An Unclassifiable, Low-Tech, Gloriously Tacky Band: Mixer (Part 2) – April 2024 Week 3 Recommended Playlist
Intro & Playlist Links
Meow meow, hi everyone~ Welcome back, it’s Mydondon! Today we’re picking right back up where we left off with our deep dive into Mixer (美秀集團)!
YouTube playlist:
Spotify playlist:
The Out-of-Nowhere “Shiny Cannon” Album
Last week we introduced two of Mixer’s homemade instruments: the Provincial Highway 8 and the Shiny Cannon. But the band actually pulled off another seriously impressive feat, and that’s the “Shiny Cannon” album, which is at the same time both a homemade instrument and an album. The idea came from Goper, who wanted everyone to own one of these DIY instruments, and one you could even use to interact with them during a live show. To get a bit more specific, this instrument, just like the Shiny Cannon and the Provincial Highway 8, can change its tone based on light, which means at a concert they can use lighting cues to interact with the audience and make the whole show that much more unique and, well, “shiny.”
But hardly anyone actually owns one of these albums these days, and honestly, getting to touch a Shiny Cannon album with my own hands is on my lifelong bucket list. If you want to get to know this album better, Mixer also made a tutorial video where you can catch a glimpse of the Shiny Cannon in all its glory.
The Shiny Cannon Album Nearly Bankrupted Them
That said, making this one-of-a-kind album wasn’t nearly as smooth-sailing as you’d imagine. Because they were working on such a tight timeline, they had to start funding the Shiny Cannon album out of their own pockets at the same time they were applying for the government’s “Pop Music Marketing & Promotion Grant.” In the end they were lucky enough to win the government’s favor and land the subsidy, but the funding came in a full third or more short of what they’d budgeted, so they had to figure out how to plug a financial hole worth over a million NTD on their own. That “Shiny Cannon” showcase did, despite all the pressure, come off successfully, but once it was over all they really had to show for it were the beautiful memories and the rush they and their fans shared, while they themselves ended up out of pocket by quite a lot.
“These Past Few Years” & “The Worker”
The Electric Fire King album also has two songs that don’t get talked about much but that I personally really love: “These Past Few Years” and “The Worker.” I privately like to think of “These Past Few Years” as a spin-off of the Affair Trilogy. It starts out as a guy who’s just been broken up with, singing about that helpless feeling of wanting to win the relationship back but having no way to do it. But then, out of nowhere, it slips in the line “Give him to your husband, then, that’s just how it is / that cute little one at your place is actually my kid / he came out all weird and strange / talks a real wild streak / must take after me.” When I heard that I was just like??? How are you even supposed to read this line? Sure, you could read it as the wife leaving the main character and taking the kid with her, but if that were the case, the current husband would already know, so the later line “You tell me not to bawl / I’ll send you back home” wouldn’t follow. Which means the husband DOESN’T know, which means the wife… well…
The second song, “The Worker,” tells the story of a migrant worker or a foreign spouse. This is an issue that’s been argued over plenty of times in the past, even fairly recently with the controversy around African migrant workers. These topics involve a lot of layers and are really complicated, but there’s no getting around the fact that here in Taiwan, many industries still rely on the help of migrant workers to function normally. And sometimes, even though I genuinely want to make an effort not to view them through a tinted lens, I can’t promise I’ve never once made them feel like I was looking down on them.
This song is an attempt to put myself in their shoes and see this world they weren’t born and raised in through their eyes. “I believe / there will come a day when we can shout out our own names / I think back to the day I picked up my simple luggage and arrived in a strange land / crossing oceans / just to send a little money back home / I never imagined / never imagined / that on this island everyone is squeezing one another dry.”
The Trouble-Plagued Mixer – The Awakening Music Festival’s Ugly Collapse and the Babao 3 Concert
Back in 2018, Mixer was just a band that had put out its first album. But compared to other bands, Mixer grew at an unusually fast pace, landing a spot at Megaport Festival within six months, and after their debut album they went on to conquer one major music festival after another. Even so, they had their fair share of misfortune. In 2019, for instance, the Awakening Music Festival suddenly went under, and the Babao 3 concert, which Awakening was originally co-organizing, ended up being something Mixer had to put on entirely by themselves. Mixer could have just cancelled it back then, but they’d been preparing for so long and really didn’t want to let the audience down, so they gritted their teeth and pushed the show through anyway.
But where was all that missing money supposed to come from? They couldn’t exactly charge everyone a second time, right? So Mixer borrowed money left and right and footed the bill for that concert themselves, and in the end, thanks to everyone’s help, they got out with only a small loss. The funny part is that at the time they were also planning to release another run of the Shiny Cannon album, a red-base collab edition to celebrate the Awakening Music Festival’s 10th anniversary, but before it could even come out, the Awakening Music Festival collapsed in disgrace.
After that there was also the cannabis vape oil incident (in short, a fan gave them a gift containing cannabis vape oil) and drummer Li Wei leaving the band, though compared to the things mentioned above, those count as relatively minor. To this day Mixer still keeps a really good relationship with their former members. None of them left because of fights; they left because their own dreams just didn’t overlap with Mixer’s. Li Wei, for example, dreamed of becoming an excellent designer and creator, and Peici left because she’d always really wanted to be a teacher, and ending up in Mixer in the first place had honestly just been a happy accident.
The Second Album – Multicolored Treasure Mountain King
In 2021, Mixer released their second album, Multicolored Treasure Mountain King, which is basically what the Electric Fire King looks like after evolving (why do I get the feeling the Electric Fire King cinematic universe is expanding infinitely?). This album includes a song written by Li Wei, who had already left the band by then, called “The Dreamer.” The MV’s plot roughly goes like this: in the far, far future, Mixer has already broken up. Goper, working odd jobs while still clinging to his musical dream, still yearns to put Mixer back together, so he goes back and rounds everyone up. Despite running into all sorts of difficulties along the way, the five of them finally reunite, pick their instruments back up, step onto the stage, and together make the unfinished dream come true.
“I’ve learned / to live stubbornly on my own / I know / what I’m doing / a steadfast heart / that won’t allow itself to be taken away / a dreamer / has to get used to the loneliness.” Maybe in becoming dreamers, we lose a little something too.
“Mark Twain”
The next song I find really special on this album is “Mark Twain.” Both the MV and the music itself are written with a lot of depth, and I’ve rewatched the MV many times myself but still don’t quite get what the metaphors are all about, and the clues you can find online are pretty limited too. For MVs this loaded with metaphor, the comment section is full of people offering their own interpretations and takes, and the fun part is that reading through them all, I found everyone has very different thoughts and angles on this song.
Mixer also dropped a few clues for everyone to guess at the meaning behind the song. Take the gorilla in the MV, for example: in Xiuqi’s interpretation, it’s a higher-dimensional species, like the Superman everyone imagines, or a god, that kind of thing. In the MV it’s the computer up against the gorilla (or, to me, the computer up against humanity), and by comparison the gorilla can still do a lot more, like the gorilla can think and move around freely and nimbly, whereas an ordinary computer can’t do nearly as much. And at the end, when the fridge is opened and it’s full of rifles, Xiuqi’s take is that it hints at the agitation and resentment of people in their later years, a kind of world-weariness where nothing ever seems to go your way.
Personally, I really like the interpretation from one user, @yu-linliu9693, in the comment section under the MV on YouTube. Below is roughly what their comment meant, after I tidied it up. The spoken intro mentions that Mark Twain once praised a lady’s beauty at a banquet, and the lady replied that she couldn’t return the compliment, to which Mark Twain said she could just lie. This exchange captures the meaning of a “beautiful lie.”
The MV stars a computer, showing how “fake” feelings can bring about “real” experiences, which ties into the theme the song is expressing. In the MV, after the two computers have a conversation, it’s only when they both put on a “lie” that they start to fall in love. The lyrics’ line “Shallow lyrics just need to ride a good melody / a terrible rotten personality just needs to find a beautiful shell” hints that in love we often pretend to be the version the other person likes, but in the end we still have to face our true selves, and that original “lie” came only from love.
We often overlook that everything in the world is a fleeting “lie,” including money, careers, and power. Technology and social networks may be fake, but their purpose is to bring us closer together. If we completely reject all this “fakeness,” what kind of life would we have? Would something be missing, some of the flavor gone? Every choice in life, whether it’s how we use technology or what we eat, has no standard right answer. The emotion the song conveys is that, although a lie may be temporary, maybe within the lie we can find a little meaning.
I think this interpretation gets about as close as you can to what this song is really trying to say to its fans. As for why “Mark Twain” was chosen as the title? It’s because here, “Mark Twain” can be read to mean “I love you.” The reference comes from Goper’s mother, who, when he was little, would often read him Mark Twain storybooks before bed, so to him Mark Twain is a way of expressing gratitude for a mother’s love, something you can catch a hint of in the YouTube MV.
“I Want Your Love” & “Punishment”
Okay, we’ve covered a few of the more cryptic, hard-to-decipher songs, so let’s introduce one that’s simple, in-your-face, and famous: “I Want Your Love.” Honestly, I think this song has a real “only Scott knows” vibe to it. It doesn’t need any obscure, hard-to-parse lyrics to make everyone feel like it’s deep; it’s just an addictive stretch of music paired with simple, blunt words. Sometimes not having to think is its own kind of relaxing, and this is exactly that kind of song. “I want your love / loving till the sky comes crashing down / the world’s too chaotic / so spin along with me / can you feel it? / the speed is too fast to keep up with / because my heart / my passion / my soul are all going wild for you.”
The next song I want to introduce is “Punishment.” I’m someone who’s pretty into punk and rock, and the moment I first heard it I knew I was going to love this one, so much so that I’ll use it to make up sentences, like if I went hiking that day I’d say “the road I walked today will come punish me tomorrow,” and so on. Every time I hear this song my body can’t help but move along to the rhythm, and then the “punishment” I sing today comes back to punish my throat tomorrow. “The cigarettes I smoke today will come punish me tomorrow / the booze I drink today will come punish me tomorrow / the cigarettes I smoke today will come punish me tomorrow / the booze I drink today will come punish me tomorrow.”
“Sim-Būn (Heartache)”
Today’s last song, “Sim-Būn (Heartache),” grabbed my attention and that of a lot of other listeners the moment it dropped, because the Taiwanese-Hokkien rap in the middle of this song is seriously cool and seriously unique! For a while I wanted to try to learn that part so that maybe I could show it off at KTV, but in the end I never did manage to learn it. In short, the song tells the story of a young man working at a fruit shop who meets the owner of a billiards parlor. From the moment they meet to falling in love, the young man is always thoughtful and caring, except for one thing: he just can’t kick his gambling habit. In the end, because of gambling, the young man misses his wife’s call for help, and ends up filled with regret over losing her.
The word “sim-būn” refers to longing and missing someone, or describes a state of inner sorrow and gloom. In plain terms, it’s that heavy, uncomfortable feeling in your heart when you miss someone terribly, and anyone who’s ever been through it definitely knows that awful feeling. Even though at the end of the story the child is successfully saved, the longing and the heavy regret in his heart can never be erased. “On the day I first left / I couldn’t put the heartbreak into words, no one bear to keep me company / the moonlight spilling outside the window / doesn’t shine on me alone / I hope there’ll come a day / when I can write my wishes and regrets into the most beautiful shore to land on / I long for your gentle voice.”
Alright, that’s where this week’s recommended playlist comes to an end! I can’t believe I actually finished it. There’s just so much material on Mixer, and it’s all over the place, plus there are still plenty of fun stories I’d love to share with everyone, but let’s leave the rest for next week! Thanks for tuning in today, and see you all next week!
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