China's godfather of electric rock Cui Jian assaulted Beijing late Saturday with his loud and angry wall of sound in his first officially sanctioned concert in the capital in 12 years. Some 10,000 fans gathered in the Capital Gymnasium to hear the 44 year-old perform the latest versions of his songs, many of which have been banned by a government wary of Cui's social and political criticisms.
"It was 12 years ago that I last performed here just after the release of the Balls Under the Red Flag album," the Beijing-born, classically trained musician told the crowd.
"If we have to keep on waiting then maybe they will let us come back and play here again in another 12 years."
PHOTO: AFP
Cui has enjoyed a rebirth this year with the release of his fifth studio album Show Your Colors, dedicated to the pitfalls of China's unprecedented urbani-zation, and a videotaped concert performance that was aired on state-controlled television in February.
The easing of restrictions against Cui's angry rap-inflected rock has come as the government shows an increased awareness of the commercial value of modern music.
British electronic music whizz Matthew Herbert is hoping to become the first musician ever to use the sound of cancer in a dance track.
PHOTO: AP
"I've found a guy, an American, that can record the sound of it," he said during an interview before a performance in Paris. The London-based musician is working on the follow-up album to Plat du Jour, released worldwide this year, which was made using sampled recordings of food to raise awareness about the industrialization of modern farming methods.
"My new record is going to be a disco record. So people might be out having a good time on a Saturday night but they might be dancing to a disco record and the beats are made from cancer," he smiles.
The know-how for this extraordinary feat would be provided by NASA via a scientist specialized in recording cellular activity. Herbert, 33, estimates he has sold 750,000 records worldwide. His unique blend of music is a collection of recorded sounds, mixed together into thought-provoking music with the help of computer technology.
The Plat du Jour album took him two years of research and six months of recording, included no traditional instruments, and used recordings of a free-range chicken being killed and the noise of more than 3,000 people biting into an apple. He also recorded an armored tank driving over a recreation of a meal cooked by British chef Nigella Lawson for UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George W. Bush when the president came to London to thank Blair for his support in Iraq.
J.K. Rowling's latest book Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince sold more than twice as many copies in the US in its first two weeks as any other author's book in a whole year. The latest in Rowling's series about a boy wizard won the Best Seller Award for the top-selling book in America in the year to Aug. 1, even though it only went on sale on July 16.
US digital media company, Snocap, run by Napster founder Shawn Fanning, said it signed deals with various independent labels. Snocap said it reached agreements with V2 Music, Matador Records and the Beggars Group under which the labels will upload and register their music catalogs with SNOCAP's database services, enabling the digital distribution of their content through commercial peer-to-peer services.
Soul singer Lemar won UK act of the year and best album at Britain's annual tribute to music of black origin, the Mobo Awards, last week.
The former Fame Academy star beat Joss Stone and Estelle to snag Act of the Year and won best album for Time To Grow, during the 10th edition of the Mobos in London's Royal Albert Hall.
The awards cover R 'n' B, hip hop, reggae, jazz, gospel and world music. Lemar said he was "over the moon to win." Public Enemy was honored with an award for outstanding contribution to black music, while American singer-songwriter John Legend won best R 'n' B act, beating Lemar and Mariah Carey. The best Reggae act went to Damian Marley, who also accepted a posthumous achievement award for his father Bob Marley.
By 1971, heroin and opium use among US troops fighting in Vietnam had reached epidemic proportions, with 42 percent of American servicemen saying they’d tried opioids at least once and around 20 percent claiming some level of addiction, according to the US Department of Defense. Though heroin use by US troops has been little discussed in the context of Taiwan, these and other drugs — produced in part by rogue Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) armies then in Thailand and Myanmar — also spread to US military bases on the island, where soldiers were often stoned or high. American military policeman
Under pressure, President William Lai (賴清德) has enacted his first cabinet reshuffle. Whether it will be enough to staunch the bleeding remains to be seen. Cabinet members in the Executive Yuan almost always end up as sacrificial lambs, especially those appointed early in a president’s term. When presidents are under pressure, the cabinet is reshuffled. This is not unique to any party or president; this is the custom. This is the case in many democracies, especially parliamentary ones. In Taiwan, constitutionally the president presides over the heads of the five branches of government, each of which is confusingly translated as “president”
An attempt to promote friendship between Japan and countries in Africa has transformed into a xenophobic row about migration after inaccurate media reports suggested the scheme would lead to a “flood of immigrants.” The controversy erupted after the Japan International Cooperation Agency, or JICA, said this month it had designated four Japanese cities as “Africa hometowns” for partner countries in Africa: Mozambique, Nigeria, Ghana and Tanzania. The program, announced at the end of an international conference on African development in Yokohama, will involve personnel exchanges and events to foster closer ties between the four regional Japanese cities — Imabari, Kisarazu, Sanjo and
Sept. 1 to Sept. 7 In 1899, Kozaburo Hirai became the first documented Japanese to wed a Taiwanese under colonial rule. The soldier was partly motivated by the government’s policy of assimilating the Taiwanese population through intermarriage. While his friends and family disapproved and even mocked him, the marriage endured. By 1930, when his story appeared in Tales of Virtuous Deeds in Taiwan, Hirai had settled in his wife’s rural Changhua hometown, farming the land and integrating into local society. Similarly, Aiko Fujii, who married into the prominent Wufeng Lin Family (霧峰林家) in 1927, quickly learned Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese) and
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