Anyone who is surprised by how geeky indie icon Crowd Lu (盧廣仲) achieved his meteoric rise to stardom need look no further than his gig on Feb. 28 at Riverside Live House (河岸留言西門紅樓展演館) for the answer.
In addition to being a superb musician who composes all his own material, Lu is a consummate entertainer. The concert was an evening of laughter and surprises.
Lu spent the first half of the performance delivering signature hits from his two studio albums, 100 Kinds of Life (100種生活) and 7 Days (七天).
The 24-year-old enjoyed a solid rapport with his fans, who were eager to chime in during the choruses.
He mimicked the sound of a mosquito, cracked jokes and played a Japanese flute.
For the second part of the concert he performed cover songs.
“I always liked female singers’ songs more when I was growing up. I guess it’s because I am more feminine,” he said.
He then went on to deliver a surprisingly poignant rendition of singer/songwriter Shunza’s (順子) I’m Sorry. For someone with such a clownish exterior,
he delivered the ballad with heartfelt emotion and
vocal precision.
Lu single-handedly performed a riotous rendition of the Hoklo (otherwise known as Taiwanese) duet Lingering Old Love (舊情也綿綿), in which he sang both the male and female parts.
Further comic gambits included his tongue-in-cheek rendition of Christina Aguilera’s Pero Me Acuerdo de Ti (But I Remember You) and a satirical interpretation of Aqua’s Barbie Girl.
The climax came when Lu invited
Hsiao Wan (小玩), his high school pal and lyricist partner, on stage to sing a ballad they co-wrote in tribute to two girls they pine for.
Hsiao Wan said that the girl he wrote the song for was in the audience. “I know she probably isn’t into me. But if you like someone, you should just tell her because it’s the rock ’n’ roll style, man.”
However, the evening felt curiously devoid of emotional resonance by the end. Lu had relied too much on his comic ingenuity rather than music to connect with the audience. The most moving number was his cover of Karen Mok’s (莫文蔚) Oh Lonely Lovers (寂寞的戀人阿), which he sang as the concert’s finale.
For a singer/songwriter who is acclaimed for his songs about everyday subjects, such as Good Morning, Morning Beauty (早安晨之美) and Happy Restaurant (開心餐廳), Lu resorts to covers of other singers’ famed numbers to get the crowd going. A gifted musician and performer, Lu’s next challenge lies in how to write songs that go beyond his Average Joe repertoire.
ON THE NET: www.facebook.com/pages/
lu-guang-zhong/25444417410
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
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest. Leaf through the pages and you’ll find them suffuse with the purple prose best associated with travel literature: “When the sun is low on a warm, clear morning, and with the heat already rising, we stand at the riverside bike path leading south from Sanxia’s old cobble streets.” Hardly the stuff of your
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