TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — A two-day city music festival featuring 15 of the loudest musicians from Taiwan, Korea, and Thailand, gets underway this weekend on two floors of an office building on Guangfu North Road in Taipei.
The brainchild of 88 Balaz (八十八顆芭樂籽) guitarist and vocalist, A-Chang( 阿強), the festival is inspired by B-movies, a cinematic form predicated on poorly written scripts, bad acting, and lots of bodily fluids.
“B-Festival means bad. It’s our way to express ourselves. I love B-movies and thought it was a cool inspiration.”
True to form, the first B-Festival in 2007 was a bonafide disaster, located far away from Taipei and an outdoor pool. Many could find the venue. It didn’t help that the band performed at one end of the pool with the audience at the other end.
Given the level of inebriation at a punk, rock and roll concert, it comes as some surprise no one got wet.
“No one went into the water that year. And I think only 100 people came. Everyone got lost. It was so bad we all wanted to quit. It took us another 8 years to host the second B-Festival.”
A-Chang says B-Festival is a sort of annual gathering for bands who play rock and roll or punk music, something akin to Lunar New Year when everyone comes together to drink, eat, and dance.
Despite the bad taste of the first installment of B-Festival, A-Chang felt the will to continue. He describes the festival as a sort of family get-together. And like a family event, there’s always an odd uncle who has had too much to drink, or an auntie who annoys everyone by saying exactly the wrong thing.
“We’ve had a few stage diving accidents. One young woman jumped into the crowd and nobody caught her and next thing she was at Taiwan Adventist Hospital", said A-Chang.
A glorious hodgepodge of local and foreign bands perform at B-Festival. (B-Festival photo)
The success of his band, 88Balaz, has allowed A-Chang to extend his familial relationship to nearby countries like Korea and Thailand through touring and participation in overseas festivals. The foreign acts invited to play B-Festival are in the same mold as 88Balaz, playing hard, fast, loud, rock and roll.
In 2019, the festival took place at Jim & Dad’s Brewery in Yilan. It was a mistake making the festival an all-you-can-drink affair with the purchase of a festival ticket. If over-consumption of alcohol wasn’t bad enough, many in the audience were ill-prepared for the strong alcohol content of IPA beers.
“I don’t think many people had experienced IPA beers before. Just two hours after the festival started, people were already sleeping in front of the stage,” said A-Chang.
Bathrooms were a similar mess with many unfamiliar with the effects of high-alcohol craft beers. “It was just a big mess and we weren’t invited back to Yilan,” said A-Chang.
Moving back to the Taipei area has helped minimize incidents related to the festival. It’s held indoors on two different levels so there’s no threat of rain cancellation or delay, and the format also allows people to come and see one band and leave.
“Everyone in Taipei is so busy nowadays. They like to see a band and then later go to a movie or something.”
Returning to the city festival format should have been a boost for B-Festival, but unexpectedly COVID hit in 2020, and despite a pledge by concert organizers to keep going forward, the worsening public health crisis led many audience members to seek ticket refunds.
“We had to return so many tickets to people that only about 100 people came in the end. But, it’s important to be safe,” said A-Chang.
Now that COVID has been downgraded to a category 4 disease, A-Chang hopes more people will come out to enjoy the brash, drunken fun of B-Festival. He believes the festival has already weathered the worst of times, and is now looking for the chance to stomp and strut in front of a crowd of adoring fans.
B-Festival is scheduled for Saturday-Sunday (April 29-30). More information is available at the website.
