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Cut to the chase: epic. OK, very good indeed. Couple of hundred people jumping up and down getting very sweaty, crowd surfing from the lady herself and some very good pounding music.

Highly recommended.

And now, the pics:

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• The serviced apartment was a bit shit. Paper thin walls and a snoring neighbour.
• I had the lurgi for four days.
• Left my good suit in the serviced apartment. They tossed it. It was worth more than the rent we paid them.
• The new apartment had dangerous electrics so we couldn’t move in.
• When we had electrics and tried the washing machine it flooded the floor.
• I had somewhat of a personal crisis which wound me up tight, but that was resolved happily.
• It’s been COLD. This doesn’t happen in Taipei. Saw blue sky once though but it’s predicted six days rain from now on.
• Jetlag. I’ve had 10 hours sleep in 3 days.
• The last Larsson “The Girl Who…” book was complete tripe. OK, not a showstopper, but disappointing.
• And I appear to have lost my headphones for no good reason. I haven’t taken them out since London.

I’m sure there was more. It’s felt like one thing after another. Still, we’re in the place and have internet so we’ll survive.

On the upside, we thought “fuck it” and booked into a decently priced 5* hotel last night and got a 100 square metre room with freebies which was awesome even if I did only get 4 hours sleep and we had to check out at 9 to meet the electrician.

Going forward (fnar) we have 4 festivals and Deep Purple to look forward to in Taipei, and a UK tour with Arch Enemy. So that should be fun.

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Sadly, all of the above is a lie.

Despite my rule of only shooting musicians I like, and assembling a wonderful collective of like-minded snappers I realised recently that I really couldn’t care any more. Watching Simon work far harder than I have and still not get anywhere and especially his lament about not getting paid just added to the ennui.

So, I’ll shoot a few more gigs in October, tour manage the Chthonic UK tour in the first week of November then focus on my fine art work.

So with that in mind, I’ve put up ALL the 1* or better photos from this year in high-resolution (good enough for a 6×4 at least). The following sets out the terms:

The following sets are all high-resolution 1600-1200 images free for personal use. Bands are free to use them on the web with credit. Commercial use is subject to negotiation, but really, I don’t bite. I retain copyright on all images so don’t be naughty.

So there you go. Round about 750 images from 40-mumble performances for your viewing pleasure. There are some good ones in there too. 2008 to follow.

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Whilst the long tail has potentially become stronger in the last few years with savvy bands being able to employ the likes of the dread Myspace and more recently the much more useful Facebook to reach out to and engage fans, the 20% who are used to taking the 80% of the revenue are suffering.

Good.

Anyhow, that isn’t the point of this post.

I’m doing some work for the BBC which involves interfacing with assorted music retailers and attempting to give them the license-payer’s business in buying the BBC’s most excellent recorded music content. What has been boggling me today has been the wide range of clue across the various providers/vendors of aforementioned musical goodness. Some examples:

• A certain large high-street music retailer has no public API. We have a spec for the format we receive but the chances of that happening in a timely manner? Remote.
• Same for Play.com, The BBC Shop (oops!), Napster and eMusic. Hmmm.
• iTunes – you’d have thunk that someone so well embedded with people with loads of money and no sense would enable the web rabble to link and make money, wouldn’t you? Fat chance. The best they can do is a “deep-link making gizmo” and an affiliate scheme with “apple-designed” stuff. Thanks guys. WE want to give YOU the business.
• Amazon – they have an API and it’s been around forever. I’m actually struggling to find documentation on their Web Services site: they’re all about the cloud these days. Still, the perl modules still work and that’s all that matters.
• Spotify – have a C client library that only runs on a specific linux. WTF? What are you people smoking?
• 7Digital have a GREAT API. Much more data than we need and some of the data we can use to enrich our database. Nice work guys.
• Musicbrainz, while not being a vendor as such, are über geeks and definitely get the API thing and are an essential part of what we’re doing so that’s useful at least.

If I’ve missed some better options with these suppliers, I’m open to suggestions of course. Still, I’m amazed that in this day and age, so many whose livelihood is going to depend on reaching out to the internet have their heads buried so deeply in the sand.

I’m sure I’ll ramble more on this as I delve deeper.

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I cocked up the outward booking slightly by forgetting that an Eastward flight would be an overnight one so I was due to arrive on the day of the “Free Tibet” Chthonic gig. After a typically horrible sleeper and a ninety minute transfer in Hong Kong which was only just enough, I arrived to a hot, steamy, soupy Taiwan summer afternoon. The taxi dropped me near the plaza where the concert was happening and Doris guided me to the artist tents and somewhere to drop my bags.

First mission was to get washed! Louise guided me to the department store that was unknowingly being used as the crew and artist restrooms. I improvised half a shower there and felt significantly refreshed after, getting rid of all the travel crap.

Next stop was FOOD. I’d been reliably informed that Taiwanese street food was the best thing in the world and this proved true with an oyster omlette and some fried dumplings with assorted sauces. Awesome.

I’ve reviewed the concert, but it’s sufficient to say it was great: amazing crowd with full “Free Tibet!” participation. The other bands weren’t too shabby either.

My day rounded off zipping through the streets of Taipei on the back of Louise’s scooter. Let me explain about Taipei and scooters: they’re everywhere. They’ve passed a tipping point, where unlike London where cars don’t give a shit, in Taipei, they’ve reached a critical mass so drivers have to be aware of this fragile little things zipping in and out like mad flies. Power to the people! Oh, they swarm.

My final experience that night was to sleep on a thin mat on the floor like a real Asian. It wasn’t SO bad, I guess.

Our mission the following day was to hit Tainan and Taichung for listening parties for Chthonic’s new album. This was a mildly insane drive from one lenghth of the island to another, setting out at a sensible time in the morning and finishing in the wee small hours of the next day. I didn’t get to see much of the country except for highway and rest stops but even there, the cornucopia of weird foods and drinks in the shops were amazing.

For those who don’t know, the Taiwanese have a very inclusive attitude to food. Being very Chinese in culture, having been occupied by the Japanese for over 50 years and with American and European influences, the choice of munchies ranges wide. Familiar brands like Lays, with some very unfamiliar flavours in the exotic and spicy end of the spectrum just ache to be washed down with an ice cold Taiwan brand beer. And that’s just the snacks. More of the real food later.

Oh, in Tainan, lunch was a nice soup noodle with very good stock clearly made from real bones.

Back to the listening parties. The Tainan one was held in the upstairs room of a lovely bar with around fifty fans in attendance. They played the whole album through track by track with accompanying video presentation followed by a Q+A.

A drive up to Taichung, where we dined on dumplings and had another listening party.

Then a week of not doing very much outside as it was SO hot and I had a major distraction, I did manage to get in an interview with Freddy and lots more great food.

On my penultimate day, Chthonic played a home gig at The Wall, Taipei’s spiritual home of metal.

And then I had to come home. Pretty good flight considering. Sad to be back.

Interview with Freddy
Free Tibet on Demotix
Review of Free Tibet Concert
A bunch of pictures
Another set of pics
Pictures (to buy!) on Musicpictures.com

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Sadly, despite a lot of help, I couldn’t get it together to go to Beijing. Next time.

Excited!

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