The man who defines himself as the Hi-fi Hobo is taking his guitar and a rented scooter back onto the highways of Taiwan for a nationwide tour over the next six weeks. Scott Cook, Canada’s prairie balladeer, will be playing a series of more than 15 shows which began last night at Sappho de Base with special guest David Vorster.
His road trip will take him around the east coast, first stopping in Hualien for a couple of shows with Mister Green, winding down to Kenting for Spring Scream, and coming back up the west coast with shows in Kaohsiung, Tainan, Changhua, Taichung and Taipei.
He’ll be reuniting with his former band The Anglers for the latter leg of his tour from April 30, ending up at Roxy Roots on May 7 for a last big show, and at Alleycat’s Pizza in Tianmu on May 8 for a final small show (free of charge).
Well-crafted acoustic roots music and honest lyrics enrich Cook’s songs, which tell a rambling rendition of life on the road, love lost and found, and strange characters met and befriended. His solo debut Long Way to Wander — which made the folk and roots Top 10 on Canadian college radio — was recorded in Taiwan in 2007, where he lived for six years. He has toured extensively since then, most recently to promote his second album This One’s on the House.
Cook’s humble charm and growling, intimate voice have been known to make girls get dreamy-eyed, dancing the night away at his live shows. Reviews of his music frequently refer to campfires and creeks, and he’s a local legend in the live music scene in western Canada. He played 137 shows and 13 summer festivals last year alone across North America.
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