It turns out that XinYi's Eslite store (4th floor, music section) brings in live music acts every Friday from 8-9pm, as I discovered while browsing their quite decent indie section. (They even have vinyl! Bloody expensive vinyl, but still!) Today's turned out to be a bass- and violin-wielding duo going by the name of 奇哥 (Chico). I suspect they were father and daughter, but I'm not... actually sure? But even if they weren't amazing, they certainly weren't terrible either, and at the very least, they were really, really bloody entertaining.
They kicked it off with an original song called 晚安, which was lovely to listen to even if the lyrics didn't seem to scan well in some places. It wasn't bad until the song apparently reached a section that consisted of the vocalist/bassist speaking out "Good night!" in different languages, most of which were pretty accented and kind of squashed together to fit into the song besides. I'm sorry, but I just couldn't think of it as anything but utterly hilarious.
What followed after was a somewhat scattered monologue on how much he loved playing bass and also how he was Very Sad that Germany lost in the World Cup. Keep this in mind, because this was essentially his theme the entire hour the show ran when he wasn't playing music - how bass was awesome and also rambling on about the German football team. He even attempted to teach us how to say "Out!" in German (Weg, if you're curious), holding up a red card he'd written the word on as he did so. He really was just really entertaining, even if by then I was slightly sceptical about his music.
I'd like to say right now though, that the violinist was awesome. And I am sad that she does not play on the CD I bought from them afterward.
But continuing on in the vein about how he loved to play bass, Chico regaled us on a story about how he used to play guitar! And decided he liked bass better. And then decided to see whether he could play Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven on bass. He could, he learned, and so he figured it out on the bass, and then decided he could play it for the public! But given his public was Taiwanese, he realised, he needed to translate it! So yeah, it turned out he'd prepared to play for us Stairway of Heaven, with the lyrics translated into the Taiwanese dialect - which let me tell you, the translation doesn't exactly fit into the song's measures in the first place.
I was staying pretty much for the entertainment value at this point, but after, the show really seemed to begin. There was still hilarious chatter about his love for the bass and such, but the original songs they began to play then were actually pretty nice to listen to, especially with the violin. (Really, the violin meshed with the bass so, so well.) The lyrics were still somewhat iffy in places, but they weren't ridiculous, which at that point I thought was good enough. The second to last song played - 磨菇之歌 - was my favorite.
Overall, I thought they had strong instrumentals but the lyrics could be much, much improved. Nor does the CD really show how awesome the instrumental is, because it's only the dude and his bass! Which is very sad, in my opinion. Still, it was pretty awesome, considering I wasn't even expecting to see a live show tonight. (And now I have Cats On Fire's album "Our Temperance Movement" to listen to, too!)
No comments:
Post a Comment