It was like Reno 911! at VU Live House on Saturday night. Revelers at the Reggae Me Crazy festival hosted by the Ximending club had to start their partying late because an uninvited guest crashed the show — the police.
Apparently the clueless cops heard the word “reggae” and assumed they’d be able to bust a bunch of potheads, getting themselves written up in the country’s sensationalist papers for saving Taiwan from the scourge of reefer madness.
Taipei’s finest pulled out all the stops for their face-off with the hippies, arming themselves with semi-automatic assault rifles that looked like AR-15s, riot helmets and bulletproof vests.
Unfortunately for the heat, they busted the joint before the first band — High Tide, who put on a killer show — even started playing, which made them look like glorified doormen at the front entrance as all the customers waited outside, smoking cigarettes and drinking cheap beer from 7-Eleven.
If the law wanted THC that badly, they should have gone to Bliss. THC was there — Taipei Hip-Hop Crew, that is — busting out rhymes for Barry Smit’s going-away bash. Smit, who was full owner of Bliss, formerly Chocolate and Love, for the past four years, sold the bar to Travis Bannert and Oliver Campbell and is moving to Taitung with his wife to open a guesthouse near the ocean. Preceding THC’s set, Smit rocked out with his own band, Crossroads (whose guitarist, Ray Anthonie, is absolutely wicked), with covers of songs such as Ziggy Stardust and Suffragette City. By midnight the crowd of mostly foreigners was so large it filled both levels of the bar and spilled out onto the sidewalk along Xinyi Road. When the party finally ended around 7am, Smit treated the half-dozen or so people who were still there to breakfast.
On Thursday indie-rock veterans Yo La Tengo played for some 300 people at The Wall (這牆), the second night of a two-night run. The New Jersey-based trio was in top form as they rocked the house with ear-piercing jams, stunned the room with beautifully quiet ballads and had the audience laughing throughout the evening.
The band started at a brisk pace with three loud and driving songs. They kept the momentum going as each tune ended — after the opening number, guitarist Ira Kaplan and bassist James McNew quickly switched instruments and positions on stage to play I Should Have Known Better, an organ-tinged, 1960s rock-sounding number from the group’s 2006 release I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass.
Kaplan and McNew changed places again for Pass the Hatchet, I Think I’m Goodkind, the opening track of the album. By then the band was fully warmed up and Kaplan picked up his stride, pouring out notes of blistering distortion from his electric guitar. Drummer Georgia Hubley kept a steady beat as she created shimmering waves of sound on the cymbals, and McNew held the song together with a hypnotic bass line.
The set then shifted to quieter, less distorted sounds: Hubley’s hushed vocals on the ballad Tears Are in Your Eyes held the audience at rapt attention; Kaplan switched to piano for the mid-tempo pop number The Weakest Part; while the funky Mr Tough, with steady falsetto vocals from McNew, drew cheers and got the audience dancing.
Kaplan’s guitar-playing grew more inspired throughout the night. During one solo late into the band’s 90-minute set, he swung his guitar in a controlled frenzy, causing the feedback to squeal in endless variations, much to delight of the audience.
The band came back with a four-song encore, which they began by asking for requests. Kaplan picked out an audience member wearing one of the band’s T-shirts, who asked the band to play You Can Have It All, a tune sung by Hubley. Kaplan drew laughs as he played a mock drum solo, throwing his drumstick into the air and then catching it clumsily.
McNew then led the band through Sun Ra’s zany and funky Nuclear War. The band’s third Taipei appearance ended as Kaplan thanked a fan he met off-stage for coming to both of the band’s shows at The Wall. They obliged the fan’s request: the Velvet Underground’s I Found a Reason.
Elsewhere this week, the 100-seat auditorium of Taipei’s German Cultural Center was filled to overflowing for Friday evening’s concert by the German a cappella group Klangbezirk. The four-person lineup, two men and two women, first demonstrated a sound machine that recorded and then replayed their input, allowing for the illusion of more than four singers. Sometimes they used it, but mostly not. Instead, they gave softly breathed renderings of often well-known numbers, sung with the microphone close to the lips and accompanied only by the snapping of fingers.
Most songs were in English, ranging from Michael Jackson to the Beatles (Blackbird Singing in the Dead of Night, sung as an encore, received an ovation). But there was one Chinese item too, and another in German. Altogether the tone was relaxed, with audience participation invited at one point, and eagerly given. You felt that the free entry, plus free wine in the interval, were not all that had brought the mostly young audience along.
The event was part of the Taiwan International Contemporary A Capella Festival. Other participants include Sweden’s Irmelin, Japan’s Takarabune and Kaichiro Kitamura and Germany’s Vocaldente. The festival continues in various locations until Saturday.
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