Go big or go home. This is the attitude behind Legacy Taipei
(傳音樂展演空間), a new rock venue located at the Huashan 1914 Creative Park (華山1914), formerly known as Huashan Culture Park, (華山文化園區). The 1,000-person capacity “live house” opens tonight with Chinese rock legend Cui Jian (崔健).
Cui, who is making his second appearance in Taiwan, launches this month’s live music program, which features cream-of-the-crop local performers and several international acts.
Taking to the stage tomorrow are Hakka singer-songwriter Lin Sheng-xiang (林生祥) and Aboriginal chanteuse Panai (巴奈). And the list of hard-hitting performers this month goes on: Wu Bai (伍佰) and China Blue, Japan’s Boom Boom Satellites, Sugaki of the J-rock band Luna Sea and US indie-rock group Yo La Tengo.
“I hope this place can become a musical landmark in Taiwan,” said Legacy’s director Arthur Chen (陳彥豪), a veteran promoter who has booked major international rock artists for festivals like Ho-Hai-Yan and Simple Life.
Legacy is poised to rival storied venues like The Wall (這牆), Riverside Cafe (河岸留言) and its sister Riverside Live House (河岸留言西門紅樓展演館), all of which have nurtured Taipei’s growing indie scene. Two established bands from that world, 1976 and Tizzy Bac, are scheduled to hold shows at the new venue over the next few months.
But Chen doesn’t see Legacy as a competitor to The Wall or Riverside, but as a partner in bringing live music culture to the mainstream.
“I feel we are working together because Taiwanese aren’t yet accustomed to [seeing live rock shows],” he said. “We don’t want people to feel that seeing a live music show is an underground thing. It should be something people do regularly, like going to CashBox KTV or going to a movie.”
Though the Huashan area has seen several rock venues come and go, none of them likely match the investment made by Legacy, also the name of the new business venture running the venue.
The company, which is
part-owned by pop star Harlem Yu (庾澄慶), is spending NT$15 million alone on a professional-grade sound system that Chen says is standard for international pop performers (unfortunately, the system won’t be fully in place for this weekend’s shows).
The venue, located in a former warehouse, will keep its original look but has been renovated to achieve quality acoustics, with an array of wood soundproofing panels suspending from the ceiling in this 225-ping (744m2) space. And audiences won’t sweat during the summer. According to Chen, the venue is equipped with a NT$2 million air conditioning system.
Perhaps in typical rock ’n’ roll fashion, the venue wasn’t quite ready when the Taipei Times visited at the beginning of the week. Workers were drilling and hammering away as they put the finishing touches on the platform stage, which stands over 1m high — tall enough to elevate any performer to rock idol height.
Be ready to pay a premium for international acts, with ticket prices topping NT$2,000 for Cui Jian’s show tonight. Tickets for J-rock star Sugizo, who performs Dec. 25 and Dec. 26, are NT$2,500. At least the drinks will be inexpensive — draft Taiwan beer runs NT$100 a glass. The venue plans to offer light snacks at all shows.
Legacy’s long-term goal is to present more mainstream pop acts on weekends. But it’s not just for the sake of business. Chen sees an opportunity to influence the Taiwanese pop scene in a way that “improves Taiwan’s overall music environment.” He says CD sales are declining but more people are attending concerts, which might encourage pop artists to focus more on live performances.
Currently, the scene may not be quite mature enough for a venue like Legacy. “But we want to be the ones that make it mature,” Chen said.
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.
It was just before 6am on a sunny November morning and I could hardly contain my excitement as I arrived at the wharf where I would catch the boat to one of Penghu’s most difficult-to-access islands, a trip that had been on my list for nearly a decade. Little did I know, my dream would soon be crushed. Unsure about which boat was heading to Huayu (花嶼), I found someone who appeared to be a local and asked if this was the right place to wait. “Oh, the boat to Huayu’s been canceled today,” she told me. I couldn’t believe my ears. Surely,
When Lisa, 20, laces into her ultra-high heels for her shift at a strip club in Ukraine’s Kharkiv, she knows that aside from dancing, she will have to comfort traumatized soldiers. Since Russia’s 2022 invasion, exhausted troops are the main clientele of the Flash Dancers club in the center of the northeastern city, just 20 kilometers from Russian forces. For some customers, it provides an “escape” from the war, said Valerya Zavatska — a 25-year-old law graduate who runs the club with her mother, an ex-dancer. But many are not there just for the show. They “want to talk about what hurts,” she
RSS