The Flaming Lips, The Advantage, and all the rest

Some may have already heard, but I am actually back in the States now. So what's going to happen to this blog? Well, for the time being I'm going to buckle down and post all the remaining shit I either meant to, or didn't have the chance to. In some cases, it might even be new and recent. But mostly not. Today you get a massive photo and video dump of the rest of the shows I went to! Which is cool if you are into shows, and I guess, music. I heard that something like 40% of people like music, so good odds you'll like all this. First up:

The Club Heavy Round Robin!

Which was actually 5 bands, and which I actually mentioned about a year ago. Remember when I woke up in an abandoned apartment, with no recollection of how I got there? That was last November, and this was earlier in the night! Fun! So basically a round robin is where bands set up all around a room, with the audience in the center. Each band plays a song, then the audience turns to watch the next band. And here are the bands:



Korean Kanye West was actually called Yamagata Tweakster, and he did kind of a weird looping synth/vocals act that was not entirely unpleasant, mostly due to his insane stage presence. You can't look at him and not smile. If you can, you are either Yamagata Tweakster himself, or a serial killer.



This was Sssiggghhhborrrggg (and yes this is the proper spelling), who you've probably seen here before. They are excellent, and would put on new masks between songs which was fun.



This guy's act was called Spookfish, and I don't remember it being very excellent at all, mostly because I don't remember him at all. Moving on.



Remember Axcutor? Yeah he played. Hardcore death metal was an interesting contrast to all the quirky experimental indie keyboard acts.



This was Zentaffy, who you can't really see, but I like 'em. The drummer sings and is the frontman. A year later I actually talked to him and I can tell you that he is a good guy.

So that was the Round Robin of November '09. One last thing:

He's so happy to be wearing a bowtie! But now:

Big-Ass Punk/Hardcore Show In Seoul!

This show was in January '10, and when I say it was a big-ass show, that's no lie:

We actually got there late so we missed the crossed-out acts, but still. That's a lot of bands. So let's get started:



Some band I don't remember. And another one:



Yup don't remember them. But look here:



Sssiggghhhborrrggg! You guys are just everywhere, and that's great. And you have a cat mask.



Then there was this band, who I remember being kind of a generic skate-punk band, but in Korea you take what you can get.



And these guys wore suits, and had a pretty good punk/hardcore set if I remember correctly. Which I probably don't, because around this time, despite me already being drunk, the coworker I was with keeps buying new drinks. And when they run out of mixers, he suggests we drink Mokkoli (a Korean rice porridge/wine drink) with grenadine. This is a terrible idea, and I do not remember the rest of the night. Apparently I puked in a cab, and in a karaoke room. Did I mention I also went to this show with an innocent Christian girl who had never been to a show before, ever? Terrible.

Some Korean Emo Band I Don't Remember!

Oh yeah, this one's got video:

So....that is something. Do not remember their name, or when that happened. But my Batman detective skills tell me it was definitely at Club Heavy.

The Advantage!

The Advantage is a rad band that plays covers of old 8-bit video game themes. Maybe 16-bit too. I don't know, I'm not in the band. They wouldn't let me.



But this one actually has video too, and I can tell you not only the band's name, but that they played in October '10. Also, the bassist was the guitarist playing with Zach Hill. Now, video game music:


What's that you say? It was pretty good, but you wished it had a little more shredding, preferably finger-tapped and crazily intricate?

Well, that's a weird list of demands, but luckily I am an Internet Psychic:


Juiceboxxx!



Juiceboxxx was a white rapper who was pretty okay. He was definitely passionate, which helps. He basically said he was from Milwaukee about a million times, climbed the amps, crawled around on the floor a little bit, and finally left the club dramatically at the end of his set.



He also played drums a little bit at the end. He was pretty good.



Alright, and now for the last band. A big one. A goddamn expensive one. For the low, low price of 100 dollars plus transportation to Seoul plus a hostel plus food plus booze:

The Flaming Lips! Whaaaaaaaaaaat



Where to begin. This show was on November 20th 2010, the week before I left, and it was on a Saturday. It was getting pretty iffy there for awhile, but in the end a friend and I got the day off from work so we could get to Seoul on time. This was the only Saturday I didn't have to work the entire time I was there, except for my vacation. So what we did was we went up the Friday before, stayed at a friend's place, and the next day went out bright and early to Everland! The amusement park that all my Korean students told me had the best rollercoasters.

Unfortunately, because Seoul is a terrible, cruel place, it takes a hundred fucking hours to get anywhere in the city, so even though we left Everland around 5 o'clock, we were an hour and a half late to the show, which started at 8. Luckily, The Flaming Lips were starting into their hour-long encore, so getting there at 9:30 turned out to be not so much of a problem. More like, an amazing fucking show.



With equally amazing amounts of confetti flying around. Also bubbles, balloons, all sorts of shit. And this:



That ring of blue lights is a gong that would light up every time Wayne hit it, which was always and awesome.



And sometimes the show would get very intense and eyeball-heavy.

So I missed "She Don't Use Jelly" and "Yoshimi", but I was there for this: their crazy-long super encore version of "Do You Realize??" complete with confetti cannons blowing up:


So that was fantastic, but what's this?! Super secret actual last show I went to?! 2 hours before I had to catch the bus to the airport, and I wasn't even done packing?!

Das Racist!

But I didn't get any pictures or video of them, because I didn't have my camera. But their first song was "Who's That? Broooown" which hit all the perfect notes and beats, and one guy from the band shook my hand for about a minute, which was kind of awkward. Then they ended with the "Combination Pizza Hut/Taco Bell" song, which they clearly kind of hated performing. And then I left Korea.

Next giant amalgamation post: Korean amusement parks! Woobang Land! Everland! The steepest wooden rollercoaster in the world! Whoo!

Xiu Xiu, Korean Skanking, and Rocky Horror

Next up in the list of shit-I-meant-to-talk-about-months-ago is the Xiu Xiu show, which was way before the Handsome Furs show, but let's pretend I'm going in reverse chronological order on purpose. So first we had our openers:

Here's local favorites Sighborggggg, who do a weird mix of guitar, drums, and looping keyboard tracks. They also always wear masks, because that's a thing you do.


Next was this band who I think was Japanese, but even if they weren't they were definitely performing at Japanese-levels of crazy:


All that opening experimental postmodern music can make a guy thirsty. Good thing this was before Bar Guess discontinued their bucket drinks:

Clearly, some people get jealous.

So then fucking Xiu Xiu played:

And blurry photos were taken.

Then Mr. Xiu Xiu pulled out this little number made for rocking: a goddamn Nintendo DS.


And played I Luv The Valley OH! on it:


And after the show, masturbatory photos were taken with the band:


Basically, a good time. So now we know that you can use a DS to successfully perform artsy indie rock songs, but a bigger question looms: Do Koreans Know How To Skank?

Let's mythbust that shit right now, international style. Meet our team of skanking scientists:

You might remember them as the Korean ska band Kingston Rudieska.

And the experiment begins:

The results? Around the :53 second mark we can see that yes, indeed, Koreans absolutely kind of know how to skank. YOU'RE WELCOME, SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY.

And that's not even the end of this update! No way Jose! Today's the very rare threefer post, where we're going to end with...Korean Rocky Horror.

Communes, the coolest bar in Daegu, put on a movie night a little before Halloween. The movies playing were The Shining, and of course, The Rocky Horror Picture Show. And we were ready for it:


Unfortunately, since this is Korea and everything is backwards, they played Rocky Horror first at 10:30pm or something (instead of midnight, which is when everyone else in the universe would play THE midnight movie), so we got there super late.

Not that it mattered. Here's all four of us (out of, I dunno, 30) who actually dressed up:

P.S. High heels were a cinch. You ladies are all a bunch of whiners. I only bailed about, what, 3 times during the night. And I wasn't exactly sober:

This is right before I asked the bartender for a straw, so as not to smudge my lipstick. Got to keep up class, even in the dark Orient.

So before you go to dirty yourself with pictures of me in tights, I'd like to bring back our fearless ska scientists because they are amazing:


SKA SKA SKA. JAMAICA SKA!

Heavy Korea

I know I've been trying to catch up on stories from my first week of training and all that nonsense, but I had quite a night tonight, and I don't want to forget the details on account of being kind of drunk, so. My night:

These past few weekends I've been telling people I was planning to go to shows, and it never happened, either because I couldn't find the place, or I decided I had better things to do (omg Dragon Age). However, tonight I finally bit that bullet and not only went out, but was able to find the place I had previously been looking for, Club Heavy. It helped that this time I just took a taxi instead of obviously flawed subway directions, but seriously fuck paying six times as much to get to the same place. One day I'll figure out how to walk there. Anyways.

I get there a little late, so I catch the first band as their set ends. They're a pretty generic but adequate punk band, lots of power chords and shouted sing-along choruses. The club is mostly Korean punks/metalheads, with a sprinkling of American GIs and maybe a couple teachers. The next band comes on stage, and my goodness. I tried to get a picture, but my camera in its insolence told me its battery was exhausted, so I'll just have to describe their frontman for you. Take a 250-pound Korean, and wrap him in a black butcher's apron. Paint the apron liberally with fake blood, and give his head a giant (albeit lying-down) mohawk. Now cover his face in 2-inch steel spikes. Seriously, his lower jaw looked like Pinhead if he decided to up his gauges to compete with rivetheads. Oh, and he has a bunch of (very real-looking) scars around his left eye, and John Lennon sunglasses. If you guessed the next band played a little death metal, call yourself Mr. Champion because you just won the game. An artist's rendition:


RAWRRRR!!!
(This is what my art degree has come to)

After listening to Scariest Korean I Have Ever Seen and his more-than-adequate death growls, I have a small conversation with one of the GIs, and am then approached by a tall acid-blonde white chick I've seen hanging around. Her name is Jen, she's Canadian, and apparently I look like I'm a big part of the music scene because she starts into a speech about how she's in the next band (but not playing because of some bullshit about how her and the bassist take turns) and we should get each others' info to network and she can help my band out in Seoul or some shit. I should mention that I did buy an acoustic guitar a few days ago, and I do plan to start playing in the area once I have a few songs written, so this is definitely not unappreciated, if a little unexpected. I'll spoil the ending for you though and say I never did get her info, and later saw her getting chummy with her Korean lead singer when I went into a nearby alley to pee.

After peeing (and moving onto my 3rd or 4th beer, despite having only eaten 2 cookies all day) Canadian Jen's band is up, and they're a decent hardcore band I guess. The lead singer is wearing a Straight Edge shirt that I drunkenly wonder about its legitimacy, and mostly wait for the next band to play. I wasn't disappointed.

The final band I saw was another metal band, a little lighter than Scary Fuck's band but still very dark and heavy. They must've been pretty big in the Korean metal scene, because the crowd starts going crazy for them, especially their singer who does some antics like pour beer in his hair and head bang towards the crowd. Interestingly, he also incorporates a lot of "Oi!" chanting into their black metal, and would occasionally exchange the devil's horns for the thumbs-up sign.



Their set ends, and I go outside to pee again. On the way back I notice the lead singer hanging out outside, so I chat him up for a bit. I find out he's from Seoul, he's 35, and he says I should have a Korean girlfriend because I'm very handsome. We exchange numbers, because for the second time tonight he thinks I already have a band, and insists I call him when I have a gig. I agree, and after talking to a couple of white guys next to us who bought his album, he leaves and then comes back with some posters for us signed by all the band members. Turns out his band's name is Method, and you can check out their myspace here (the guy I was talking to is Ryu Min, if you're curious).

So blah blah blah I follow the white guys to get sandwiches and then the train station but it's the wrong one, so I walk around more, get lost, and hail a cab home. I'll take a picture of my new poster when my camera's battery is done charging, but for now just know it says "Struggling LIFE 4 METAL" in sharpe and is hanging above my bed and is awesome.

The End.