Saturday, September 29, 2007

Chthonic





While I was living in Taiwan I caught black metal band Chthonic a couple of times. The band recently played the Ozzfest in the states and the lead singer Freddy Lin addressed the UN Below is his speech taken from Metalunderground:

This is the speech made by Freddy, Chthonic's vocalist in New York City and Washington, DC on the 12th and 13th September's press conferences.

Freddy Lim, Vocalist of ChthoniC
2007/09/12

"As a musician, I am here to make noise for my fans. As a Taiwanese citizen, I am here to make noise for my countrymen. I have sung across America for more than 2 months for my fans, and now I will take the opportunity here to speak for my fellow Taiwanese.

Taiwan's sparkling talents range from sculptor Ming Chu, to the internationally-acclaimed director Ang Lee, to the internationally renowned Cloud Gate dance troup, to the Sahara-crossing ultra-marathon runner Kevin Lin, to Major League Baseball players such as New York Yankees star Chien-ming Wang. Taiwan's creative gifts and energy can not be contained within borders or forced to abide by the restrictions of political deal-making. The 23 million people of Taiwan are living diligently and sensibly, with the wish to freely thrive in this world as equal partners on our shared planet. Like the people mentioned above, we are not politicians, and all we can do is to fight our best in our own career, to use the cultural power to fight against Chinese strong military threats, and -- through the artistic language -- to spread ideals that our countrymen believe about how the international society puts limitations on Taiwan.

During our two-month American tour, most fans and media have supported the message that we carry during this tour. At our concerts, the fans show their anger toward those politicians in United Nations by shouting and even cursing; back home, these fans even put their efforts of supporting Taiwan into their daily life, like a report I've just received from a fan who wrote about Taiwan for her Social Justice Action class project to spread the message to her classmates and friends. For these young people, it's very logical and natural to support Taiwan to join the international society and for Taiwanese to share the same international rights that they have, but the politicians in United Nations seem to think it's more logical and natural to sacrifice Taiwan in their political games."




Pic taken from Michael Turton's blog A View From Taiwan

Friday, September 28, 2007

Black Market, Rocket Jocks and The Offbeats at Valve September 21st

This one was a good one. Just the right number of bands for an old fart like me. Two bands I hadn't seen before and one I'd seen a number of times. The Offbeats were the first band up and they played ska and got a crowd dancing. I don't know much about Ska outside of Madness, The Specials and Operation Ivy so I can't compare to them to anybody as they didn't sound like any of these bands. In fact, I've forgotten what they did sound like because I walked out halfway through their set in order to buy batteries.

Came back and caught the rocket jocks - who I've seen a few times now and they always put on a good show with their Ramones inspired pop-punk. I finally got a half-decent recording of them playing "Invasion of The Giant Ants" which is a personal favourite.
See video below.



Next up and headlining this show were The Black Market. The band obviously, from their name, are very influenced by The Clash and maybe Rancid(who I've always consider a Clash knock-off band rather than a band with any true talent).

The Black Market started with their song Walls which is my fave from their Myspace site Walls is below.



Then they got thrashier with Toowomba riot



My complaint would be they compared VB to Lion Red saying they both tasted like piss. VB is great beer and used to be cheap to buy. Why is it so expensive these days? Lion red is not great beer but used to be cheap to buy. (I haven't drank Lion Red for years and maybe, just maybe, it is now a great beer. I doubt it, though).

I've added a couple of links. I haven't got it totally sorted as kiwiblog is a political blog and lastdaysofmanonearth is a new wave/punk mp3 blog and both are listed as music blogs(I'm no techie). I recommend checking both blogs out.

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