In the previous two Spring Screams, Funky Brothers (放客兄弟) played one of the best time slots — a testament to their growing popularity.
Their show last year was more about the weather than the music. In the downpour, half-dressed friends jumped up and danced with the band, slipped and fell and then got kicked off the stage.
This year, a soft mist enveloped lead singer Airy Liu (劉怡伶) as she displayed her sultry vocal chops, while the band showed off how tight it had become just in the past year due to spending lots of time in the studio. After years of planning, Funky Brothers have finally recorded their self-titled debut album, which will be launched with a show on Friday at The Wall (這牆).
Photo courtesy of vj dust
BOYS ONLY
Liu says she enjoyed being in school choirs, but didn’t set out to be a singer. “I really wanted to learn how to play the drums,” she said. “I ended up becoming pretty good, but my father thought that drums were for boys.”
After high school, Liu moved from what was then known as Taichung to Taipei City and got into a car accident that left her arm in a cast for six months. It was then that she started to take singing seriously. “When I am singing, my brain is different,” Liu said. “I feel alive and feel like people accept me.”
After performing with a few cover bands, Liu joined the Funky Brothers in 2009. The boys had extended an invite, saying they wanted the different sounds a female vocalist would bring. Liu adjusted quickly to the unusual group dynamic.
“It is a band of brothers,” Liu said. “Brothers that sometimes fuck things up and are late or get into fights, but we don’t care because we treat each other like family.”
HURDLES
While Funky Brothers were gaining a reputation for playing an eclectic live show, they were also making plans to record a studio album, plans that didn’t materialize.
They also applied for government grants, but never got approved. “I don’t know why we didn’t get government money,” Liu said. “But we have great friends who love to come to our shows, so I thought we should involve them.”
Liu was intrigued by the idea of crowd-funding and the Web site Kickstarter. She came across Taiwan’s version, Flying V, and wanted to ask for NT$600,000 to record, market and distribute an album. But she was rejected.
Unfazed, she met with the owners of Flying V, who advised her to set up a more realistic goal of getting NT$350,000 over the two-month period. Funky Brothers ended up smashing the goal.
ALBUM OF FUNK
Damien Caillou, the fedora-wearing saxophonist of Funky Brothers, loves the new album. “It is representative of the years of playing onstage together,” Caillou said. “It is also very new since we tried a lot of different arrangements. Even if people know our songs, we expect them to be surprised.”
Liu feels that the recording went naturally and is very excited for people to hear the album. “If people enjoy our live shows, they will like the CD,” Liu said.
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
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist