After two months of intense competition, the Taiwan 2015 Red Bull Thre3style DJ battle is over. The dust settled on May 22 at Myst, and Mr Skin (real name: Lai Chung-hung, 賴重宏) was declared victorious, earning a trip to the world finals in Tokyo, Japan in September. His 15-minute winning set consisted of an eclectic mix of Mandarin songs, Run DMC with Aerosmith, Pink Floyd, Bee Gees, Red Hot Chili Peppers and even Bon Jovi for good measure. It was the exact opposite of what Myst’s patrons hear regularly — one of the reasons Mr Skin caught the judges’ ears.
Mr Skin let the Vinyl Word in on some of the preparations he made for the competition. Before the battle, Mr. Skin, along with DJs Question Mark and Ground, decided to call themselves the Agreement Team Boys and promised each other they would meet in the finals. It worked, and all three DJs made it through their qualifiers. Mr. Skin and DJ Ground even worked closely together, listening and critiquing each others’ sets before they performed.
Mr. Skin says he never hesitates to reach out to others for feedback on his sets.
Photo courtesy of UpAgainsttheWall.Asia
“When I first raised this very cheeky proposal directly to DJ Ground, I thanked him for agreeing with it,” he says. “I think it allows us to have a healthy competition and has many positive benefits.”
OMNI-POTENT
On May 20, OMNI held its soft opening, with the weekend as the actual grand opening. Both of these openings were delayed by construction for a few weeks, but word on the street is that OMNI, which used to by Luxy, has a huge chance to reclaim the best-club-in-Taipei championship belt that Luxy held before it closed in March. For starters, OMNI has stunning video screens that wrap around the DJs, making customers feel like the future is now. Also, one of the biggest complaints about Luxy’s main room was the positioning of the bar, which took up most of the space in the back. With the bar gone, there is now more room to breathe.
Will OMNI follow Elektro and Myst and start booking DJ Mag’s top 100 acts to bring in the punters, or will they create their own way forward? It is too early to tell, but OMNI has a lot of potential.
UPS AND DOWNS
A decade ago, the Black Eyed Peas were on top of the world with hit singles, sold-out global tours, and universal radio play. The group once played the Super Bowl and sold 10 million copies of their record, Monkey Business. Things have changed quite a bit in 10 years. Tomorrow night in Taichung at Show House, a club known for being filled with Eastern European strippers, Taboo, one-third of the Black Eyed Peas’ original line up, will be reliving the early-2000s by playing his favorite EDM, pop and hip-hop songs as well as a ton of his own material.
■ DJ Taboo is at Show House tomorrow night from 8pm to 5am, 161, Daguan Rd, Taichung City (台中市大觀路161號). Admission is NT$1,000 at the door.
Taiwan’s politics is mystifying to many foreign observers. Gosh, that is strange, considering just how logical and straightforward it all is. Let us take a step back and review. Thanks to the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), starting this year people will once again have Christmas Day off work. In 2002, the Scrooges in the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said “bah, humbug” to that. The holiday is not actually Christmas, but rather Constitution Day, celebrating the enactment of the Constitution of the Republic of China (ROC) on December 25, 1947. The DPP and the then pan-blue dominated legislature
War in the Taiwan Strait is currently a sexy topic, but it is not the only potential Chinese target. Taking the Russian Far East would alleviate or even solve a lot of China’s problems, including critical dependencies on fuel, key minerals, food, and most crucially, water. In a previous column (“Targeting Russian Asia,” Dec. 28, 2024, page 12) I noted that having following this topic for years, I consistently came to this conclusion: “It would simply be easier to buy what they need from the Russians, who also are nuclear-armed and useful partners in helping destabilize the American-led world order.
If you’ve lately been feeling that the “Jurassic Park” franchise has jumped an even more ancient creature — the shark — hold off any thoughts of extinction. Judging from the latest entry, there’s still life in this old dino series. Jurassic World Rebirth captures the awe and majesty of the overgrown lizards that’s been lacking for so many of the movies, which became just an endless cat-and-mouse in the dark between scared humans against T-Rexes or raptors. Jurassic World Rebirth lets in the daylight. Credit goes to screenwriter David Koepp, who penned the original Jurassic Park, and director Gareth Edwards, who knows
July 7 to July 13 Even though the Japanese colonizers declared Taiwan “pacified” on Nov. 18, 1895, unrest was still brewing in Pingtung County. The Japanese had completed their march of conquest down the west coast of Taiwan, stamping out local resistance. But in their haste to conquer the Republic of Formosa’s last stronghold of Tainan, they largely ignored the highly-militarized Liudui (六堆, six garrisons) Hakka living by the foothills in Kaohsiung and Pingtung. They were organized as their name suggested, and commanders such as Chiu Feng-hsiang (邱鳳祥) and Chung Fa-chun (鍾發春) still wanted to fight. Clashes broke out in today’s
RSS