My Spring Scream 2010: The Top Three Top-Threes (Updated with Video)
Written by Matt Gibson Tuesday, 13 April 2010 01:13
Anybody who’s been to Taiwan’s largest
music festival knows that the quality of the acts varies.
That’s to be expected at a festival where the bands perform for free. In my experience, most acts at Spring Scream are good, some are great, a few blow out your frontal lobe, and a handful stink like Taipei’s sewer in the summer.
This year Spring Scream featured more than 200 bands on seven stages in three days. No reviewer, no matter how diligent, could watch more than a small selection of the acts. So, rather than pretend that I was able to see everything and write a review of the whole festival, I’m going to write about those performers that I actually saw that really nailed s#*t to the wall.
I’ve lived in Taiwan for several years and know the music scene fairly well. Most of the bands that I expected to kick ass, totally kicked ass. There were also several bands that I didn’t like before, or hadn’t heard of, that surprised me. Also, many aspects of the festival other than music were awesome. So, I’ve written three best of Spring Scream top-three lists: bands that kicked ass that I expected to kick ass, bands that took me by surprise, and non-musical aspects of Spring Scream that made it fantabulous.
The Top 3 Bands That I Expected to Kick Ass
3) Scott Cook
Scott Cook, of Edmonton Alberta, recently returned to Taiwan after three years touring Canada as a solo folk musician. The last time I saw him perform, he was playing a one man band gig in the Armory in Tainan. He’d play a bassline on his guitar and loop it using an effects pedal. Then he’d play his chorus and loop that too. Then, he’d play solo over all of that while stomping on a wooden box for percussion and singing folk songs in his deep, rootsy voice. He called himself the hi-fi hobo. Scott Cook was sickeningly talented then, and those three years on the road in Canada sharpened both his songwriting and performing skills. The crowd laid out on the grass around the White Stage on Saturday around 7pm as Cook nailed his one man set like a true professional with intricate, storytelling lyrics about life, travel, and music. This is what he said about being a folk musician: “It’s a lot like bein’ a stripper, a lot of tryin’ to turn drunks on.”
2) High Tide
It’s no surprise that festival headliner
High Tide (ICRT’s 2008 battle of the bands winner and Waakao’s Best of Taiwan
2009 highest placing band) was a top draw.
This band oozes professional musicianship. Made up of members of classic
1) Blood
Blood Orange’s stage show is tighter than Rush Limbaugh’s sphincter during gay pride week, so it was no surprise that they drew a huge crowd. The surprise was the people in the crowd. Although Blood Orange grinds out speedy instrumental hardcore, their musicianship is so impressive that people of all musical persuasions—young folks, old folks, hippies, punks, tai ke, ravers—all turn out to watch them play. They churned out intricate hardcore riffs, speckled with full stops, and interspersed with jazzy interludes, with such precision that even the older audience members, who were obviously not into thrasher speed punk, stood entranced.
Taipei Times music writer David Chen picked Blood Orange as a festival highlight. They were. Divebomb bassist Dan North dubbed them the best act of the festival. I have to agree.
The Top 3 Bands That Took Me by Surprise
3) Hong Kong New Hair City
I saw Hong Kong New Hair City once in a little nightclub in Tainan. I thought they were pretty good. Not incredible, but good. I don’t know what changed between that show and Spring Scream. Maybe the sound in that tiny club with the rented PA was bad. Or maybe the band was having an off night. But, for whatever reason, that performance gave me the wrong impression about NKNHC.
When I saw NKNHC on Saturday afternoon I couldn’t believe it was the same band. I only saw one band that matched their energy at Spring Scream (See #2 below). Singer Danielle Sanger got the crowd bouncing in the sun with a strong stage presence, energetic performance, and heartfelt vocals. The guitarist, bassist, and sax player all got in on the act making for a good, old-school rock-out performance. And when they were forced to wind up their set to keep the schedule moving, the crowd wasn’t just disappointed—it was angry—screaming encore even after NKNHC had vacated the stage.
2) Go Chic
A photographer friend of mine photographed Go Chic a couple of months ago. He told me, “They’re the best indie band in Taiwan. They’re going to be huge.” I thought he was just talking them up to make it sound like he’d photographed a big important band. I was wrong.
When I stumbled onto this band playing the Blue stage at 8:50 pm on Saturday I got sucked in. I’ve never seen a band that projected so much raw energy. The crowd was going mental.
Go Chic draws on rock influences like Primal Scream and The Stone Roses and mix them with euro style electro. The result is three chicks and a drummer belting out dance tunes that sound like a cross between Metallica and Madonna with their sexy sneaker and tights-wearing singer waving her finger at the crowd screaming over crunching guitar riffs, “I am your reason to dance.” She most certainly was.
1) Vialka
This duo from France was undoubtedly the biggest surprise of the festival. Nobody that I know had ever heard of this French duo when they arrived at Spring Scream, but by the end of the weekend everybody knew who they were.
I was tipped off about this act on Saturday night when I met a music producer from Thailand. He’d been blown away by Vialka’s Saturday performance. He claimed that they were the best act at the festival. He strongly advised me not to miss their Sunday night performance at 8:50pm on the White stage.
I heeded his advice. I don’t know what to call the music they
played. On their website Vialka calls it
“world punk rock”. I think the label schizophrenic
speed folk-jazz is more appropriate.
Guitarist Eric Boros zipps up and down speedy scales contrasted with
surprising, off-beat chords while drummer Marylise Frecheville smashes out cymbal punctuated
anti-rhythms. They build tension with
off-beats and surprising transitions until it’s as tight as highwire, and then
dance on it a minute, before bringing it crashing down with a simple harmony
that sets the crowd in motion. Sometimes
it seems as though they’re both soloing off maniacally in different directions,
but a connection between them always remains. Vialka showed a degree of
professional musicianship that few Spring Scream had seen before, but all will
remember for years to come.
The Top 3 Non-Musical Highlights
3) The Bathrooms
Anybody who has been to a music festival dreads the porta-potties and expects to shower under a bottle of Evian. Festival bathrooms are chambers of doom. They’re vestibules of vomit, excrement, used condoms, and other unmentionable bodily fluids. They’re mirrors that reveal the depths of human depravity.
For some reason, however, the bathrooms at Spring Scream were as tidy as my grandmother’s pantry. They were clean. They were never crowded. There were even showers with hot water. I never once waited in line, or even had to wipe off a toilet seat. Incredible.
2) NT$50 Drinks
Cheap drinks add brilliantly to a festival’s atmosphere. It does a festival little good when festival goers are preoccupied with budgeting their money instead of rocking out like it’s 1999. This year Spring Scream had NT$50 drinks everywhere. Beer was NT$50, mixed drinks were NT$50, and the Red Bull tent was even serving up NT$50 shots of Jagermeister so cold that they gave you brain freeze. This kept festival goers happy, relaxed, and enthusiastic and focused on their job—the most important job in the festival—having fun.
1) Wacked-Out Stage Dancers
The other night my friend was explaining to me his reason for drinking. “You know when you see a guy that’s so wasted he’s falling over. That’s no fun. But you know when you see that guy that’s totally wasted, dancing away in his own world, having a blast, and doesn’t give a shit what anybody thinks. Seeing that guy makes my day. The key is to attain that level of wastedness and keep it going all night.”
At around 5pm on Saturday my friends and I were hanging around the DJ stage drinking NT$50 screwdrivers. I was tired, hungover, and in a bad mood. Then my buddy pointed to the stage and shouted, “Look, there’s Mike.” There was our buddy Mike on the stage, wearing giant white sunglasses, totally hammered, dancing like a rock star with a bunch of flaming gay dudes. He was having so much fun he was oblivious to the fact that a homosexual Taiwanese man was closing in on him from behind. It totally made my day.
Photos by
Señor Vigar
Video by http://www.digitalcanvasfilms.com/
