“Encore, encore, encore…” echoed through the Ching-sheng Square on last Wednesday, October 20. Despite the possible threat of fire ants, a rock concert dedicated to this year’s freshmen was held at sunset as scheduled. The 300 strong fans appeared to have forgotten that not long ago a fire-ant mound was discovered nearby. They were totally immersed in the deafening beats of rock & roll, jumping up and down to the rhythm in the slightly chilly evening.

The organizer, the Western Music Student Club, knew they needed to counter the fear for fire ants in order to ensure a healthy turn out of fans. Therefore, instead of being a fear-monger, they launched the concert under the slogan of “We can hypnotize fire ants fast” and renamed the concert as “Fire Ant Warriors”, urging fans good-humorously to stand up to any possible attacks by these ants. The poster of the concert also read: “ Achtung, fire ants! Music is our sword, rock & roll is the shield, and we’ll fight for the right to sing on the square”. Well, their trick certainly worked as hundreds of fans turned out that evening.

The four-hour long concert was packed with delighted fans that sang and danced along with the performers. The bands that inspired them include “Fire Ant Army”, “831”, “Doodda”, “Slien Sign” and “Bottom-up Band”, whose members are all TKU students playing the bass guitars, electrical guitars, synthesizer, and drums to blast everyone away with their highly-charged music. The drummer from the “Slien Sign”, Lin Ya-ru, a senior of the Mechanical and Electro-Mechanical Engineering (MEME), was thrilled and proud to see how everyone was enjoying him/herself.

One of the highlights was a retro moment at the concert when Hong Wei-ling, a senior of the Civil Engineering Department who is also the lead singer of the band “831” played some well-known rock & roll tunes from the 70’s. With the atmospheric soft yellowish light, music such as that of the Moody Blues was indeed very tantalizing.

Overall, the concert was a great success. The Chair of the Western Music Club, Huang Bao-hwa, a junior of the MEME Department, was very up-beat after the concert, hoping to see more musical creative juices flowing out in the future through such events. One of the fans, Chen Zheng-wei, a sophomore of the Public Administration Department vowed to return for more.

Note: U2, an Irish rock band, released a hit song in the 90’s called “Achtung Baby”, It means “Watch Out Baby” in English.