Then, earlier this week, roughly one-third of the Taiwan-based expat bands selected to play the real Spring Scream learned that their applications for performance visas had been rejected by the government.
To obtain a temporary performance visa from the Taiwanese government, musicians must submit a promotional kit, music samples and other details in a process similar to applications to international festivals like South by Southwest in the US or Japan's Fuji Rock. The restrictions were designed to protect Taiwanese artists from competitors such as the Filipino cover bands that were once much more prevalent in the country.
Moe said this was the first time Spring Scream required local expat bands to apply for performance visas and that the vacancies in the schedule would be filled. "Everything we are being asked to do [by the government] we are doing," he said.
Such measures help Spring Scream maintain good relations with local authorities. Unlike the Ho-Hai-Yan rock festival (海洋音樂祭), which the Taipei County government appropriated from its founders two years ago and handed to a television station to organize, Davis and Moe have never lost control of Spring Scream.
But the extra precautions will not preempt the kind of sensational coverage of music festivals by the national media that has by now become a kind of Kabuki theater.
Moe said he has already seen a television report on new hidden cameras undercover police will be using this year to film suspected drug users.
"They showed the DJs [from the raves], they showed everything else, but they didn't show any of our stages," he said. "That was two minutes of prime time news with our [the Spring Scream] name on it."
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