Cui Jian (崔健) rocked Taipei on Friday night with a blistering two-hour concert in his second appearance in Taiwan since headlining the Ho-Hai-Yan Rock Festival in 2007. Donning his signature tattered white cap with a red star emblazoned on front, China’s “godfather of rock” provided a fitting inauguration for the city’s newest concert venue, Legacy Taipei (傳音樂展演空間), which holds around 1,000 persons and was nearly at full capacity.
It’s easy to see why Cui often draws comparisons to Western rock icons like Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Kurt Cobain. His music is clearly inspired by an indignant spirit, sense of urgency and subversive energy. But he and his six-piece band have also crafted a unique sound with an impressive rock vocabulary that covers everything from hip-hop and electronic pop to reggae and ska.
Cui put on a solid concert that was engaging from start to finish. The band began with Balls Under the Red Flag (紅旗下的蛋), the title track from Cui’s 1994 album, which had an alluring, funky junkyard groove. A ska-infused song followed, setting the tone for the evening with anthemic choruses and driving grooves.
Audience members started singing along early in the evening as the band played Nothing to My Name (一無所有), one of Cui’s concert staples and a breakthrough hit that became an anthem during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.
During a press conference earlier in the day, Cui mentioned the Beastie Boys and Public Enemy when pressed to name other bands he admired. Those influences were heard in the evening’s set. The band played newer songs like Get Over That Day (超越那一天) and Blue Bone (藍色骨頭), which featured some smooth rapping by one of the band’s two drummers, Bei Bei (貝貝).
For the final song, a funky jazz number, Cui invited his “Taiwanese sisters” to come on stage and dance. It went over well with the crowd, but looked slightly awkward when Cui’s stage crew shooed the 14 or so women off the stage just before the song ended, as if to say the party was over.
The band was thoroughly professional and displayed first-class musicianship. The distinctive sound of Cui’s recordings translates well live, thanks to veteran members Liu Yuan (劉元), who played the baritone saxophone and Chinese flutes, and guitarist Eddie Luc Lalasoa, a Madagascar native that has played with Cui since the beginning of his career.
Throughout the night, Cui kept his stage banter to a minimum, sometimes briefly introducing songs in his thick Beijing accent and gruff, raspy voice.
The concert went without a break and the band returned for two encores. Audience members sang along and swayed to the final song, the sweet rock ballad Girl in the Greenhouse (花房姑娘). Between encores, Cui told the audience, “I will definitely
be back.”
The boys of the Horse Dance Company (驫舞劇場) have grown up. The six men delivered a finely nuanced and polished performance of Growing Up (正在長高) at Taipei National University of the Arts’ Experimental Theater in Guandu on Saturday afternoon.
Taking over a space twice as large as they usually use, they more than amply filled the room, both in stage utilization and with the audience. Removing a couple of rows of seats, they created a long stage that extended from the back of the theater right up to the railings of the second tiers. The walls were left exposed so you could see all the rigging and the large metal door that leads to the set-building room behind the theater. The floor was covered with white mylar flooring and the only “set” was an archipelago of small crescent-shaped islands of dirt.
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