For decades, scientists have struggled to reconcile the seemingly contradictory theories of relativity, which explains the behavior of planets and stars, with quantum mechanics, which explains how subatomic particles work.
Rocketgrrl is past all that and has already entered the eleventh dimension.
The expat band is a jam-rock explosion that mixes punk with psychedlia, noise and science fiction. Their sessions are like Homeric poems about an intergalactic battle between the forces of love and the minions of darkness. Think futuristic lyrics penned by J.R.R. Tolkein and performed by the Butthole Surfers, but with more distortion, and you get an idea of what Rocketgrrl is trying to do.
PHOTO COURTESY OF ROCKETGRRL
"It's kind of like a science-fiction epic adventure," said Rocketgrrl's drummer, an American who calls himself Darin the Barbarian or Rock Starkey. "We play in the key of loud — really loud, really hard improvised rock 'n' roll that has jazz elements but not jazz chords. It swings, but with a rockabilly swing."
The story of Rocketgrrl is the standard one for almost any expat band: Darin was running around Spring Scream several years ago trailing a long cape and talking about starting a band. There, he ran into singer Leon La Pointe and guitarist Anthony Roberts, aka Red. The next morning they were on stage and Rocketgrrl was born.
Their sci-fi back story was born in the back of a van, outside the now-defunct 616 art collective in Taichung, where Darin and Leon woke up with hangovers and started singing, "Government Organized Sleep Foundation!"
According to Rocketgrrl's mythology, the Evil Lord Xanadar's Government Organized Sleep Foundation sends out sleep rays that pull gravity out of the known universe, with its three dimensions of space and one of time, thus preventing humans from accessing the other seven dimensions, which we cannot experience but which are said to exist according to a version of string theory, a model of physics that reconciles quantum mechanics and relativity. (If this sounds confusing, Darin says to think of it as analogous to how global capitalists and politicians like US President George Bush and US Vice President Dick Cheney cause suffering by controlling an unfair share of the world's resources.)
"Basically, the idea is to play hard enough to merge gravity and time so that the eleventh dimension is achieved," Darin writes on his Myspace blog. (www.myspace.com/darinthebarbarian).
Rocketgrrl now performs with a stunt drummer, two dancers and bassist Erin King. Everyone wears a cape and a mask, which they change depending on the characters they're representing. Red wields a stratocaster connected to a Bigg Muff, a Russian-designed distortion box, and Leon uses a zoom box or a digital delay box to alter his voice. They have released one album, 2005's Riders of the Tenth Planet, and are about to embark on a multi-city tour of Taiwan this month before ending up at Spring Scream in April.
To listen to Rocketgrrl's music or contact the band to purchase an album, visit www.myspace.com/poohat
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist