“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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