Watch out this weekend ’cause a big, bad wolf will be rocking at the door. For the past 20 years, punk rockabilly legend Guitar Wolf — a Japanese three-piece outfit composed of Guitar Wolf, Bass Wolf, and Drum Wolf — have blasted eardrums and broken sound barriers. The group has toured with the Cramps and played with the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, and made audiences howl at events like Fuji Rock, Rock in Japan and SXSW.
After a tour of Japan in September, the US last month, and a recent Matador Records showcase with Pavement and Sonic Youth, the band is playing in Kaohsiung tonight and Taipei tomorrow.
Matador Records said that when the band sent in the master for its album Jet Generation, the sound engineer said the sound “levels exceeded the theoretical maximum possible on compact disk,” and that it was “the loudest CD in history.”
Photo courtesy of Guitar Wolf
Guitar Wolf’s sound is heavily influenced by the Ramones, with elements of the Boredoms’ future-wave noise punk and what the band calls “Jet Rock,” a tip of the hat to Joan Jett, a long-term inspiration and hero for Seiji (aka Guitar Wolf). He was 18 years old when he first saw her play and was taken “prisoner” by her “leopard eyes,” he said in a recent e-mail interview.
The group’s most popular albums are Planet of the Wolves and Jet Generation. The most soulful is Dead Rock, composed after the original Bass Wolf, Billy, died of a heart attack in 2005 aged 38. The tragedy tempered the band members’ hard-drinking lifestyle, though they still keep a beer machine in their office.
The band’s look and attitude are as important to Guitar Wolf as the music. Seiji’s fashion revolves around a black-on-black theme — omnipresent wraparound shades (one interviewer commented that in 13 years of knowing Seiji he’d only seen his eyes once) and a collection of leather jackets that include one signed by the Ramones, one signed by Joan Jett, and a black-and-white jacket similar to the one Johnny Thunders wore.
Interviewing such a band presents it’s own difficulties.
Asked how he decided to make rock ’n’ roll his life, Seiji wrote: “Human is not to become a person who can become it. It becomes the one wanting to become it.”
Seiji went on to explain that rock ’n’ roll was the best way for him to “keep cool” and to be “popular among lovely girls.”
But what can fans expect from the show?
“If you are bitten by us, you are [in] serious [trouble],” Seiji wrote. “You might [catch] the sickness of intense rock and roll. Give an antirabies serum for the case.”
“Our new album is coming soon,” Seiji wrote. “Anyway, we can’t wait to eat you.”
What was the population of Taiwan when the first Negritos arrived? In 500BC? The 1st century? The 18th? These questions are important, because they can contextualize the number of babies born last month, 6,523, to all the people on Taiwan, indigenous and colonial alike. That figure represents a year on year drop of 3,884 babies, prefiguring total births under 90,000 for the year. It also represents the 26th straight month of deaths exceeding births. Why isn’t this a bigger crisis? Because we don’t experience it. Instead, what we experience is a growing and more diverse population. POPULATION What is Taiwan’s actual population?
For the past five years, Sammy Jou (周祥敏) has climbed Kinmen’s highest peak, Taiwu Mountain (太武山) at 6am before heading to work. In the winter, it’s dark when he sets out but even at this hour, other climbers are already coming down the mountain. All of this is a big change from Jou’s childhood during the Martial Law period, when the military requisitioned the mountain for strategic purposes and most of it was off-limits. Back then, only two mountain trails were open, and they were open only during special occasions, such as for prayers to one’s ancestors during Lunar New Year.
You would never believe Yancheng District (鹽埕) used to be a salt field. Today, it is a bustling, artsy, Kowloon-ish “old town” of Kaohsiung — full of neon lights, small shops, scooters and street food. Two hundred years ago, before Japanese occupiers developed a shipping powerhouse around it, Yancheng was a flat triangle where seawater was captured and dried to collect salt. This is what local art galleries are revealing during the first edition of the Yancheng Arts Festival. Shen Yu-rung (沈裕融), the main curator, says: “We chose the connection with salt as a theme. The ocean is still very near, just a
A key feature of Taiwan’s environmental impact assessments (EIA) is that they seldom stop projects, especially once the project has passed its second stage EIA review (the original Suhua Highway proposal, killed after passing the second stage review, seems to be the lone exception). Mingjian Township (名間鄉) in Nantou County has been the site of rising public anger over the proposed construction of a waste incinerator in an important agricultural area. The township is a key producer of tea (over 40 percent of the island’s production), ginger and turmeric. The incinerator project is currently in its second stage EIA. The incinerator
RSS