So you book Limp Bizkit and a hundred other bands, build a giant stage for 10,000 people and then the most powerful storm the world has seen so far this year, Typhoon Soudelor, makes a bee-line for Taiwan. The Heart Town Festival (海山屯音樂節), which will hold its second edition this weekend, has not had it easy. But, as the organizers say, the show must go on.
The Heart Town Festival, a music festival for metal, hardcore and rock, was originally scheduled to start today and run through Sunday, with four stages and 104 bands and international headliners including US bands Limp Bizkit and The Used, Young Guns from the UK, and other international bands, including Japan’s Coldrain and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Last year the event drew around 5,000 individual ticket buyers, and this year pre-sale tickets have already topped 8,500, with expected attendance around 10,000.
But with Typhoon Soudelor bearing down and expected to sweep over Taiwan tonight, Heart Town organizers have canceled Friday’s performances, but will continue to go more or less as scheduled on tomorrow and Sunday. They will move as many of today’s performances as possible to tomorrow and Sunday. Check for updates on the event’s Facebook page.
Photo courtesy of the Heart Town Music Festival
Limp Bizkit plays Sunday night and is in fact the reason that Heart Town has changed venues this year, from last year’s downtown location to a more expansive site next to the Taichung High-Speed Rail Station.
“Last year the main stage could hold about 3,000 people, and that was great for last year’s festival and originally we were going to stay in the same place,” says Heart Town organizer Jimmy Liu (劉鈞輝).
“But then we booked Limp Bizkit and we knew we’d need a bigger site. In Taichung, there are not so many venues to choose from, so we chose this spot near the High Speed Rail,” he adds.
And yes, Limp Bizkit, the band that translated heavy metal and rap for the mainstream, suburban American meathead, is a serious draw in Taiwan. They were huge here in the late 90s and early 2000s, back when Taiwan still had a viable punk scene.
Interestingly, that was also the era when Taiwanese rock bands started looking more to overseas influences and were no longer interested in putting “Taiwanese” influence into the music — as did the slightly earlier “Taiwanese rock” of Wu Bai (伍佰) and Bobby Chen (陳昇), or even LTK Commune (濁水溪公社) and The Clippers (夾子). Instead, punk and indie rock kids were listening to Limp Bizkit, Green Day and Rage Against the Machine and ripping off as much of the formula as they could decipher for their own performances.
Limp Bizkit formed in 1995 in Jacksonville, Florida, and though critics have always held a grudge against them for music that is, if not stupid, at least lowest common denominator. But they still managed to create one of the most powerful mosh-pit engines in music and an incredible crossover appeal. They sounded hard, but they didn’t have long hair or any of the gothic or horror film stylings of other metal bands.
Fred Durst was a suburban B-boy with a backwards baseball cap, and guitarist Wes Borland took things straight to Planet Weird with body paint and outrageous costumes. Through the years they’ve continued to occupy odd territory between rap (or rap-metal), hardcore and nu metal. Their last big hit Ready To Go from 2013 featured the rapper Lil’ Wayne and was originally to be released through the hip hop label Cash Money Records.
Other acts to look out for at Heart Town include Japanese metalcore bands Coldrain and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, both of which are huge in Japan, with a growing international following. Both groups manage to create a weird hybrid between pop and metal, with karaoke-friendly melodies that explode into crunching power chords and the throaty screaming vocals of extreme metal. Both groups are also good looking and stylish, almost like boy bands for the 21st century, though still with a very hard edge.
Liu says that following on from the first festival last year, they wanted to broaden the audience and tried to book one more mainstream international headliner. That fell through, but they have still invited local pop rock bands like Wonfu (旺福) and Power Station (動力火車), as well as a huge range of local indie, punk and metal acts.
“One thing that surprised us is that we’re getting a lot of messages from people that don’t seem very familiar with music festivals,” Liu says. “People write to us and say, ‘I’ve bought tickets, but what do I get to watch?’ So we have to explain they can see any of the performances during the festival.”
With the absence of other traditional summer festivals like Formoz (野台開唱) and Ho-Hai-Yan Gongliao Rock Festival (貢寮國際海洋音樂), Heart Town is also Taiwan’s only major international music festival this summer. Let’s hope it doesn’t get completely blown out.
■ The Heart Town Music Festival will be held tomorrow and Sunday from noon to 10pm at a site near the Taichung High Speed Rail Station, Gaotie 3rd Rd, Wuri District, Taichung City (台中市烏日區高鐵三路). Tickets are NT$2,800 for a two-day pass, or NT$1,800 for a single day ticket. For more information, go to: www.facebook.com/hearttownfestivaltw.
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