Today it is commonplace for people to release their creative musical work on Facebook or YouTube. But it is only in the 21st century that these self-media platforms have become available. Before that, many musicians could only sing to themselves in the shower.

Thankfully there have been live houses like Witch House and the Riverside Music Café that have embraced artists’ thoughts and original ideas about life, the living environment, and the future. These venues have given a home to music that was not yet widely accepted, and brought countless indie musicians—including Anpu, Panai, Crowd Lu, Zé Hwang, Wu Qing-feng, and Peggy Hsu—into our lives.

 

Witch House

Bringing underground music to the surface

Naming her venue “Witch House,” founder Peng Yu-jing says, “I don’t feel that the term ‘witches’ has a negative connotation. Basically, it refers to a group of women with the capacity to take action, and in traditional society they even played a role as healers.”

Peng, a sociology graduate, had been working as an apprentice chef at the Sherwood Hotel for only two months when suddenly she got a call from the owner of Fembooks bookshop. Peng rapidly describes the origins of Witch House in cartoon-like fashion, playing both roles in the conversation: “The Fembooks owner paged me saying ‘Something’s come up, call back now.’ ‘What kind of emergency could she have involving me?’ ‘The florist below Fembooks has moved out. I asked the landlord to save the space for you and not rent it out to anyone else.’ ‘Save the space for me to do what?’ ‘Don’t you want to open a café or restaurant?’ ‘What do you mean I want to open a café? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’” Thus did Peng, who enjoyed working in the kitchen, stumble into founding Witch House, and a major performance space for Taiwanese indie music got its start.

Peng didn’t want the space to be used only passively, so she accepted various activities and projects, such as graduation exhibitions, screenings of 16-­millimeter films, puppet theater, and performances of plays. “In those days there were very few venues, but there were many voices that wanted to be heard and every­one had something they wanted to say.” When the bar Scum opened by the underground band Groupie was forced to shut down, the band’s leader brought a truckload of equipment to Peng and asked her if she could take it. She readily agreed, buying the gear at second-hand cost, and thus began Witch House’s relationship with underground music. “This was the first time Taiwan’s underground music was brought to the surface,” she says with a smile.

A place for women to sing their songs

When the venue first opened, Peng wanted to have “a place where young women could stay out late having fun.” Once live music was added into the mix, she still hoped to give priority to women’s voices, offering them a stage to sing their own songs and tell their own stories.

Artists like Anpu (Deserts Chang), Panai Kusui, Zé Hwang, and Sandee Chan were all regular performers at Witch House. Generations of women musicians have sung their songs there, as Witch House has provided a home for the generational changes in Taiwan’s indie music scene and has added diversity and richness to it.

In an interview with Ma Shih-fang, Anpu once said, “If not for my experiences at Witch House, I might still have written songs, but I wouldn’t have had such humility towards music or life, and perhaps even wouldn’t have felt that living was so crucial just for myself.” Panai, who was a regular performer at Witch House in 1998, says that early in her career when she sang at restaurants she had to consider customers’ reactions. “I was just a piece of furniture with a voice.” But at Witch House she could sing her own songs, and she really began to express herself in performances.

Memories of youth

It’s not easy to run a live house in a residential neighborhood. You have to cultivate good relations with neighbors and cater to their needs. “Outside the venue we maintain order and keep things quiet, and look after the stray dogs and cats on the street. We even maintain order among people who aren’t our customers, because everything is on our shoulders,” laughs Peng.

In 2011, a major fire at a pub in Taichung brought to the fore the longstanding problem of the regulation of live houses. Government agencies repeatedly came to Witch House to conduct inspections, and at one point it was rumored that the venue was going to be closed down. When this story broke, people from all walks of life filled the mayor’s mailbox with emails of support for Witch House. Peng never anticipated such a warm response. “I think perhaps everyone had good times here when they were young!”

After getting past the threat of being closed, in 2015 Witch House held the “Witch Festival” to celebrate its 20th anniversary. The star-studded line-up testified to the trajectory of indie music in Taiwan. In 2020, Peng and Witch House received an Outstanding Contribution Award at the Golden Indie Music Awards.

A “live” house

It was only after a renovation in 2016 that Witch House began to offer Wi-Fi. Peng felt that if you were meeting your friends face to face, why spend time looking at your cell phone? It’s better to spend quality time together. ­Panai says, “Here there’s no difference in how people look at each other. For example, you are a customer, but you’re still a person, and if someone comes to work here she is still a person and doesn’t have to always have a smile on her face. In this space you aren’t something special just because you are a customer, and no one has a lower status because of the nature of their work.” At Witch House, profit is not the only standard by which things are judged: the value of people is even more important.

Why do artists at Witch House invariably want to sing their own songs? Peng Yu-jing explains that, besides the rise of native Taiwanese consciousness back in the day, “In fact a lot of people want to express themselves through music, but it’s rare that people can fully express themselves in the music industry.” Mainstream record companies package their artists for the market according to a high-profit economic model. However, in the production process the music and its creator often become more and more remote from each other. “After a songwriter has signed a contract with a big record company, if for ­example they want to support Panai’s stand on the issue of land justice, will they dare to speak out? Won’t they have concerns? That’s why I feel that the simpler these relationships are the better, because then you can really be yourself.”
 

Riverside Music Café

Founded for musical performance

Tucked away in a back street near the Taipower Building in Taipei’s Gongguan area, Riverside Music Café is known to music fans as “Little Riverside” to distinguish it from the Red House performance hall (“Big Riverside”), in the city’s Ximen area, which was founded in 2008. Although Little River­side offers only a small basement space, famous bands and artists including Mayday, Wu Bai, Peggy Hsu, Won Fu, and Tizzy Bac have all performed here. It has been 20 years since the venue opened in 2000, during which time the venue has been a major promoter of Taiwan’s indie music.

After graduating from university, Riverside founder Geddy Lin went to the Musicians Institute in Los Angeles for further study. Having been to live houses in America, he says: “Bars in the US with live performances all have a door charge; people have to pay for the music.”

After returning to Taiwan, he took note of music performance spaces on the island at that time. Folk music restaurants held fewer than 100 people, and there was an absence of performance spaces at the next level, meaning that performers lacked the training and experience to be able to handle large events. “Singers must first have done at least 300 or 500 shows to be able to handle a performance at Taipei Arena.” Lin points to the example of Broadway in New York, which is backed up by the off-Broadway scene, so that a theater company progresses from venues with 100 people to those with 1000 and then 10,000, providing a gradual training process unavailable in Taiwan at that time.

“Riverside was founded for the purpose of live performances,” says Lin proudly. He carefully crafted the sound quality of the space. “We needed to build a performance venue that is up to standard: the monitors on stage have to be high-end ones and the speaker system has to be carefully calibrated. This trains musicians in the sounds they should be hearing when doing a show.”

“Little Riverside is a starting point for dreamers.” But dreams cannot come true all at once; people have to advance one step at a time. “The role that live houses play is to assist artists in getting adequate performance training to help them prepare for future concerts.”

In 2008, bands that had developed during the early period after the founding of Little Riverside urgently needed a larger stage, and Lin founded the Red House performance space in Ximen.

Recording the path of a city’s music

“Venues that hold 30 people are basically hand-to-hand combat, and it is the nature of the music itself that is being contested. They use the most primitive, simple equipment, and the audience hears your true colors.” For performers, these spaces offer ideal opportunities to test out the originality of their own music. But larger venues, such as those holding more than 500 people, test the artists’ control over the music. At this stage, artists have to commit themselves to learning to operate hardware, so that there is no qualitative change in the music when it is projected out through sound equipment; they must understand how to optimally present the music they have created.

Through one performance after another, live houses provide indie musicians with training opportunities. Lin explains how bands progress from one stage to the next by learning to deal with the challenges of venues of various sizes.

Record companies devote their efforts to enlarging the market for existing pop models and following popular trends. But indie artists use music to express their thoughts about their own lives, transforming their life experiences into song. Lin says: “Indie musicians create markets, change markets, and create trends.” And in this process live houses are indispensible.

After 20 years, 7283 days, and more than 12,000 performances, Geddy Lin is now fully committed to the task of organizing Riverside’s 20th anniversary music festival. Thinking back to his original purpose in opening the venue, Lin says that Little Riverside has always been oriented to on-stage shows and to providing a friendly environment to people just entering the music industry.

Riverside was not just a pioneer; it has been a witness to history. Lin says: “Live houses provide an important vantage point from which to record the develop­ment of a city’s musical culture. We [at Riverside] have been very honored to be able to play a part in the growth of Taiwan’s indie music scene.”