SXSW Day 2 Notes

Notes from SXSW, Day 2.

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This is the first proper vacation that I have taken in more than a year. It is so nice to get away and not think about doing anything. In most cases, even during a vacation, one must spend the energy to plan things and go to places. Not me, and not this time. My plan was set before I left such that I hardly have to think. I feel completely relaxed.

It was nearly 3 a.m. when I returned from K-Pop Night Out showcase, which was 4 a.m. EDT. Needless to say, I woke up late. I decided that I must have a true Texas barbecue for lunch. Online reviews recommend John Mueller's barbecue, so I drive there. Unfortunately, they are closed Wednesday. So I headed to Franklin barbecue instead.

It was a little past noon when I got to Franklin barbecue. The line was long, but what did I care? I just had to make Jambinai's showcase at 3 p.m. After about 20 minutes of waiting, a waitress from Franklin came out to say that there was a very real chance that the food would run out by the time I ordered. Some people left, which made me decide that I should stay. For those who stuck around, the waitress handed out a small grilled sausage, which gave me just enough energy to stay standing.

An hour and a half later, I was inside the restaurant. Right behind me was the cut off; the waitress put up a "Sold Out" sign on the door as I was walking through it. It took another 45 minutes for me to move from the door to the counter to place the order. Looking back, the moment I got in through the door was the point of no return for me to make Jambinai's show. But I could not possibly leave--there were at least 20 people behind me who waited for two hours, only to turn back with empty stomachs!

I strike up a conversation with the man in front of me. He was an executive at a media company; he complained that he didn't have to wait this long for the Academy Awards. We decide to share the lunch, so that we can try out different cuts of meat. But our pact was useless. By the time we got to the counter, they only had briskets and sausages. Regardless, we sat together with the spoils.

The barbecue is absolutely fantastic. The brisket turned into a buttery melt in the mouth. The sausages were just right amount of spicy and crunchy. I have had better side dishes elsewhere, but who cares.

By the time I got out, it was 2:50 p.m. I drive toward Austin Convention Center, in the futile hope that I might still make Jambinai's show at 3 p.m. I failed, of course--the traffic around the Convention Center has been murderous all day. After circling around to find parking, I give up at 3:15 p.m. and headed back to the hotel. Then I took the sweetest post-meal nap in months.

So if you're counting, the Korean (1) woke up late; (2) waited 2.5 hours for barbecue; (3) ate the said barbecue; (4) went into food coma until dinner time. In other words, an extremely productive day.

At night, I headed out for the concerts by Hollow Jan and YB. (There will be a separate post to discuss them.) Since I was only watching two shows, I decided to have more fun, which equals drinks. After two hours of screaming and jumping around, I headed back. Tomorrow is Seoulsonic; it was going to be a long day.

Turns out, I was lucky to have called the night early. Later that night, a drunk driver plowed through the crowd, killing two and seriously injuring more than 20 people. The incident happened right in front of Elysium, the venue for K-Pop Night Out the night before. Terrible, senseless stuff.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.

SXSW Interview: Jambinai

(source)

Blending hard rock and Korean traditional music, Jambinai is one of the most unique Korean indie bands. They were extremely well received by SXSW, as they made an appearance on the official International Day Stage as well as a number of other shows throughout the festival. The Korean met Jambinai during K-Pop Night Out for a brief interview.

The interview was conducted in Korean; the translation was the Korean's own.

TK:  Please say hello to everyone.



Jambinai:
Hello, I am Jambinai's Lee Il-woo.
Hello, I am Shim Eun-yong, geomungo player for Jambinai.
Hello, I am Kim Bo-mi, haegeum player for Jambinai.

TK:  Can you please introduce yourselves? What does "Jambinai" mean?

Lee:  We are a crossover band that combines traditional Korean music with rock 'n' roll.
Kim:  "Jambinai" doesn't have a meaning. We just liked the sound of it.

TK:  How did you come to form Jambinai?

Lee:  We were all classmates at Korea National University of Arts, majoring traditional Korean music. We kept in touch after we graduated.
Kim:  One day we got together for drinks, and decided that we wanted to play this kind of music.

TK:  This is your first SXSW festival. What do you think of it? How did you like the way the audience reacted to your music?

Shim:  We love it. I heard that the American audience responds quickly and directly, that they would just get really quiet or leave right away if they don't like what they were hearing. But the audience seemed to focus on our music, which was great.

TK:  What bands are you influenced by?

Lee:  Obviously we do traditional Korean music, so we were influenced by those musicians. On the rock side, Nine Inch Nails is a big influence.

TK:  To a lot of international fans of Korean music, "K-pop" means something like Jay Park or HyunA, who are also performing in this show. Do you think Korea's indie music will grow in popularity?

Shim:  Well, it is not as if we began this band to become popular. We always knew that we will be outside of the mainstream, so even having this much public attention was not what we expected. It's a strange feeling.
Kim:  I think there is plenty of great indie music in Korea, but lack of exposure is a problem. I think SXSW is a great opportunity to introduce our music to the larger audience, and I think this exposure will cycle back to Korean market as well.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.

SXSW: Notes from K-Pop Night Out

The Korean's first show was K-Pop Night Out, held at Elysium just a few hours after the Korean's arrival into Austin. Here are some notes and impressions from the show.

- I got to the venue about 30 minutes before the show began. The line looked like this.

Luckily, because that line did not apply to SXSW badge holders, we walked right in. This was the venue.

A good-sized space. It was a healthy-sized crowd--around 250 people, swelling and contracting throughout the night. The crowd was strongly Asian, but not exclusively so. The non-Asian contingent fluctuated between 20 to 50 percent throughout the night. The space was just the right size, with enough body heat to get oneself into the mood of things. In many ways, it was the ideal setting.

The screens cycled the music videos from the artists who were set to appear on the show.

One snag, however, was that Kiha & the Faces [장기하와 얼굴들] was unable to make it to SXSW due to visa issues. Hollow Jan took their place instead.

Reviews of each performance after the jump.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.




- I find it interesting that the showcase is called "K-Pop Night Out," although there are only two (Jay Park and HyunA) who would fall under the narrow definition of "K-pop" (i.e. idol pop.) It lends further credence to the point that I have been consistently making: that "K-pop" must broadly mean "Korean pop music," which is much greater than "Korean idol pop music." I am encouraged by the crowd. It was only 7:30 p.m.; surely, they did not all come here just to watch HyunA doing stripper moves at 1:30 a.m.

- Jambinai comes on. There will be another post introducing this band more in depth, but Jambinai might be the most unique band in Korean indie scene. The three members play guitar, geomungo [거문고] and haegeum [해금], the last two being traditional Korean instruments. Traditional Korean music meets rock 'n roll.

Unfortunately, the sound system did not cooperate, giving a lot of feedback and annoying extra noise. But Jambinai soldiered on, and the crowd responded positively.

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- Nell is next. I absolutely love Nell, but there is no other way to say this: Nell had a bad show. Nell's showcase was mostly made up of songs from their latest album, which was not reviewed particularly well. I have not yet listened to the latest album, but I am inclined to agree with the reviews after hearing Nell perform. A 13-year-old band with five regular albums (seven if one counts pre-debut albums) need to explore the new frontier. Instead, Nell ends up sounding like a slightly more serious CN Blue. Not a good thing.

To be fair to Nell, the sound system continued to be uncooperative. Kim Jong-wan [김종완], Nell's front man, had to stop the performance between songs to keep tinkering with the sound balance. Nell's meticulousness with their sound is well known, but this was one of the instances in which it would have been better to simply perform rather than to dither.

(EDIT 3/13/2014:  I made a mistake about Nell's set. Other than Ocean of Light, Nell's performance was mostly from their previous albums. I made the mistake because I was interviewing Jambinai during the later part of Nell's set, and I could not focus on the music. I stand by the overall point that Nell had a bad show. At least in the first 10 minutes of the set, I did not hear the sound that I expected from them. But my apologies about the factual error. I am new at this covering-concerts gig; I will do better next time.)

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- Hollow Jan comes on. They are beginning with a disadvantage: they were a last-minute stand-in for Kiha & the Faces, whose folksy style is very different from Hollaw Jan's. For those who came to the showcase expecting the likes of Jay Park and HyunA, Hollow Jan's screamo rock must have been a shock to the system.

As they always do, Hollow Jan exploded on stage. About half of the crowd was stunned and scared. But surprisingly, the other half of the crowd LOVED them. After one of the songs, one guy bellowed: "THAT WAS AWESOME!!!" Numerous banging heads were seen.

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- Crowd became visibly excited as Crying Nut was going through sound check. It has been more than a decade since I have seen Crying Nut live. In the intervening decade, Crying Nut went from a merry band of youngsters to the consummate professionals. Crying Nut was playing their second SXSW festival, and the experience showed. The band's interaction with the crowd--speaking the right phrase in English, inducing audience participation, high-fiving the audience at the right moment--was natural and flawless. If any band could represent Korea's rock 'n roll, it is this one.

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- Went to the restroom during intermission. Was almost sure that the heavily tattooed fella in front of the urinal next to mine was Jay Park.

- In terms of audience interaction, Idiotape was the polar opposite of Crying Nut. The band got up there, and did not speak a word. Not even the perfunctory, "Hello, we are Idiotape." Instead, they open with 12 minutes of electronica, only taking three-second breaks as they moved onto the next song, then the next. For over 40 minutes, Idiotape only played music, not saying a single word.

And the crowd went wild. Spontaneous dance party broke out in different corners of the venue. Turns out, Idiotape had the best clubbing music among all the bands performing for the showcase. Somehow, a concentration of hot girls emerged in front of me, and began losing themselves in the music. Idiotape mixed in their version of Beastie Boys' Sabotage, which took the show to another level.

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- In the intermission, I feel that the crowd has changed significantly. It was younger, and more screamy. Burly guys appeared in front of the stage, lest a fan should jump onto it. The space between people got a lot tighter.

The crowd suddenly became restless. I looked up to the direction of the camera phone, and there she was. Lady Gaga was in the sound booth, preparing to check out the next acts. Which made me face up to the unpleasant reality: although the showcase featured five rock and electronica musicians from Korea, the real show was about the two K-pop acts coming up next.

- Jay Park comes on, sounding like a Korean love child between Macklemore and Justin Bieber. He first appears with baggy jeans and jacket, and performed a slow-moving strip tease over the next 40 minutes, eventually revealing his chiseled and tattooed torso. Camera phones were everywhere. The girls were dying with screams.

Jay Park is talented enough, and his presence was tolerable enough to this rock 'n roll fan. But apparently, Jay was starting a new record label called AOMG, and his crew was on the stage with him to be introduced to the crowd. And the crew--particularly one guy named Loco--was simply not ready for prime time. Every one of them had the shit-eating, "I'm-just-glad-to-be-here" grin on their face. Yes, I know Loco won Show Me the Money, the rap battle show on Mnet. I don't care. I like my artists with charisma, not "I-don't-belong-here-but-thanks-for-having-me" vibe. It was like watching Jesse's crew on Breaking Bad: a bunch of dregs following a half-decent leader.

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- I thought I hate-watched enough performances in my life, but I never hate-watched as much as I hate-watched HyunA's set. It is looking increasingly clear that HyunA does not belong to the upper echelon of K-pop's idol market. The cream of the crop in Korea's idol pop eventually rise by finding their own voice and personality. Lee Hyo-ri did so; more recently, Ga-In is doing the same. In contrast, HyunA is exactly the same as she was two years ago: that is to say, generic.

This showed in HyunA's set. Sincerity is hard to fake on live stage, especially if one lip-synchs the entire set. HyunA made all the appropriate stripper moves, but they were not sexy. In fact, the girls in front of me who were dancing to Idiotape were incomparably sexier, because they were genuinely having a good time. HyunA was not; she was there for business, and that was all. It was a painful 30 minutes to endure. Even the crowd, who was completely ready to love HyunA, was not responding as enthusiastically as it could have.

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All in all, K-Pop Night Out was a fantastic success. The venue was packed, people reacted enthusiastically, and the music was (for the most part) phenomenal. Great way to finish the first day at SXSW.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.

SXSW Day 1 Notes

Hello AAK! readers! The Korean is reporting live from Austin, Texas. He will periodically put out his own impressions of his travel, reviews of showcases and interviews with Korean artists performing at SXSW.

For up-to-the-moment view of the Korean at SXSW, please follow his Facebook page: www.facebook.com/thekorean.  Below is the Korean's impression from Day 1 at SXSW.

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The direct flight from D.C. to Austin is a small jet, with four passengers per row. It is so small that everyone is required to gate-check one's carry-on luggage. I notice at least a dozen guitars in the large carts for check-in luggage. This is a flying can full of artistic talent. I feel giddy.

On the way to my hotel in Austin, I run into an In-and-Out burger. I become jumpy with excitement; I have not had America's best burger for more than a year. I roll into the drive-thru and order my usual: animal style double-double with whole grilled onion, with animal fries. The order-taker is impressed: "That's a real California-style order right there." But when I was checking into my hotel with my bag of In-and-Out, I see a couple of girls holding bags of Whataburger. I gotta try that too. The burger, not the girls.

Walking around the streets of Austin, I feel life and energy of the kind I could feel in the hip streets of New York and Seoul. Food trucks are everywhere, and they emit fantastic aroma. People are looking good, and they are in a good mood. This trip is going to be great. I can feel it.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.

SXSW Tomorrow!

Tomorrow, the Korean will board the plane bound for Austin, Texas. SXSW, here we come!

For rest of the week, Ask a Korean! will be running SXSW specials. We have interviews lined up with majority of Korean bands performing in Austin. The Korean will be attending as many concerts as he could, reporting the sights, atmosphere and his impressions. Stay tuned....!

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.

Tofu after Prison

Dear Korean,

I never understood why people always give tofu to those who get out of jail. I know it's supposed to be a "out with the old, in with the new" type of mentality, but why tofu? 

Curry

For those who are not aware: this is true. It is a Korean custom for someone who is just leaving the prison to have a bite of tofu upon exit.

Example of an ex-con, who just finished his sentence, eating tofu.
Pictured is Kim Tae-chon [김태촌], a notorious leader of a crime syndicate.
(source)

Why tofu? There is no single accepted explanation for this custom. The custom itself is not very old, as the recorded reference to the custom began appearing around early 20th century. Common theories are:

• Tofu is pearly white.  By eating something white, which symbolizes purity and innocence, the convict resolves to live a crime-free life going forward.
  
• Tofu is cheap and nutritious.  During the Japanese occupation of Korea--when this custom appeared--the prison conditions were beyond terrible. In addition to undergoing frequent and brutal torture, prisoners were often malnourished. As tofu is one of the cheapest source of protein, someone who just got out of prison could receive an emergency injection of nutrition in the form of tofu.
  
• Tofu is made of beans.  Also during the Japanese occupation of Korea, the standard prison food was rice and beans. Although rice would be the preferred meal, Imperial Japan's colonial administration liberally mixed in cheap beans into the rice, as it was in no mood to spend too much money on prisoners. Although this practice ended in 1986, Koreans use the idiom "eating rice and beans" as a euphemism for going to prison. In her essay titled Tofu [두부], famed novelist Park Wan-seo [박완서] wrote that eating tofu represents a transformation. As tofu is the liberated spirit of beans, one also wishes one's criminal spirit is likewise transformed.

Personally, the Korean thinks the second theory is the most plausible, but that is no more than bare speculation. 

Completely apropos of nothing: freshly made tofu is quite possibly the most delicious food in the world. If you have not had it, you are missing out. It is pleasantly warm, as smooth as pudding and still retains the savory bean flavor. If you are ever traveling in Korea, China or Japan, do everything you can to try a freshly made tofu.

Got a question or comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.

Kim Yuna's Last Bow

Dear Korean,

I call upon you in a time of need. The Queen has been defeated and many are crying 'foul'. Time and time again, you have guided us, your loyal readers, through the fog of media bias to the facts that help us make sense in these trying times. In your infinite wisdom, do you see a home field advantage, or was the Queen being too conservative in her fight towards the gold?

Justin E.

Put it this way: one has to believe in some really implausible series of events to believe that Adelina Sotnikova won her gold medal fair and square. Out of the many articles that covered women's figure skating in Sochi, The Wire's coverage was the most definitive. There are many, many factors to which the article points, but three factors stand out the most.

• Sotnikova's previous personal best in free-skating was nearly 20 points below her Olympics score. That personal best was set only a month before the Olympics.
• Sotnikova's Olympics free-skating score was so high that, had she not made a mistake in one of her jumps, it would have set the world record (which Yuna Kim set in the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.) This does not pass the "laugh test." Even if one completely ignored Sotnikova's flub, her program was not superior to Kim's program in Vancouver.
• It has been said that Sotnikova performed a more technically difficult routine than Kim, because Sotnikova executed one additional triple jump. But Mao Asada, 2010 silver medalist, executed one more triple jump than Sotnikova and was flawless in her free skate. Yet Mao scored lower than Sotnikova.

So, in order for one to believe that Sotnikova won her gold medal fair and square, you have to believe: (1) Sotnikova managed to improve by nearly 20 points in a month; (2) Sotnikova's performance, but for the mistaken landing, would have been the best free skating in the history of women's figure skating; (3) Sotnikova beat Kim because she did more jumps than Kim, and Sotnikova beat Mao because she presented better artistry than Mao. One can believe all of the above, sure. One can also believe that Barry Bonds's head size doubled because Bonds just worked out a lot, or the Hand of God mysteriously appeared above Diego Maradona's head in the 1986 World Cup.

(source)

But enough of this. As Yuna Kim retires after this Olympics, the Korean would rather honor and celebrate her remarkable career. Because Kim is so unusually graceful in her performance, the words "utter dominance" do not naturally come to mind when one thinks of Yuna Kim. But wrap your head around this one: in her 12-year skating career, Yuna Kim never fell below third place in any of the competition she entered. That means that Kim medaled in every single game that she ever entered since she was 12 years old. And those games include six world championships and two Olympics.

Never in the century of women's figure skating history was there an achievement like this one. This puts Yuna Kim on the same plane as the greatest winners in sports, right up there with the likes of Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Roger Federer, and so on. And we were all simply lucky to have witnessed such an incredible dominance, presented in the most beautiful form imaginable.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@gmail.com.