Consider the Meek frontman Kevin Lee said he would announce a second Antipop! tour sometime this week if the first one, three punk rock shows held in Taipei and Taichung over the weekend, was a success. He didn't have to wait that long. Before seeing what kind of crowd last night's concert at Groovecity in Taichung would draw, he had already committed to organizing a second round. "We got great feedback [from Friday and Saturday's shows]. Everybody was really happy and wondering when our next show would be," Lee said yesterday evening in a phone interview before the doors opened at Groovecity. "Because of the buzz it created, we don't want to wait too long. We're hoping to get something organized in six or seven weeks."
Lee and bandmates Greg Russell and Sharm Rowland organized the Antipop! tour, which visited Taipei for two shows Friday and Saturday at the APA Lounge 808 in Ximending before heading to Taichung for a final show last night, to foster more interaction between Taiwanese and other Asian bands and help jump-start a more vibrant underground music scene here. In addition to their band, the lineup included The Hindsight (光景消逝), Rabbit Is Rich (兔子很有錢) and Faded Moment from Taiwan, and all-girl Japanese punk band Akiakane.
Judging from Saturday night's show - it packed more than 60 people into a space designed to hold 50 and somehow still had room left over for a decent-sized mosh pit - the market is ready. Tickets sold out, and overall attendance for both of the Taipei shows was "just over 100," Lee said, which meant that the most important goal - paying for Akiakane's airplane tickets and hotel rooms - was reached when the tour was only two–thirds of the way through.
PHOTO: STEVE LEGGAT
On Saturday, Lounge 808 was nearly full by the time Rabbit Is Rich - a relative newcomer to the Taipei pub scene with a sound that's reminiscent of the White Stripes, if the White Stripes sung in Mandarin and had a female vocalist - took the stage for a surprisingly tight set. The moshing then began in earnest when hardcore activists Consider the Meek followed with a politically charged performance featuring songs that had the crowd chanting "Fuck Bush!" and "[China] don't threaten Taiwan!" Akiakane finished things off with the night's most impressively loud display, a long set that had the crowd jumping up and down and slipping across the beer-soaked floor. "Akiakane said they were surprised," Lee said. "They didn't expect to have such a big response from the crowd. They always thought of Taiwanese crowds as being shy."
Jarrod McClay, who arrived in time to see the last two bands, was also impressed. "It was a good amount of people for the space," he said. "The crowd was super-friendly; everyone was talking outside." "Ridiculously cheap booze - that was fantastic," he added.
Antipop! felt like a real punk concert. It was loud, hot, the lighting was superb, and the audience was as enthusiastic as the artists. Consider the Meek set out to create the kind of buzz they experienced when they toured Japan earlier this year. And they succeeded.
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
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
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
Peter Brighton was amazed when he found the giant jackfruit. He had been watching it grow on his farm in far north Queensland, and when it came time to pick it from the tree, it was so heavy it needed two people to do the job. “I was surprised when we cut it off and felt how heavy it was,” he says. “I grabbed it and my wife cut it — couldn’t do it by myself, it took two of us.” Weighing in at 45 kilograms, it is the heaviest jackfruit that Brighton has ever grown on his tropical fruit farm, located