I was just checking out the lineup of musicians and acts playing at this year’s SXSW in Texas and was really amazed by the Korea presence this year — 10 Korean artists, not including Korean-American musicians. In 2010, I think there was just one.
There is also Far East Movement, with the Korean-American quotient. And, of course, there are plenty of other Asian acts, from Japan and around the continent.
The important thing, imho, is how Korean groups are increasingly getting out of Korea and playing around the world. That sort of exposure — exposing the bands to new audience and exposing new audiences and acts to the bands — is so important to developing the Korea scene. That sort of thing is a big part of what made Korean movies so good, 15 or 20 years ago. It’s great to see music doing the same.
Anyhow, Galaxy Express played at SXSW last year, too, when they scores a pretty cool mention in the New York Times. And once again, they will be going on a tour after the festival, hitting 25 shows in a dozen states (or so says their Facebook page). I’ll post the full schedule once I hear about it.
Last year was a great one for Korean pop music, but it was also excellent for indie music and other non-pop stuff in Korea. I only spent a couple of weeks in Korea this year, but it was clear from the shows I went to and people I talked with how vibrant the scene is these days (not to mention the music I downloaded and listened to). Back in 2008, when I started the Korea Gig Guide, I had this feeling that the indie scene was growing and getting stronger, like it was in the late 1990s. These days it is stronger still, continuing to grow bigger and more interesting.
Sadly, though, I don’t have a big list of my favorite new releases. For yet another year, I focused my energies in older Korean music, thanks to a huge batch of old records a friend digitized for me. I’m pretty proud of my collection of Korean rock, folk, and pop from the 1960s and ’70s now (thanks mysterious friend!). A related highlight of my year was meeting the great singer Kim Choo-ja. She and her husband nicely opened their home to me, and so I was able to absorb several hours of stories and good stuff.
As for new releases, the best of the year was probably Jambinai’s first full-length release, Différance (iTunes, Amazon). While not a fan of their more hardcore-tinged experiments with electric guitar, their core sound — driving postrock played on Korean traditional instruments — was as great as ever.
There was plenty of fun electro-based music last year, such as Glen Check (I particularly liked the single “84″) and Neon Bunny (her new EP Happy End was all quite fun). Love X Stereo is pretty good, too.
I am not a huge Telepathy fan, but their new version of “Flying White Pillow,” recorded for Fred Perry, was really intriguing, showing signs of growing into something more (a live show I saw of theirs in May backed up that impression).
And there were new released by 3rd Line Butterfly, Galaxy Express, and other big names.
But, as I said, I spent more time listening to old music, so I’m sure I missed a lot.
One of the coolest stories in 2012 was definitely Busker Busker, the Cheonan trio that appeared on an American Idol-esque TV music contest and somehow overcame all the producers’ preconceived notions of how the program was supposed to run, becoming perhaps the most popular group of the year. Yes, K-pop still dominates Korea, but the success of Busker Busker — a real band, playing real music — was one of the brightest rays of sunlight to shine through the bubblegum clouds in a long time.
(Not that there is anything wrong with bubblegum … I just value diversity).
Much more authoritative than my opinions, though, are the smart folks at Weiv, Korea’s longtime online music publication. They have put together another solid (and eclectic) list of the year’s top Korean music:
Fun news — Pop Goes Korea is at last available as an e-book. You don’t have to track down a physical copy, wait for an order, or kill any trees anymore.
Best of all, my publisher allowed me to make one small but important change to the e-book edition. At last we have the dollar-won exchange rate specified in the text. When I wrote the book, it was at the unusually strong 800 won/dollar level, which made some of the numbers seem a bit odd (soon after, it fell to 1,200 won/dollar, and today is still less than 1,100 won/dollar).
Big thanks to everyone who has already bought a copy. And thanks to all who read my articles and blogs — I really appreciate the support and I hope to keep you interested.
I see by the time stamp on my last post that I am overdue for my annual Korea Pop Wars update. Or Pop Goes Korea update. Or something.
Anyhow, the good news is that, at long last, it is looking increasingly likely that Pop Goes Korea will be getting an e-book edition soon. Stone Bridge Press is even letting make a couple of small changes, to things that have long bothered me about the original book — not a full-fledged update or anything so grand, but small things that matter to me.
It’s been a fairly eventful year, since my last post here. K-pop has really started making a lot of noise in the West, in ways I never would have guessed a few years ago — there were even concerts in Barcelona, Paris, Germany, and South America in the past year. In addition, I helped start the Korean Indie website (before leaving it recently). And so far, 2012 is shaping up to be the most successful years commercially for Korean movies since 2006, and could conceivably become the best year ever.
As usual, if you want to read more about Korean pop culture, my writing, or other random subjects, it is best to check out my personal blog, as I don’t really update this site much anymore.
Having just seen Prometheus, it’s become clear to me that a lot of people just have no sense at all when it comes to naming their starships. Isn’t naming a space ship “Prometheus” just asking for something bad to happen? Like saying “This ship is unsinkable.” With that in mind, here’s a list of names I would never use on a space ship:
Prometheus
Icarus (from Event Horizon)
Hubris
Oedipus
Nemesis
Eumenides (or Furies, Fates, etc.)
Ragnarok
Poetic Justice
Death Star (cool name, but way too much baggage)
Nothing Could Possibly Go Wrong
Shyamalan
On the other hand, “Oh No, Oh No, We’re All Going to Die” would probably be fine.
Was it Douglas Adams who said “The universe isn’t smaller than you imagine; it’s smaller than you can imagine”? Here are my three biggest examples:
1) Sophomore year of university, first day of class, in a political science class waiting for the professor to arrive and begin the lecture. Bored, I turn to the guy beside me and start making small talk. “Where are you from?”, I ask creatively. Turns out he is from Canada. “Oh, me, too,” I respond. He asks where and I tell him near Toronto, from a small town he likely has not heard of. But he is apparently from a small town near Toronto, too, so we keep delving and asking questions. Turns out, not only is he from the same small town as me, his dad took out my appendix when I was 13.
2) Korea, late 1990s. I was in a smallish town, a couple of hours from Seoul, and bored. So I ask around and find a bar where westerners have been known to hang out. I go there and indeed some sort of party is going on, consisting of mostly English teachers. We begin chatting and the usual. While talking to this one red-headed woman who is around my age, I again ask “Where are you from?” She says “Canada.” I say “Me, too, but from a small town you’ve never heard of” and the dance begins again. Turns out, not only was she from the same town, she sat beside me in high school for a couple of years.
3) Italy, last week. I was at a conference (sponsored by the wonderful folks at the Legatum Institute). During dinner one night, I end up yakking with one of the lecturers. I knew that she went to the same university as I did, so I start asking about classes she took, professors, etc. We’re not getting much overlap, but something about her answers is scratching at my subconscious. I thought she was four years younger than me or so, but now I am not sure, so I ask when she graduates; she says just one year after I did. So I ask if she lived at 42nd street, in one of the row houses. She looks at me, confused. I asked if Mxxxx and Bxxxxx were her roommates then. She looks more confused. And then it all comes together.
Turns out, this is woman lived with some friends of mine and was there on one of the stranger, booze-fueled nights of my early 20s. We ended up on the roof of the oldest building on campus around 3am, just hanging out in the light rain and watching helicopters come and go from the roof of the nearby university hospital. It wasn’t a revolutionary evening, but it was quite nice and I repeatedly pillaged the scene in my early attempts at short story writing.
There have been plenty of other odd events over the years — bumping into old friends in European museums, meeting my university advisor at a party in Seoul 15 years after graduating. Sometimes I fear that online networking risks making those surprising bursts of coincidence obsolete, as we drag behind us all the random encounters from out lifetimes. Probably not, at least not entirely. But, nonetheless, that is one reason why I try to stay off Facebook and Google Plus and the rest. If, as Joni Mitchell tells us, you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone, sometimes you need to get rid of things (people, connections) to appreciate them again.
I’m trying out this new theme for the blog. While I liked the old one well enough, it was terrible at customizing, and was too small to read comfortably. Besides, this theme has a bit of pizazz.
But if anyone has any input, I’m always happy to hear from you.
I’ve been listening to an early copy of Light in the Attic’s Shin Joong-hyun retrospective, BEAUTIFUL RIVERS AND MOUNTAINS: THE PSYCHEDELIC SOUND OF SOUTH KOREA’S SHIN JOONG-HYUN, 1958-1974, and so far I am really impressed by it. The sound quality is noticeably better than the CDs currently on the market, even with the compressed versions I have, with better range and dynamism (and now recorded at the correct speed).
Light in the Attic Records tell me that they made new transfers of Shin’s songs from the original vinyl (the original masters were apparently burned by the government back in the 1970s), then remastered everything in the United States. The result is Shin Joong-hyun much closer to how his music is supposed to sound, and if you have only heard his music on CD, the difference can be pronounced at times.
Other people have also been listening and apparently are impressed. Mojo magazine’s most recent issue (October) has named the retrospective their Reissue of the Month, giving the CD 4 stars and comparing Shin to Phil Spector. Sadly, Mojo is not available online (at least not for free), but you can read a couple of excerpts from their review here.
Attic will also be releasing a digital EP of Shin’s music, SHIN JOONG-HYUN, FROM WHERE TO WHERE: 1970-1979, and I quite like it, too. Both collections contain severals songs that I have not heard before, with an emphasis on Shin’s more rockin’ and psychedelic songs.
BEAUTIFUL RIVERS AND MOUNTAINS contains 14 songs, including many of Shin’s best, such as “The Man Who Must Leave” (떠나야할그사람), “The Sun” (햇님, a personal favorite), and of course “Beautiful Rivers and Mountains” (아름다운강산). There is just one song, “Moon Watching” (달마중), from his debut album, Hiky Shin, but it was interesting to hear something Shin recorded way back in 1958. And there is a good overview of the various singers who have recorded with Shin over the years — Kim Jung-mi, Kim Choo-ja, Lee Jung-hwa, Jang Hyun, Park In-soo, Bunny Girls, and Kim Sun. “J Blues ’72″ is really good, imho.
WHERE TO WHERE has seven songs, but they are also all very solid, including “Grass” (잔디), “What Am I Going to Do” (나라고 어찌하오), and the Music Power version of “Beautiful Rivers and Mountains.”
These releases are not perfect — the anglicizing of the song names is a little rough, for example. And Shin’s history in the liner notes is a tad credulous, and could have used a bit more rigor. But these are mostly quibbles, and overall the releases are great, a huge recommend for anyone interested at all in the music of the period.
The vinyl version of BEAUTIFUL RIVERS AND MOUNTAINS comes out Sept. 6, and the CD version will be released Sept. 24. WHERE TO WHERE will be available on Sept. 25.
And I just learned that another American label, Lion Productions, also has a couple of Korean rock albums on the way, including Kim Jung-mi’s NOW. Apparently Lion is going to similar lengths as Attic to get their releases just right, so this could be a great few months for fans of this amazing era in music.
A generation ago, struggling writers who needed a bit of cash might try porn — fast, trashy writing that was generally artless, but it paid the bills. Today, they have news aggregators — pretty much the same thing.
Pop Goes Korea: Behind the Revolution in Movies, Music and Internet Culture is the only English-language book to examine the whole of Korea's entertainment industry and how it became such a powerhouse over the past 15 years. With profiles of many of Korea's top stars (including Lee Byung-hun and Rain), Pop Goes Korea features chapters on movies, music, television, comic books, the Internet, and more.
What the Critics Are Saying
Wall Street Journal:
"Mr. Russell's book is the first by a non-Korean to explain the rise of Korea's entertainment industries. With lots of pictures, lists (top TV shows, most expensive movies, worst flops) and sidebar articles, the book could hardly be more approachable."
London Korea Links:
"...a lively description of the industry and infrastructure which makes the creation and enjoyment of these stars possible."
"Five stars out of five"
Korea Times:
"The book reveals not only the challenges of Korean pop culture but also triumphs and feats in entertainment and arts with poignant analysis and anecdotes to help the industry move in a better direction. "
Purchase
To buy your own copy of Pop Goes Korea, you can check out these websites:
