Twinkle, twinkle, bigger stars

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The summer rock season in East Asia has arrived, with a handful of big-name artists rolling into Taiwan this week.

Massive Attack and Pet Shop Boys are the headliners at the TWinkle Rock Festival (有象音樂祭), a four-day concert series that begins tomorrow night at Legacy Taipei with psychedelic Brit-pop band Kula Shaker. Appearing on Friday is former Stone Roses front man Ian Brown.

TWinkle, so named by organizers as a reference to both the common abbreviation for Taiwan (TW) and the star power of its lineup, is the latest attempt to establish an annual concert mecca for the nation’s music lovers.

Since the demise of the Formoz Festival (野台開唱) in 2008, Taiwan has lacked a steady festival to take advantage of the proximity of major Western artists traveling to Japan for Fuji Rock and Summer Sonic. Last year’s Music Terminals, which played host to trip-hop legend Tricky and UK glam-rockers Placebo among other indie artists from the US, Australia and the UK, is not being held this year.

One difficulty often cited by promoters and organizers in putting on a festival is the cost involved — they say the market for large-scale rock events in Taiwan has not yet matured. Formoz, which over the years has hosted a variety of crowd-drawing artists such as Megadeth, Yo La Tengo and Moby, had struggled with complaints about the ticket prices, which were NT$1,600 per day in its final year.

TWinkle’s promoter, Very Aspect Culture Group (有象文化), acknowledges the challenge of filling seats, and has taken a different approach by hosting large-scale concerts with fewer artists.

Tickets won’t be any cheaper, though. Massive Attack and Pet Shop Boys’ concerts each cost NT$2,000 for the lowest-priced seating areas and up to NT$5,000 closer to the stage.

But concertgoers will be getting value for their money, insists Fu-Fu Hsu (許維城), who runs Very Aspect. He says both Massive Attack and Pet Shop Boys will be bringing their full stage shows to the Taipei World Trade Center Nangang Exhibition Hall (台北世界貿易中心南港展覽館).

Hsu is well aware of the “narrow” tastes among Taiwanese when it comes to arena pop concerts. As a veteran promoter, the 40-year-old has organized shows by megastars such as Ricky Martin, Kenny G and South Korean singer Rain.

But he says Taiwan is ready for more “cool” concerts by “interesting” artists — another reason his company is putting on TWinkle.

With the Massive Attack and Pet Shop Boys’ shows, Hsu says he wants to show Taiwanese audiences that a stadium concert can be both entertaining and thought provoking.

He points to Massive Attack’s onstage LED signboards that flash political messages across their huge screens (which will be translated into Chinese for the group’s show on Wednesday), and Pet Shop Boys’ elaborate and artful stage design and production, which almost takes on Broadway proportions.

Even though Hsu looks like the typical rock promoter — he wears his long hair in a ponytail, dons flip-flops at the office and chain-smokes — he says he has spent much of his life working behind the scenes at theater and fine arts performances with his family’s agency, New Aspect (新象, Very Aspect’s parent company). The company has brought to Taiwan A-list performers such as cellist Mstislav Rostopovich, French actor and mime master Marcel Marceau and opera tenors Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras.