Ex-Racer X and Mr Big guitarist Paul Gilbert and his new band will be touching down at The Wall next Thursday as part of their current world tour to promote their recently released album, Spaceman One.
Gilbert first made his mark on the world of guitar shredding, or the art of playing as many notes per second, with oddball heavy-rock combo Racer X in the mid-1980s. The group never really managed to create much of a buzz outside of hardcore heavy-rock circles however, and Gilbert parted company with the combo in order to join Mr Big in 1992. Within months of joining the band, Gilbert had scored his first number-one hit, To Be with You.
Since he parted company with Mr Big, which disbanded in 1996, Gilbert has released a string of solo albums, but none of them has ever proven as successful on the global stage as his Mr Big hit, though several of his records have made it to the number one spot in Japan, where he continues to have a huge following.
PHOTO COURTESY OF ARTIST
Released in early June by Shrapnel Records, Gilbert's latest album, Spaceman One, features an eclectic collection of guitar-driven tunes on which Gilbert deviates somewhat from his trademark heavy-rock/ballad styles he employed when fronting Racer X and Mr Big.
Along with the more orthodox breakneck metal numbers like Jackhammer, Gilbert takes time to mix it up with some fantastic punk-like hooks and riffs, several post-rock styled tunes and a couple of slow jerky ballads, and he even throws in a few surprises, such as the Japanese-language rock anthem Boku No Atama.
A few of the album's highlights and tunes to listen out for next week include the brilliant 1970s-like punk anthem and the mosh-pit-inducing On the Way to Hell, the early Elvis Costello-meets-Cheap Trick-like number Mr Spock, the rockabilly inspired Wash My Car, and the gnarly guitar-solo-fueled Terrible Man.
Gilbert might not have the same pulling power as several of the international acts set to perform in Taiwan this summer, but if you fancy catching a real band in the act as opposed to being subjected to more of the same by the rather ratty suspects, then Taipei's The Wall is the place to be next Thursday. Regardless of one's musical preferences, Gilbert and his band are guaranteed to put on one hell of a show.
Paul Gilbert Spaceship One World Tour will be at The Wall this Thursday, July 7, at 7:30pm. Tickets cost NT$1,200 and are available at the door. The Wall is at B1, 200 Roosevelt Rd, Sec 4, Taipei (台北市羅斯福路四段200號B1).
June 9 to June 15 A photo of two men riding trendy high-wheel Penny-Farthing bicycles past a Qing Dynasty gate aptly captures the essence of Taipei in 1897 — a newly colonized city on the cusp of great change. The Japanese began making significant modifications to the cityscape in 1899, tearing down Qing-era structures, widening boulevards and installing Western-style infrastructure and buildings. The photographer, Minosuke Imamura, only spent a year in Taiwan as a cartographer for the governor-general’s office, but he left behind a treasure trove of 130 images showing life at the onset of Japanese rule, spanning July 1897 to
One of the most important gripes that Taiwanese have about the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is that it has failed to deliver concretely on higher wages, housing prices and other bread-and-butter issues. The parallel complaint is that the DPP cares only about glamor issues, such as removing markers of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) colonialism by renaming them, or what the KMT codes as “de-Sinification.” Once again, as a critical election looms, the DPP is presenting evidence for that charge. The KMT was quick to jump on the recent proposal of the Ministry of the Interior (MOI) to rename roads that symbolize
On the evening of June 1, Control Yuan Secretary-General Lee Chun-yi (李俊俋) apologized and resigned in disgrace. His crime was instructing his driver to use a Control Yuan vehicle to transport his dog to a pet grooming salon. The Control Yuan is the government branch that investigates, audits and impeaches government officials for, among other things, misuse of government funds, so his misuse of a government vehicle was highly inappropriate. If this story were told to anyone living in the golden era of swaggering gangsters, flashy nouveau riche businessmen, and corrupt “black gold” politics of the 1980s and 1990s, they would have laughed.
Imagine being able to visit a museum and examine up close thousand-year-old pottery, revel alone in jewelry from centuries past, or peer inside a Versace bag. Now London’s V&A has launched a revolutionary new exhibition space, where visitors can choose from some 250,000 objects, order something they want to spend time looking at and have it delivered to a room for a private viewing. Most museums have thousands of precious and historic items hidden away in their stores, which the public never gets to see or enjoy. But the V&A Storehouse, which opened on May 31 in a converted warehouse, has come up
RSS