRA decided to set up their own giant sing-along stage. Fans of non-mainstream KTV will be able to croon to the likes of black metal act Chthonic and post-rock trio Peppermint (薄荷葉).
The Wood Stage will feature an assortment of unplugged material and talk-show-like interviews featuring well-known personalities such as Sandee Chen (陳珊妮) and lesser-known acts like Vista.
Organizers have already sold in excess of 10,000 tickets and, based on these sales alone, expect this year's Formoz festival to prove equally, if not more popular than previous ones. When TRA offered a limited number of three-day passes at the cut rate of NT$300, the ticket agency was mobbed hours before the tickets went on sale.
“People began lining up outside [the ticket booth] at nine in the morning. We opened at three in the afternoon and had sold out of the special tickets within an hour,” Lin said.
It is now too late to purchase advance tickets, but those wanting to attend all three days can still buy weekend passes at the gate for NT$1,800. Single-day tickets cost NT$1,000.
In order to stamp out gatecrashers, festival-goers will have to show some form of identification when purchasing tickets. IDs will be checked at the gates to ensure that ticket-bearers are who they say they
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