Britpop icons Jarvis Cocker and Brett Anderson headline the 2008 Urban Simple Life (簡單生活節) festival, a combination outdoor concert/street fair that takes place this weekend at Taipei’s Huashan Culture Park (華山文化園區).
On the musical side, Simple Life features popular local acts including 1976, Sodagreen (蘇打綠), Chang Chen-yue (張震嶽) and Free 9, Tizzy Bac, and Lin Sheng-xiang (林生祥), as well as guitar-playing and composition competitions. Street fair-style attractions include a “street market” for vendors selling original designs and handicrafts, a T-shirt market and a market for organic products.
Ex-Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker, who released a critically acclaimed solo album in 2006 and is fresh off the heels of his UK tour in support of the 30th anniversary of Rough Trade Records, is one of this year’s main attractions and performs on the festival’s Sky Stage (天空舞台) at 7pm tomorrow.
Brett Anderson, formerly lead singer for the quintessentially English alternative rock band Suede, caps the weekend’s festivities when he plays the Sky Stage on Sunday at 7pm, followed by local favorites and Golden Melody Award-winning folk-rock band Sodagreen at 8:50pm.
This is the second installation of Simple Life. The first iteration happened in 2006 and was headlined by Canadian soft rocker Daniel Powter, Angie Hart, formerly of Australian group Frente, and Wu Bai (伍佰) and China Blue.
Simple Life is organized by Neutron Innovation (中子創新), the group that runs the www.streetvoice.com Web site and organizes the TK Rock (台客搖滾嘉年華) festival.
TK Rock took the idea of taike (台客) — originally an ethnic slur used by Mainlanders to denigrate native-born Taiwanese — and ignited a national trend in the form of music by artists such as MC Hot Dog’s I Love TW Girls (我愛台妹) and gloriously tacky fashions that riffed on Taiwanese night-market styles.
What: 2008 Urban Simple Life (簡單生活節)
When: Tomorrow and Sunday from noon to 10pm
Where: Huashan Culture Park (華山文化園區), 1, Bade Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市八德路一段1號). Call 0800-612-168 for more information
Tickets: NT$1,500 a two-day pass or NT$900 for a one-day pass when purchased in advance online at tickets.books.com.tw or at 7-Eleven stores; NT$1,200 for one-day passes purchased the day of the show
On the Net: simplelife.tw.streetvoice.com
Simple Life aims to achieve something similar by packaging aspects of Taipei street culture, including its indie-rock scene, the growing number of outdoor markets such as Campo Life Art Carnival (CAMPO生活藝術狂歡節) and small shops run by young businesspeople in areas such as Yongkang Street (永康街).
Only this time the nascent trend’s target market isn’t just Taiwan, it’s China.
In an interview earlier this year, Neutron Innovation’s Landy Chang (張培仁), formerly an executive at Magic Stone and Rock Records, elaborated on the concept: “I figured out during the last 20 years when we were selling records” by Taiwanese musicians to the Chinese market that “we maybe sold, if you include pirated albums, one billion copies. This is one billion copies.”
“I don’t think [Taiwanese record labels] are selling CDs or songs or singers [in China],” he continued. “We are selling only one thing — that is Taiwan’s better lifestyle.”
For Chang the music that best embodies the attractive aspects of the Taipei way of life is not bawdy, raucous taike-style hip-hop and rock, but the acoustic, reflective “urban folk” sounds of artists such as Deserts Chang (張懸) and Sodagreen, which provide solace from the confusion and hectic pace of life in Asia’s crowded urban centers.
“If you have a certain lifestyle you have a philosophy,” Chang said. “You have your sense of beauty, your unique art sense, your unique style — that will make a trend.
“If people buy it it’s not only to buy a song; they’re buying a better lifestyle,” he said.
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