Spring Scream starts today in an annual rite of passage for Taiwan's independent music scene that brings thousands of artists and revelers to Kenting (墾丁) for a weekend-long series of outdoor concerts.
The festival started as a small party on the beach organized by foreign residents Jimi Moe and Wade Davis 14 years ago and has evolved into Taiwan's premier showcase for independent music. Last year's event drew daily crowds numbering between 7,000 and 10,000 people, Moe said.
Officially titled Double Rat 2008 Spring Scream (2008正宗春天吶喊音樂藝術祭), this year's fest is being held on nine stages at Oluanbi Lighthouse National Park (鵝鑾鼻燈塔公園), which lies on the southern tip of Taiwan. Roughly 250 bands are scheduled to perform over the three-day event.
Headliners include singer Faith Yang (楊乃文), versatile alt-rock band Back Quarter (四分衛), Brit-rockers 1976 and veteran punk/post-rock five-piece The Chairman (董事長). Among the less well-known local artists worth checking out: acoustic act Passiwali (巴西瓦里), Tainan punks Divebomb, Hakka hip-hop crew Kou Chou Ching (拷秋勤) and Taitung reggae group Red I and the Riddim Outlawz.
The overall quality of the international bands booked for this year's festival does not match the standard established in previous years. But the foreign lineup does include several promising acts, including New York's Dynamite Club, Japanese bands Aonami and Abnormal Voltage, French act Vialka, and Born to Hula and Soler from Hong Kong.
"The stages look amazing, and it's gonna be a fun year," Moe said. "There's good music all day long - that's one key difference compared to last year. It's not like before where the great bands tended to be at night."
As usual, a clutch of raves, dance parties and concerts are being held simultaneous to Spring Scream in the Kenting area. (See Page 14 and Page 15 for more details.) In total, the festivities are expected to draw 150,000 revelers to the Kenting area this weekend, according to Pingtung County's Cultural Affairs Bureau.
Kenting residents, visitors and the national media refer to all of the above events collectively as Spring Scream, or Chun Tian Na Han (春天吶喊), but in recent years Davis and Moe have been issuing statements and holding press conferences to emphasize the differences between their festival and the other events.
Spring Scream organizers are keen to disassociate their festival from the raves that attract media coverage of hedonistic behavior and police drug busts. Last year, some 120 people were arrested in the Kenting area during the festival weekend on drug-related charges, according to the Pingtung Police Department.
"Spring Scream has never had a drug problem," a spokeswoman for Spring Scream said on Tuesday in an e-mailed statement. Elaborating in a phone interview, Moe said: "We want people to be able to separate Spring Scream from everything else. This would allow people with families and kids to know that they're safe or protected if they go to the official Spring Scream."
Double Rat 2008 Spring Scream has experienced a couple of teething problems unique to this year. In February, the Pingtung County government announced that several "Spring Scream" concerts would be held at the Hengchun Airport, leading to erroneous media reports that Spring Scream had changed its name. (See this week's Vinyl Word for more information on the gigs at Hengchun Airport.)
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