This last weekend was a busy one. We had to do a p…
This last weekend was a busy one. We had to do a pick-up shot at a lab on NTU campus on Saturday (more about this stuff on the production journal), after which I had to rush home to Bitan with my camera equipment, look longingly at the newly opened swimming pool downstairs, change clothes and take my trumpet and the bass back over the bridge to the MRT station and take the train to Gongguan, where the Ramblers were set to kick off the first of several performances with Sheng Xiang and Water3 at the Riverside.
I got there first, and the place was empty except for the sound people setting up the stage. They must have just cleaned, as the air had an antisceptic odor. I put down my stuff and went back outside, though it was muggy and hot, to wait for the others, who soon arrived. They had spent the afternoon lounging around at Bongos. Sandman bought me a tasty sandwich as the Riverside has no food worth mentioning, and I was starved.
Sheng Xiang and Water3 arrived and started their soundcheck while we went upstairs to the courtyard next to the Taipower Building to warm up. A couple of kids ran around laughing and bumping into us as we played, though Sandman chased them off a few times.
We were opening for Sheng Xiang, and this was the first time since I joined the band that we’d played for such a thoroughly Taiwanese audience. They seemed to like the music, though we didn’t have a lot of time on stage. Mark, the other band’s harmonica player, jumped up and played with us on one of our songs.
Then it was Sheng Xiang’s turn. Sheng Xiang himself is a nerdy guy with a high voice, but boy, can he sing. He was accompanied by Mark, Xiao Liu (Little Six) on a beatiful black fretless bass, and Yufeng, a girl who played a whole range of traditional Chinese instruments. They played Hakka and Minnan songs, mostly with a Japanese flavor to them, in a tight, expert fashion. Conor went up and blew us away accompanying one song, and David did another. Later on we all went up and played together, though one of the songs was in E, a difficult key (f sharp) for trumpet, but I eventually started to get the hang of it.
Thumper took Slim, Sandman and I home, stopping in a park on the way to chat for a while. It was a lot of fun; I look forward to the rest of our shows with Sheng Xiang. The next one, in two weeks I think, is at Witch House on June 4th. See the schedule here under “concerts”.
Sunday morning I showed up bright and early at the Sandcastle so that we could get a headstart on our trip down to Longtan for the Hoping for Hoping Peace Festival. It was hot and shiny, so we went casual. David and Robyn showed up, rousing me from Sandman’s couch where I was recovering from the night before, and we set off in Sandman’s Nissan down Ankeng Road. Everyone was in good spirits. “I just love this tunnel!” Robyn exclaimed, not something you usually hear from common commuters. It was, in fact, a beautiful drive. About an hour later we found the place with no problem thanks to excellent instructions provided by “MJB” on Forumosa. I sat in the passenger seat reading the printout while Sandy drove.
The festival was at a place called Kunlun Gardens, a camping grounds in the mountain valley situated around a kind of temple. The road up the mountain was narrow, rocky and steep, but at least we weren’t on foot.
Our destination turned out to be a big grassy area, spotted with small pine trees and abandoned playground equipment including a small helicopter that looked like it might have been flown and crashed by little people in the 1970s. Young shirtless white guys, mostly with beer guts, played frisbee, and a man dressed in a long white gown was on the stage introducing a rock group. Tents were everywhere. It felt like an attempt by young foreigners in Taiwan to rehash Woodstock, a kind of hippie central. Strange at first, but comfortable after a while.
We found the stall where Robyn set out necklaces and bracelets for sale for the Garden of Hope Foundation. Food was available from stalls nearby. The music coming from the gigantic speakers was tinny and booming at the same time. We went down the road a bit into the forest to do some practicing. Sandman said that later on there would be a lot of fireflies out.
We were on after an African drum group, Papa Alex & the Pan Afrika, which featured several African men, some shirtless and all very sweaty, dancing, playing and singing traditional tunes. Half of the crowd was dancing right in front of the stage, while the other sat a ways off in the shade of the small pine trees. Occasionally a small group of hikers would show up and realize that the quiet hamlet they were expecting was nowhere to be found.
Our show went well, if a bit rushed due to time constraints. We sat around playing with other musicians afterwards for a while as big trucks lumbered around dissembling the stage and the stalls. Alita Rickards found a baby somewhere and brought it over for drum lessons. I was kind of hoping to see some fireflies, but everyone was quite tired and wanted to get back to Bitan for some of Athula’s famous rhoti. It was good to have a couple of days out in the sun; rain is forecast for the rest of the week.
In other news, Yahoo! got back to me and let me in again, though they keep sending me emails to verify my email address while giving me codes that don’t work. Also, somehow I’ve ended up in Yahoo! Canada’s email, for some reason. Still no answer on how this keeps happening or what my password is being changed to. I suspect it will happen again, so I’ve changed all of my important email notification settings from the yahoo account. I wonder if they’re even curious about this case, if they’re not telling me something, or if the bureaucracy is simply set up to “fix and ignore” problems like this. Ernie tells me I’m the only such case they’ve come across as far as he knows. I suspect it might have something to do with having a non-.tw email address while being physically located in Taiwan. Perhaps we’ll never know.
