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Spring 2002, Taiwan Republic of China
Forty Minutes of Hell goes to Taiwan
March 28th - April 8th, 2002
Spring Scream "Horse" 2002 Music Festival

Click Here to watch our music video for
"Fuck It All" - shot live at Spring Scream 2002
(large file download - broadband connection recommended)

Trip Summary

On March 28th, we flew into Taipae, Taiwan and were met
by our hospitable friend Darin.  We immediately set off for
TaiChung, and this is where our pictures begin.

Check it out.  In Taiwan you can get a
urinal on your outdoor balcony. 

This is Spike.  Our favorite Taiwanese doggy, who
we hung out with quite often in TaiChung.
Spike likes to sleep on a bean bag... a little tidbit that I unfortunately
did not realize until the day after I slept on same bean bag.

Streets of TaiChung. 

Taiwan has this thing with smog in their cities.

Here's where we tested Ben's faith in us by having him
fall backwards into our loving arms.
(that's a joke)
Seriously, this is the vantage point from which the picture
above was taken.  Ben shot some video here too. 

They'll use big eyed little girls to sell about anything in Taiwan. 

Buddha, at a fish market in TaiChung. 

Taiwan rice field, in the outskirts of TaiChung.

Here's a shot of Scott, with Ben behind him, on the streets
of Taipae.  We went back up there to play a show before
heading to the festival. 

Here's the gig board outside the underground Taipae club
"The Riverside" where we played our second gig on the island.
(the first show was in TaiChung, and I forgot to take my camera)
This place was very fun, and had super cool owners and staff.

Dzap dau dau opened the show in Taipae for us.
Three very cute and very nice punk rock girls from Hong Kong.
The Drummer and lead singer are sisters.
They also played at the Spring Scream festival, and
we sure hope to get to see them again in the future.
Nice, nice people.

Here we start up the rock. 

It was a little smokey in the bar, but what a cool picture
it made.  You can see Ben shooting video over to the left,
with the spirit of Stevie Ray Vaugh overseeing AK and Brandon. 

You can't really tell it from the pics, but Brandon was just as
sick as a dog for about two or three days... including when we
played this show. 

More rocking. 

Even more rocking. 

The Andrew Kershen = Rock God picture.

The me = rock god picture. 

The Brandon = rock slave picture. 

At the riverside, they advertise their gigs on the freaky
bizarre toilet.
(doesn't show in picture, but this tank is near the ceiling) 

We had the prime "top line" slot on the toilet ad.

Andrew orders and eats some mystery street food in Taipae,
that came with rice, peanut sauce, and cilantro ...on a stick.
About 10 minutes later, Darin tells us that the mystery
part of the stick is cooked pig's blood.

Andrew says cooked pig's blood is actually pretty good. 

In Taiwan, you can take the flying dog bus line. 

"Taiwan Beer"... as pictured on the right.. is said to
have formaldehyde in it.

We think that's why the Taiwanese hold their youth so well.

This is definitely going somewhere on the next Album sleeve. 

One thing I will say about Taiwan... they have some of
the most comfy buses you'll ever ride in.
The bus system really rocks too.  Works almost like a subway
system.  In big cities you can catch a bus to another big city
at the station roughly every 5 or 10 minutes.

Buddhist temple out the bus window. 

At this point we're at the Spring Scream festival, and here
is a shot of our sleeping accomodations.  This picture is late
morning, the day we arrived.  We caught an overnight bus
with other performers and got here at about 7am.

Early first day of the show, and a few tents are set up.
By the weekend, there were tents just about everywhere
in the sleeping fields.

The festival was about a mile walk to the South China Sea
beach, and we made the pilgrimage several times.
Here's Brandon and Ben.  Both have cool hats that they
bought in "Kenting", near the festival.  Ben's hat has this
cool "pop-up" little air conditioning feature. 

Here's a early shot at the festival.  Unfortunately, the festival
didn't start up until about 4pm each day, when there was only
about 2 hours of light left... and it was still really hot.  By the time
were throngs of crazy people out and about, it was too dark
for pictures.  But here you can get an idea of what was coming.
This is one of 3 large stages that had music working about 6 or
8 hours a day.  By the later evening hours, this entire area was
full of tons and tons of people.  I don't know how to say for sure,
but I'd estimate about 10,000 in attendance over the weekend.

Brandon and Ben one morning.  (day 2, I think)

Here's one of our beach/town walks. 

Brandon and Ben love each other with sunscreen every
time they get a chance.. 

One Taiwanese mainstay, at all the convenience stores, is
boiled "tea eggs".  I had one, and they're pretty good.  But they
also stink up the convenience store in a terrible way
that's beyond words! 

Taiwan has a nasty national addiction - call "beettle nut".  It's
something that grows on the island, and apparently has loads
of caffeine and nicotine in it.  The way they market it, is by having
pretty young girls cut and wrap it in street displays like this one.
They hate for you to take their picture, so you have to get far
away and use the zoom... like I did here.  Sometimes they wrap
the beetle nut with beetle nut leaves... and sometimes they get
fancy and used dried fruit.  Either way, it seems to make people
shake, sweat, and buy more.  It also makes their teeth green.

Taiwan has sharp pokey spikey things that grow in the wild, 
as Andrew and I found out on a failed attempt to climb a 
mountain near the festival.
We later succeeded in climbing the mountain, but by that time
my darn digital camera had quit working.  But we got an amazing
view of the festival... the beach... and the local nuclear reactor.

Here's more from the failed climb attempt.  This is where we
took a 5 minute break after about 60 minutes of tearing through
scratchy brush trying to find the trail that others told us was
easy to find.  Later... we found out that it was easy to find, if
you start in the right spot. 

Here's the mountain, from where we stopped the first attempt. 

Taiwan has cows, and some of them are apparently pretty dead.

Back at the festival, Andrew gets his butt pretty much kicked
by a local Taiwanese ping pong paddle master. 

As performers, we got free food.  They cut up food for you,
and then you grilled it yourself over little fires.
I saw Scott try a raw mushroom here, and it made a local
girl make just the funniest gross out face. 

No, not that kind of mushroom.

Hanging out in the heat of the day, waiting for jam time. 

Brandon tells Ben how to run his camera. 

Scott does a pre show stretch. 

I forget this fellows name, sitting by Andrew, but he was a
Canadian visiting the festival.  He would trade us beer and
water, for a daily use of our showers. 

Here's a shot of Darin, who've I've mentioned several times above.
Looking dapper, in his stylish cowboy hat. 

Tina... another displaced American... down for the festival. 
She works for CNN in Taipae.
She did not get to see our band rock, thanks to staying up
the entire night before at a beach rave.  Maybe next year.
But that brings up the raves.  Every night after the festival
ended, raves would start up in the woods and on the beach.
I don't know how you could do it all, but if you wanted to do
it all... you could skip sleep the entire 4 days and never
run out of anything to do at all.

I took several of these shots, hoping to have some blackmail
material... but they turned out much lamer than I was expecting. 

I think I took this shot after catching Scott
with the morning grouchies. 

But he got over them quickly, and here we're getting some breakfast. 

Check out this beetle nut marketing technique. 

...and this one. 

Here were some of my breakfast friends from the last day
of the festival.  The fellow on the right is yet another dislocated
American, teaching English in mainland China.  Very nice guy,
but I'm terrible with names... and darn if I can't come up with
his at the moment.

Darker picture than I was hoping for, but this guy
really had some cool tattoos.

Here's a hilltop shot looking down on the festival grounds.

That's it for the pictures.  Unfortunately, thanks to the lighting,
I have no "action shots" from the festival performances.
But Ben shot some great video, and you can click here
to see some of it compiled into a music video for "Fuck It All"
(large file download - broadband connection recommended)

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