The big deal this weekend started with a rodent that died in the back of a computer. deadmau5 (real name Joel Zimmerman), who brings his audio and video spectacular to the New Taipei City Exhibition Hall tomorrow night for Spring Love, was changing a soundcard when he found a mouse that had gotten stuck and died. Online friends joked that he was “the guy with the dead mouse.” He wanted to create a user name out of the joke to use on a chatroom, but there was an eight-character limit for names on the chat site he was using, so deadmau5 was born and the rest is history.
That history includes going from relative obscurity to ranking near the top of DJMag.com’s Top 100 DJ poll over the last three years (No. 11 in 2008, No. 6 in 2009 and No. 4 last year). deadmau5 is most well-known for his hit Ghosts ’n’ Stuff, which has been featured on the soundtrack for MTV’s highest rated show, Jersey Shore, as well as the video games DJ Hero 2 and Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars. Last year, deadmau5 performed at the MTV Video Music Awards and the Winter Olympics.
Still, deadmau5 doesn’t consider himself a DJ. He is a producer and has never been part of the DJ culture. He wears a huge mouse head when he performs and his stage setup is unlike anything else.
Photo Courtesy of the LOOP
David Hsia (夏天浩), head of theLOOP, the company that has been holding Spring Love since 2003, recently said: “This is deadmau5’s first time in Taiwan, and he’ll be performing at a brand new venue. deadmau5 will be traveling with his production crew, so this high quality show will feature synchronized sounds and video. We are confident that people will have one of the best times of their lives.”
■ theLOOP presents Spring Love featuring deadmau5 tomorrow night at the New Taipei Exhibition Hall (新北市工商展覽中心) 1 Wucyuan Road, Wugu Industry Park, New Taipei City (新北市五股工業區五權路一號). Admission is NT$1800 at the door.
With the temperatures in Taiwan inching up toward roasting this week, it’s time for some reggae music. The conglomerate of Black Reign (formerly known as the O-Brothaz) has been lying low for a while and decided not to hold their Reggae Beachfest earlier this year. Instead, they are grabbing their red, yellow and green towels, adding a few guests like Sunny Smalls and Rankin Kim, and promising lots of sweaty bodies grinding in close quarters to dub and reggae all night long.
■ Dubwise from 10:30am to 5am tonight at Revolver, 1-2, Roosevelt Rd Sec 1, Taipei City (台北市羅斯福路一段1-2號). On the Net: www.revolvertaipei.com. Admission is NT$350, which includes a drink.
In the mainstream view, the Philippines should be worried that a conflict over Taiwan between the superpowers will drag in Manila. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr observed in an interview in The Wall Street Journal last year, “I learned an African saying: When elephants fight, the only one that loses is the grass. We are the grass in this situation. We don’t want to get trampled.” Such sentiments are widespread. Few seem to have imagined the opposite: that a gray zone incursion of People’s Republic of China (PRC) ships into the Philippines’ waters could trigger a conflict that drags in Taiwan. Fewer
March 18 to March 24 Yasushi Noro knew that it was not the right time to scale Hehuan Mountain (合歡). It was March 1913 and the weather was still bitingly cold at high altitudes. But he knew he couldn’t afford to wait, either. Launched in 1910, the Japanese colonial government’s “five year plan to govern the savages” was going well. After numerous bloody battles, they had subdued almost all of the indigenous peoples in northeastern Taiwan, save for the Truku who held strong to their territory around the Liwu River (立霧溪) and Mugua River (木瓜溪) basins in today’s Hualien County (花蓮). The Japanese
Pei-Ru Ko (柯沛如) says her Taipei upbringing was a little different from her peers. “We lived near the National Palace Museum [north of Taipei] and our neighbors had rice paddies. They were growing food right next to us. There was a mountain and a river so people would say, ‘you live in the mountains,’ and my friends wouldn’t want to come and visit.” While her school friends remained a bus ride away, Ko’s semi-rural upbringing schooled her in other things, including where food comes from. “Most people living in Taipei wouldn’t have a neighbor that was growing food,” she says. “So
Whether you’re interested in the history of ceramics, the production process itself, creating your own pottery, shopping for ceramic vessels, or simply admiring beautiful handmade items, the Zhunan Snake Kiln (竹南蛇窯) in Jhunan Township (竹南), Miaoli County, is definitely worth a visit. For centuries, kiln products were an integral part of daily life in Taiwan: bricks for walls, tiles for roofs, pottery for the kitchen, jugs for fermenting alcoholic drinks, as well as decorative elements on temples, all came from kilns, and Miaoli was a major hub for the production of these items. The Zhunan Snake Kiln has a large area dedicated