For indie-music fans, the usual bands will be playing at this weekend’s Megaport Music Festival 2010 (大港開唱), but in a not-so-usual locale.
The festival, which started last weekend and was organized by Taipei venue The Wall (這牆), takes place at Kaohsiung’s Pier 2 Art District (高雄駁二藝術特區), an area of Kaohsiung Port that has been converted into a public space with three outdoor stages.
Concertgoers get to enjoy harbor-side sea breezes while watching performances by more than 40 acts, including beloved folk-rock artist Deserts Chang
(張懸) and garage rockers The White Eyes (白目樂團). Megaport’s main stage located in a former warehouse will host performances by American group The Secret Machines and pop sensation Sodagreen (蘇打綠).
The festival is a homecoming for musicians in groups like LTK Commune (濁水溪公社), The Peppermints (薄荷葉), Aphasia (阿飛西雅) and The Hindsight (光景消逝), bands that are based in Taipei, but all of which have members who grew up in Kaohsiung.
“Many of these bands feel a strong connection to their hometown,” said The Wall’s Orbis Fu (傅鉛文), who is overseeing the festival. “For everyone involved, this is something that they’ve always wanted to do.”
Fu, who grew up in southern Taiwan but now lives in Taipei, hopes Megaport will provide a boost to the indie-music scene outside of the capital. “The music coming out of Tainan, Kaohsiung and Taichung — this kind of diversity is really important for [Taiwan’s overall] indie-music scene,” he said. “A lot of bands from the south think: ‘We’re from the south, no one knows about us.’ I think this is wrong.”
A few hometown favorites feature prominently at Megaport. Grunge band koOk and pop-punks FireEx (滅火器) played headlining shows last weekend. Indie-rock outfit Orange Doll (橘娃娃) and ska group Shy Kick Apple (害羞踢蘋果) appear this Sunday.
Fu, who also works as FireEx’s promoter and manager (the group is signed to The Wall’s affiliated label, Uloud Music), said the Kaohsiung band’s growing success offers an encouraging example for local musicians.
“Bands like them will have an effect on other Kaohsiung bands, who will think ‘Yes, I have a chance to make it big. We can be like them, we can be more successful, we can gain the acceptance of a larger audience,” he said.
In addition to Megaport, The Wall has been active in the city for the past year, using the Pier 2 space to hold concerts by bands with widespread followings such as 1976 and Tizzy Bac.
Several notable international acts are also part of this weekend’s lineup: The Secret Machines is a trio that combines electronica with 1970s rock guitar riffs and Led Zeppelin-esque drum beats, and Rebuilding the Rights of Statues (重塑雕像的權利) is a Beijing-based indie-electronica band that gained international attention after an appearance at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. The group also caught the ear of renowned electronic musician and composer Brian Eno, who contributed keyboard tracks on the band’s debut EP Cut Off!.
With three other stages, dubbed Star, Dawn and Aurora, Megaport brings to mind another festival organized by The Wall, Taipei’s now defunct Formoz Rock Festival, Taiwan’s equivalent of Japan’s Fuji Rock.
But where Formoz drew in crowds of young revelers and die-hard rock fans, Megaport has attracted “lots of students and even families,” said Spykee Fat, a DJ in the underground scene who is working for The Wall as the festival’s promoter. “[The bands] really like this place because it’s very close to the port and it’s close to Kaohsiung City.”
Located just five minutes from Kaohsiung MRT’s Yanchengpu Station (鹽埕埔站,O2站), Pier 2’s easy access and harbor setting adds to the festival’s appeal, said Fu. “You can walk around the city ... and then go see a show. It’s very relaxing.”
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