The best indicators of where the fun was happening during last year's spring weekend were the floodlamps emanating from a handful of hot spots in and around Kenting. This year, the Taipei Times sheds some light of its own on the major events taking place.
Make a Wish (Moonlight 2003)
There's no such thing as bad publicity, and last year's Moonlight rave on the beach received its share of it. As a result, although anticipation for this year's party has been high, the authorities in charge of the beach asked that it end by midnight.
PHOTO: ALBERTO BUZZOLA
"The party's just starting at midnight," said David Jr., who has organized the rave for the past three years. He's instead moved it inland to the field adjacent to the site of last year's Dreamfield rave. But sand looks to be the only thing absent from this year's party, the only rave to take place on Thursday night as well as Friday and Saturday. England's Dave "Give It" Twomey has signed up to play, as has Japanese DJ Tsuyoshi. They'll spin on both Friday and Saturday night on the main stage, Alien Prophecy, along with turntablists such as K Fancy, Orange, @llen, Em Lee and Victor, as well as live acts Outer and David Jr's own outfit, Acid Fertilizer.
The second stage, Dazed and Confused, is where revelers can chill out to downbeats and dub, and the third stage, called Traveling at the Speed of Thought, will offer psychedelic trance.
Tickets: NT$800 per night or NT$2,000 in advance for all three nights. In Taipei, you can purchase advance tickets at Rock Candy, located at 7, Lane 79, Sec. 1, Fuhsing S., Rd. or at any Tower Records stores. In Hsinchu, advance tickets are available at Club View on the 15th floor of the China Trust Hotel, 106 Chungyang Rd. In Taichung, at Blue Records, located at 18 Huamei St. And in Tainan's Ganesh Store at 10 Yungfu Rd., Sec. 1, or Kaohsiung's Ganesh Shop at 12 Yuju St.
PHOTO: ALBERTO BUZZOLA
Spring Love at the "Love Mansion"
Taipei's 2nd Floor makes its foray into the Kenting Spring Weekend by taking over Kenting's Sea View Hotel, which they've temporarily renamed Love Mansion.
Here's the deal: Buy an advance ticket to the Love Mansion for NT$1,000 and the ticket itself will have space to be punched three times; once for a discount round-trip ticket on Royal Dragon Bus Lines from Taipei or Taichung arriving on Friday and leaving Sunday; a second punch will get you onto Dawan Beach for free on Friday for the Golden Beach Music Festival. The third punch gets you onto the grounds of the Love Mansion for Saturday's "Climax," as the organizers have dubbed it.
And just what is the Climax? The gates open at 2pm for a party set to go well into the following day. Headlining the evening will be Japanese DJ Takkyu Ishino of Denki Groove, along with live acts We Save Strawberries, Sissy, Dexter and English, and Spring Scream veterans Mimi-chan. 2nd Floor's resident DJs will also spin throughout the night as will a roster of other local favorites, including K Fancy, Saucy, SCL, Nina, Michaelphonic and others.
The Climax naturally follows Friday night's "Foreplay," an evening of elbow-rubbing set to poolside lounge music. The organizers are wisely figuring that most partygoers will choose to skip the Foreplay and are banking on a high turn-out for Saturday night's fun. They're even helping to promote the Moonlight party on Friday night.
Look for the shuttle bus with "Spring Love" plastered to the sides that will be taking partygoers to the Love Mansion from the gate of Kenting National Park on Kenting Rd. You won't want to walk!
Tickets: NT$1,000 Spring Love tickets can be purchased in advance at 2nd Floor in Taipei, 15 Hoping W. Rd., Sec. 2. or at AMP Music and Clothing at B1, 9 Chunghsiao E. Rd., Sec. 4, Lane 205. In Taichung, you can pick up advance tickets at Samadhi. Call (04) 2451-5596 for location information.
Tainan and Kaohsiung residents can get tickets at any X-Large store. Be sure to buy advance tickets even if you don't plan on taking advantage of the Royal Dragon offer or Friday's beach activities; they're still cheaper than the NT$1,200 tickets available at the door on Saturday.
MTV Party
The world-famous Music Television channel enters the Spring Weekend fray this year with a party to be held upstairs at the Chintan Pub (金灘) on Dawan Road. Taiwan's "No. 1" DJ Victor along with Room 18 resident Chozie will take the wheel on Saturday night. MTV will be filming the fun, so if you'd rather catch one of the other parties, you can still see what you missed in promotional footage that the music channel will likely show again and again.
But the music stops at 2am, so there's plenty of time to make it to Moonlight or the Love Mansion.
Tickets: NT$400 are available at the door.
Golden Beach Music Festival
"But I want to dance with sand in my shorts!" you say." There will still be a party at the beach, but the mood of this year's festivities will be different from last year. Basically, the Pingtung County government has co-opted Dawan Beach for themselves and is helping to produce the Golden Beach Music Festival. It will have local acts Sticky Rice (糯米團), Chang Cheng-yue (章震嶽) and MC Hotdog's Dog G headlining Friday night and Backquarter (四分衛), Mayday (五月天) and Julia Peng (彭佳慧) on stage Saturday. But if you've dreamt all year about watching the sun come up with 3,000 friends, your dreams will be dashed on the rocks south of Dawan Beach -- the government's party will run from 4pm to midnight, apparently to avoid press articles with headlines like "Sex and drug party in Kenting" that came after last year's Moonlight madness. Instead of watching the sun rise, this year's partygoers can watch the sun set, and still be able to dance with sand in their shorts.
Tickets: Available at the gate to the beach (don't even think about sneaking in!) for NT$500 per day or NT$700 for a two-day pass.
-- David Momphard
Spring Scream
Spring Scream has reached what it's organizers call a "comfortable size" -- so the concert's format will be basically the same as last year's event, with about 150 bands on four stages over four days.
What's new is a growing presence of Hong Kong bands and New York's Dynamite Club. According to event organizer Wade Davis, Dynamite Club "just heard about Spring Scream somehow and wanted to come."
The concert is again situated in the Liufu Ranch with the first band taking the stage at 4:30pm on Thursday, April 3 and the show wrapping up around midnight, Sunday, April 6. In addition to music, it will have a half pipe for skateboarding, an indoor film festival and numerous vendors.
Dynamite Club, self-proclaimed purveyors of "retard-core" is a New York City-based band that many reviewers see as heavily influenced by Japan's legendary punk outfit, the Boredoms. At its center, the band consists of guitarist Kentaro Saito and drummer Mike Pride, both of whom claim backgrounds in rock and jazz. One reviewer noted that virtually all their songs "begin as something akin to blues rock, ascend into unrefined jazz-rock and then explode in a massacre of drum rolls and squawking, distorted guitars." They play Saturday at 11:10pm, but it won't be the first time the Spring Scream crowd has seen a Japanese guitarist playing in tighty whites.
At least five bands from Hong Kong will also play, potentially signaling growing interest from Hong Kong's underground music scene. Friday night will see the straight rock of Thinking Out Loud and punk from Hardpack. Saturday will see Alpasonic in the afternoon and in the evening the return of King Lychee, a tight, hard-edged rock ensemble, and Lam Kee, which falls somewhere in the range from hardcore to rap-metal.
Other foreign acts include a number of perennial favorites. Mimie-chan packs a ska stage with wackiness, a horn section of women dressed as cartoon characters, and a big sumo-esque gentleman wearing a diaper, though there are always surprises.
Miracle Saru plays some of the most hard driving psychedelic rock in Asia, invariably mesmerizing crowds, driving them into a frenzy and leaving the next band with a drained audience. Q returns from Texas with its slacker, cynical, redneck kitsch, combining bluegrass and klezmer into "Jewgrass." Reverend Bobby will likely join them on stage, sitting in on the standup bass and preaching sermons.
The other 140 or so bands present a veritable Who's Who of Taiwan's underground rock scene. Thursday night offers a mellow warm-up with up-and-coming bands: the keyboard rock and strong vocals of Tizzy Bac, the Fugazi-inspired progressive rock of 8mm Sky and the hip-hop of Triple Stage. Friday heats up with the happy China-haters of the Taichung punk band RPDX and two red-hot expatriate funk acts, Milk and the Smoking Cones.
The heaviest lineup comes Saturday night with Champion, Hi Santa, more Taichung punk from Oi, the face paint and satanic dialects of Chthonic, the shouting-angry-shaved-headed-guy nu-metal of 666, Taiwanese rap from Rock Records' recrodign artist Dog G and the aforementioned lineup of Hong Kong and Japanese bands.
Sunday winds down with groovy surf rock from Kola and the Hsimen Spiders and the sublime sounds of Cricket.
Spring Scream tickets cost NT$1,200 in advance and are only available in four cities, but until March 31 they can be purchased through any bank's automated teller machine (ATM) by anyone with a Taiwanese Identity Card. Alien Resident Cards (ARCs) however will not work. Further instructions for ATM purchases are on the event's Web site.
Meanwhile paper ticket sales locations include Witches Pub in Taipei, Russel's Cafe Restaurant in Taichung, Armory Pub in Tainan and Dog Pig Art Cafe in Kaohsiung. Fewer than 2,000 paper tickets are available in advance. At the gate single day admission will cost NT$1,000. For a complete schedule and more ticket information, check: www.springscream.com.
-- David Frazier
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