When Mayday burst out in the Taiwan music scene in 1998, they were the voice of youth. Not just because they were young at the time, but because their songs captured youth in all its energetic, hot-blooded, lyrical, fearless, bittersweet glory. Ten years later, Mayday is still the same good old Mayday. They've found greater commercial success than any other Taiwan band and achieved a superstar status matched by few, but they're still the Mayday that holes up every year to make an album that hits the heart, and then tours like crazy to put on show after show that hits the spot. Last December, Mayday returned to the Zhongshan Stadium for their first concerts there in eight years, playing to an audience of 100,000 in two days.

The concert opened with an impressive flurry of New Year's-worthy fireworks and the energetic karaoke favorite "Love i-n-g". The atmosphere stays electric with two more youth-oriented rock tracks off Mayday's last album Poetry of The Day After: "Bursting Liver", an anthem for all the fun-loving night owls out there, and the freedom-hailing "The Cry of Spring". These catchy fist-pumping jump-along songs of youthful defiance are of course half of what Mayday is best known for, and what makes their concerts such exuberant events.

The other half of Mayday are the rock ballads with heart-piercing lyrics that voice your hopes and fears better than you ever could. My favorite track from Poetry of The Day After, "You Are Not Truly Happy", is the first ballad to appear, and its beautiful melody and emotional lyrics are even more moving live. The most affecting song of the night though would have to be "The Place in My Heart That's Not Broken Down", a quietly intense mid-tempo number composed by Monster and written by Ashin. I was not particularly struck by the song when I listened to Poetry of The Day After, partly because Ashin's vocals muffled the lyrics more than usual in the album recording, but it sounds amazing live. Ashin sings through the ups and downs of the song with great emotional intensity, and his lyrics reflecting on self and music ring out clearly with its strong imagery: "When people become markets / And markets become battlefields / How many dreams are buried in the field?"

For more cheerful fare, "Smile and Forget Song" and old standby "Monkey King" capture the heart-stirring campfire-singalong sentiments of youth and friendship, growing up and staying true, that have made Mayday's music so popular among the young and the aging young over the last ten years. Mayday's music seems to be forever linked to the sentiment and spirit of youth, but it is a youth that keeps growing with the band and the listeners, perhaps nowhere more clearly than in "Yi Ya Ya", a gentle back-to-basics acoustic number that Stone wrote for his infant daughter.

Mayday closes the concert on a high note with the Taiwanese-dialect number "Breakout Day", singing the hope, conviction, and endurance of a heart that has weathered storms but chooses to believe a better day lies ahead. In the very least, there should be better music. Next month, for the third year in a row, I'll be seeing Mayday in concert in May. And I hope that I can continue to do so for many years to come.