Okay campers, the boys have already made the Washington Post, and now they’re on the BBC! (Okay, the Chinese version, but still.) Here’s a quick and dirty translation:
On March 27, famous Taiwanese band Mayday held their first concert in England, called “Just Rock It, at London’s Wembley Stadium and received the welcome of thousands of Chinese fans.
At a press conference after the concert, Mayday’s lead singer Chen Hsin Hung Ashin said how happy they were to come to play in London, and because it was Mayday’s first real concert in Europe, they were deeply surprised to see the eight thousand fans in attendance.
“The first time we’re in London, we’re quite unfamiliar, but we suddenly had eight thousand friends waiting for us, so as soon as we hit the stage we were very moved,” he marveled.
Chen Hsin Hung remembered that although they still didn’t know what rock and roll music actually is, but “when we were teenagers, English rock band The Beatles changed our lives; I think this is the power of music, maybe that’s the meaning of rock and roll.”
“So this time, if we have a chance to come here and change the life of a friend here who likes Mayday, we’ll be so happy. Because we hope that tonight after they attend our concert they find that tomorrow they’re a little different than they were before,” he said.
Ten years ago Mayday Guitarist Shih Chin-hang (“Stone”) pursued advanced studies of music in Liverpool, so in the concert he specially used English to express his gratitude. He expressed his love of London, saying, “The architecture is really historical, and the modernization of the city hasn’t damaged that.”
“Stone” also recalled that the first day he landed in London, he specially headed into the city center to Hyde Park to bask in the sun, spending a very happy afternoon there.
At the press conference, “Stone” explained that Mayday has a great love of British music groups, including the Rolling Stones, Queen, Led Zeppelin, and other older groups, and also the more recently internationally popular Coldplay. Mayday listened to all this music growing up.
“For Chinese to hold concerts in Europe or even other western countries is very difficult; when I was in Liverpool studying music and I was the only Chinese or even East Asian person in the whole school, that was also pretty difficult business,” he admitted.
Mayday noted that when they learned that many famous English bands have played in Wembley Arena, the venue for their “Just Rock It” concert, they felt very honored, but it also made it a very important concert for them.
Given the importance of the London show, Mayday really hopes that not long from now they’ll be able to return once more and play in an even larger place, bringing their “Noah’s Ark” World Tour to even more English and European fans.
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Now, on a side note, here’s another fun bit about the concert (in English):
Kim, who was recently named Songwriter of the Week on BBC Radio Scotland, was given the rare chance to showcase her material – and Scatterbox’s video – when an old friend, who also happens to be a hugely successful pop star, got in touch.
A former fellow student at The Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, Shih Chin-hang, better known as Stone, a member of Taiwanese alternative rock band Mayday, asked Kim if she wanted to screen the video before their sell-out gig at Wembley.
Okay, that’s pretty cool. I wonder what the London crowd thought of the song?
