For some people, reminiscing about the1990s brings back memories of slap bracelets, Beverly Hills 90210, Beanie Babies, Chris Farley crushing coffee tables and gettin’ jiggy with it. For others, thoughts of the 1990s hark back to Bill Clinton and Monica Lewiniski’s extracurricular activities, Michael Jordan’s complete and utter dominance on the basketball court, the Olsen Twins and Los del Rio’s extraordinarily catchy but extremely cheesy Macarena song and dance.
For Brandon Thompson — singer, bandleader, and self-proclaimed 80’s baby but lover all things 90s — the decade represents the time when he became a man.
“The best music of that decade ran the gamut of musical tastes. Dance music, R&B, hip-hop, metal and even the grunge scene were all forming during a time in our lives when we were trying to figure out who or what we wanted to become,” Thompson told the Taipei Times. “The music offered many of us choices we had never thought about listening to before.”
Photo courtesy of Brandon Thompson
For these reasons, Thompson is throwing the F@#K Yeah 90s! party at Triangle tonight.
THE GENESIS
Mandy Roveda and Sarah Fothergill of theater group Taipei Players kicked around the 90’s party idea, but it never came to fruition. Even though Roveda and Fothergill have both moved on from Taiwan, Thompson is doing a 90’s show complete with 30 musicians, a lip sync battle and DJ Mr. Uppity throwing down the classics at the end of the night, as a dedication to them.
“This idea has been percolating for quite some time,” Thompson said. “They wanted to do an entire night of Karaoke style 90’s music but sadly never got around to putting that show on, so I decided if I am going to do a smorgasbord style live music show I should make it a 90’s night and do it in their honor.”
While the song list for the night is as tightly guarded as the newest Tamagotchi pet device was in 1996, many hints have been tossed out on Facebook including Color Me Badd, Sugar Ray and the white guy from Counting Crows who may or may not have been sleeping on Thompson’s couch since the Y2K bug did not hit. One thing is for certain: there will be eight guitarists, six bassists, four drummers, two keyboard players and nine singers playing over three hours worth of 1990’s music.
Carrie Kellenberger, one of the singers, would only offer a hint.
“Every song I’m singing is a song that every ‘90’s girl sang in their bedroom with a hairbrush in hand.”
F@#K Yeah 90s! A Night of Awesome L!VE MUSIC Friday night from 9:30pm to around 4:00am at Triangle, 1 Yuman St, Taipei City (台北市玉門街1號). Admission is NT$500 and includes a drink.
May 28 to June 3 Taiwan provincial governor Chen Cheng (陳誠) was adamantly opposed to the state-run Central Daily News (中央日報) moving from Nanjing to Taipei in 1949. The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) already had a mouthpiece in Taiwan, the China Daily News (中華日報), and he argued that the relocation of the Central Daily News “would have absolutely no function besides affecting the morale of the people,” according to the book 1949: An Earth-Shattering Year (1949: 石破天驚的一年) by Lin Po-wen (林博文). Chen likely had a grudge against the paper too. Despite editor-in-chief Tao Hsi-sheng’s (陶希聖) “central first, then daily” policy prioritizing the
A fine-grained opinion piece in United Daily News (UDN) in December was packed with data that tells the story of the coming voter shifts in this election. The piece cited another UDN poll from early last year that surveyed residents of the six municipalities. The overall data identified four areas of major concern: housing prices (named by 50.6 percent), low salaries and insufficient career opportunities (32.2 percent), transportation problems (26.5 percent) and air pollution (25.1 percent). The next more important issue was public order at 10.1 percent. None of these issues have become a signature issue for any of the presidential
Buffeted by earthquakes and the potential of conflict with China, Taiwan’s leaders want to accelerate plans to make the island more resilient to communications breakdowns and direct attacks on its digital infrastructure. It could be an impossible task. Audrey Tang (唐鳳), the head of the Ministry of Digital Affairs, says she wants the country’s US$740 billion economy to be able to handle the possible collapse of all its communications in the event of an emergency by the end of next year. The threat isn’t theoretical: the Matsu Islands found themselves digitally adrift after two of their submarine internet cables were severed by boats
When Theresa MacPhail was four, her brother was killed in an accident. When she was 14, her mother died in a car crash. And when she was 24, her father died from anaphylactic shock after a bee flew in through the open window of his truck and stung him in the neck. For anyone else, these devastating experiences would almost certainly have been psychologically catastrophic. “I have several friends who are psychology professors, and they’re always saying, ‘No offense but, by rights, you should be a drug addict, or have severe emotional issues,’” she says, smiling, over Zoom from her
RSS