Freak Out Beast 2010 edition
Freak Out Beast (吵年獸), a music festival featuring a huge line up of Taiwan indie bands, took place on Saturday and Sunday in the space around the Red Theatre in Ximending. I attended both days last year but this year I was only able to attend for one day on Sunday.
The event took place on multiple stages around the Red Theatre. At the entrance there were turntables and mixing decks set up for DJs to perform. I had seen this crew performing in Ximending a couple of months earlier. In the evening Kou Chou Ching (拷秋勤) performed their Taiwan-style hip hop.
On the south side of the Red Theatre there was a small performance area for acoustic bands. The band playing in the photo is Xiasheng (夏生).
Plover were performing only their third live show. They were a well practiced outfit though and put on a good performance.
I have seen The Peppermints (薄荷葉) play several times in the past few weeks including at the Sanying Community. After their performance I bought a copy of their recently released CD “Banished”.
The last time I saw The White Eyes (白目樂隊) perform was at Freak Out Beast a year ago. They put on an awesome performance that had the crowd jumping. Gao Xiao Gao (高小糕) is incredibly energetic on stage and provided non-stop entertainment for the crowd. She even jumped into it at one point!
Someone broke out a bunch of sparklers while The White Eyes were performing. Freak Out Beast is based on a tradition related to the new year and scaring away the beast. With a lot of loud music and plenty of screaming from the crowd I am sure the beast was well and truly scared.
*More photos in the Freak Out Beast 2010 set at flickr.
Update: Check out Joshua Samuel Brown’s blog with some great videos of Kou Chou Ching and The White Eyes.
Freak Out Beast in Ximending
Another Lonely Planet
Photo in Sky Couch magazine
Freestyle motocross at Freedom Square
314 Tibet protest in Taipei
Posted: February 8th, 2010 under Photos, Taipei City, Taiwan.
Tags: kou chou ching, music
Comments
Comment from joshua samuel brown
Time 8 February 2010 at 4:39 pm
David, nice running into you yesterday. Posted some videos of the performances & linked this post over at Snarky Tofu. Let’s get together for coffee sometime.
Comment from David Reid
Time 8 February 2010 at 5:20 pm
jenna, sorry that you missed it. If you want to take a trip down south there are a couple of great music festivals coming up. On 28 February there is “Justice for All” in Pingdong. Then there is the Megaport Festival in Kaohsiung over two weekends in March.
joshua, good to see you there. Love your videos. I have a video from the event, but have had some difficulty uploading it. It would be great to chat some more.
Comment from Todd
Time 10 February 2010 at 10:13 pm
Nice bumping into you David! Wish I didn’t have to leave so early!
Pingback from Weekly Links – February 11, 2010 « The Daily Bubble Tea
Time 11 February 2010 at 5:02 pm
[...] Samuel Brown and David Reid with reports from the Freak Out Beast concert in [...]
Comment from jenna
Time 8 February 2010 at 4:15 pm
We were in that area on Saturday night (Calcutta Indian Food for dinner and drinks in one of those bars near Red House) and clearly it had finished, because there was nothing going on and the tents were empty in the light rain. The place we ended up had postcards advertising this, however. We didn’t notice that it was that weekend on the card. What a shame!