Gigantic Teacher Power

Did you know that AISG’s faculty is home to a band made up of rock-spirited teachers called “Gigantic”?

The band’s name was taken from the title of a hit by alternative rock band The Pixies, and they chose it to show how powerful and loud the band is. The band consists of four teachers: Mr. Boyd (lead singer), Mr. Schwagler (guitar), Mr. Hall (guitar) and Mr. Shomper (drums). The band plays every Friday or Saturday night in or around Guangzhou, and has been known to pack in a crowd, comprised of both expats and local Chinese rock fans.

The idea to create the band first came up five years ago when Mr. Boyd played his guitar at an Open Mic Night at Hooley’s, a bar in Guangzhou. The bar manager thought Mr. Boyd’s performance was exceptional and asked if he could get a band together by the following weekend. Right away, Mr. Boyd searched for other teachers at school and pulled together a group, some of whom had played as part of a rock band with each other before. At the time, the drummer was Mr. Jones instead of Mr. Shomper. For their first performance, the band learned 25 songs in a week and a half. According to Mr. Boyd,  the band had a successful first performance.

Early on, the band played a variety of songs during their performances, but most of their songs are sad and dark rather than happy. Below is a video of the band playing a cover of David Bowie’s “Rebel Rebel” at Hooley’s.

According to Mr. Boyd, the reason the group chooses to play rock is because the music is big, loud, powerful and emotional. He stated that, for him, as a person who listened to rock music from a young age and joined a punk rock band at the age of 16, rock music has been something that he cannot remove from his life. Although Boyd works full-time teaching art at AISG, he hopes that the band will remain together for as long as possible or until he starts losing the desire to perform as a rocker on stage.

Gigantic was recently featured in a writeup in the Shenzhen edition of the local magazine “That’s…”: see the slideshow below to view the article. If you happen to bump into the band and see one of their performances, make sure to give them a friendly cheer!

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