That Fucking Place!
As the co-owner of the music industry’s favourite hangout spot and the director of some of Taipei’s largest venues supporting independent artists, Arthur Chen has witnessed the evolution of the Taipei underground music scene for the past four decades. I spoke to Chen about Fucking Place and the live houses that revolutionised a generation of Taiwanese creativity.
There’s no better way to explain what kind of bar Fucking Place is other than a short anecdote told by its co-owner Arthur Chen. A few years back, Sugizo, guitarist of the legendary Japanese metal bands X Japan and Luna Sea, got a little bit tipsy there. He saw another man sitting at the bar and immediately turned to Chen and their friends. “That man looks exactly like Tricky,” said Sugizo half-jokingly, referring to the British trip-hop artist, his favourite musician of all time. The crowd turned to the bar and, almost at the same time, laughed, “he fucking is Tricky!”
“At this fucking place?” You might ask, as Fucking Place doesn’t quite look like somewhere two world-class musicians would coincidentally meet outside of their own respective countries. It serves cheap alcohol, the bathrooms are always a mess, and the whole place smells rotten. But somehow it has survived the past thirty years and welcomed guests like director Wim Wenders, Icelandic post-rock band Sigur Rós, and Chinese rock pioneer Cui Jian.
“No matter how famous you are, the service you receive will be equally as shit,” joked Chen, with a giggle suggesting that there is some truth in the joke. This is how he described his customers. “They are anticonformists who are confused about what they stand for, they could be idealists or materialists. No matter which political party they stand for and for whatever cause, they have the deepest understanding of the world that’s beyond our comprehension.”
The Taipei Underground
Chen wasn’t the one who opened Fucking Place. When he first became a regular at the bar in the 90s, it was still called the Postmodern Graveyard. “I can’t remember how I got to know this place, but I was living a rebellious lifestyle and I would avoid bars that everyone went to,” said Chen, who used to casually spend over 20,000 NTD (£500) every month at the bar, so much that he decided to just take over the bar’s ownership.
“Before I took over the place, it was a hangout spot for hipsters, filmmakers, and anti-authoritarian liberals,” reminisced Chen. Since then it has changed its name to the Graveyard and eventually to Fucking Place, now synonymous with the Taipei underground music scene thanks to Chen’s love for underground music and the bar’s infamous, daily DJ sets.
In the 70s, when Chen was still in school, most live houses in Taipei were restaurants with live bands that covered either folk-pop singers like Tracy Huang and Stella Chang, or hits on the Billboard charts. People who despised the mainstream turned to South Taipei’s underground live houses like Wooden Top and Men Dogs and Ants, where a young Chen first experienced the energy of heavy metal. “I was shocked – it was very hazy, everyone had long hair, everyone was drinking Taiwan Beer with the black bottles, everyone was smoking Longlife cigarettes, and I was embarrassed to even grab the Marlboro Light from my pocket,” said Chen. “The headbanging and roaring was like a ceremony for people who knew they belonged there, but you would quickly find yourself home if you had even just a little bit of rock in your blood.”
Fucking Place wasn’t known for rock music back then, but Chen wanted to bring on board the same contagious music that infected him. “Fucking Place started to play rock music every day but ninety-nine percent of the people didn’t really feel for the music,” explained Chen. “But if that one percent of customers happened to have even just a little bit of rock in their blood, it might change their lives too.”
The Turning Points
The Taipei underground music scene saw a turning point in 1994 when the livehouse Scum opened on the block next to Fucking Place. Men Dogs and Ants sadly burned down the same year and Scum inherited the same underground rage that it had, only that the owners wanted to do something about the scene’s unoriginality and its unhealthy obsession with music from the West.
“The owners, who were A-Feng and A-Chi, vocalists of the bands Groupie and The Chairman, allowed bands to perform only if they also played original music besides covering Guns N’ Roses and Van Halen,” said Chen. “Everyone wanted to play there so it started the first wave of creativity in the underground music scene.” Some Taipei live houses that still strive today, many of which are cradles of some of the biggest names in Taiwanese independent music, were born out of the ashes of Scum after it closed in 1996.
The other turning point happened at Fucking Place. “Two decades ago it was considered tacky to play songs that were sung in Chinese, especially in those so-called classy disco clubs,” described Chen. “But around 15 years ago, after the DJ finished his set at Fucking Place, I spontaneously took over and played a set of Mandarin, Taiwanese-Hokkien and Taiwanese-Hakka songs. Then I realised that it’s easier to resonate with the crowd with music from their shared cultural background and in their own mother tongue.”
In 2009, Chen launched the first iteration of the Authentic Chinese Hit Song Night, an annual all-nighter marathon live set event that blasts Chinese language hits. “So many people flocked into Fucking Place that night that the floor collapsed and destroyed some of the phones on display in the telecom service downstairs.”
Occasionally, people, mostly those who have been visiting for decades, complain about how Fucking Place isn’t the same fucking place anymore. “‘That means we’re all getting too old,’ that’s what I usually say to them,” joked Chen. Some DJs playing at Fucking Place would immediately switch to rock music whenever they see Chen walking in, but Chen couldn’t care less. “The reason Fucking Place rocks is because we play more than just rock music,” explained Chen. “Fucking Place shouldn’t be catered to my own taste because it exists for everyone as a sanctuary.”
Beyond Fucking Place
Alongside Fucking Place, Chen has experienced several career changes. He started in the advertising industry, but wanted something more adventurous. Chen decided to move to Hong Kong and started working for Channel [V], a television channel launched in the 90s to replace MTV’s Asian operation. Chen spent most of his time there working on a late-night rock music-themed programme that satirised the mainstream and shed light to the underground. At the age of 40, Chen left the television industry and became the director of Legacy, a collective of live houses in Taiwan that has been hosting independent musicians since 2009.
Legacy is unlike any of its predecessors. Its largest location is in a spacious, revamped warehouse that could host more than 1200 people. “Legacy has always had the strategy of hosting both independent artists and mainstream artists because we want to democratise the live house,” explained Chen. “People think that a live house should be in a cramped shady basement, but we want to bring it out of the underground (quite literally) and make it accessible to people who are afraid of entering spaces like that.”
In 1983 Chen went to the first concert he’s ever been to, the New Year’s Eve gig of Ta-Yu Lo, a legendary folk rock singer known for his critique on nationalism and conservatism. “I found excitement in the fact that 10,000 people are uniting at one place for the same reason,” Chen remembered. “It’s the same thing with seeing your favourite artist’s gig even when it’s only with twenty other people, you feel safe, included, and comfortable, that’s what I want to bring to the music industry.”
In late June, the Authentic Chinese Hit Song Night will launch its fifteenth incarnation, this time across two weekends, in two cities and four different venues, including Fucking Place and two of Legacy’s warehouses. From Fucking Place to Legacy, “Taiwanese underground music only started a few decades ago, and we shall let it strive for another 50 or 100 years,” said Chen.
