Monday, February 16, 2015

K-pop and K-rock timeline / A brief look at 3.5 years of Korean music

I bought plenty of music while living in Korea - something like 100 albums of Korean rock and pop. All of which has been shipped back by now. Packing the big Kpop albums into the EMS boxes brought forth memory after memory. I never danced to Kpop in any clubs, but the sounds blasted out of the stereo and the headphones often enough in the early days here. Those incessant beats and hooks still grab me. The Wasu apartment had posters from the Wonder Girls, KARA, and Secret on the walls. A friend once (correctly) called it a "teenybopper's room." And though I felt a twinge of embarrassment at being called a 26 year old teenybopper, the posters evoked the same sense of home that I had in the US when posters of The Ramones and The Who graced the walls.

Kpop gave way to Krock in the end because A) I've always liked rock more and B) Kpop's candied sounds get annoying after 40 minutes. The rock allowed me to indulge my inner historian and go on a journey through Korea's past. I did find plenty of pop in there, but it was pop of a different sort, for it had real people playing real instruments and only one vocalist at a time. The rock and pop mingled together in the late 60s and early 70s anyway. Shin Joong-hyun played on many of those records and he always threw in some tasteful solos. Sometimes the two genres merged in format: Sanulrim who started out playing '60s garage pop at '70s song lengths in 1978. See some more stuff about the group and their debut LP here.

It's end of the working day here. Apologies for cutting it short.

The timeline of music posts here:

16 February 2015 - Sanulrim's 1st LP.
4 June 2014 - Guitar Fridays [Sanulrim's "Reflection"]
  • Mostly about playing guitar with the students. Included for Sanulrim's song.
8 Jan 2014 - Classic Korean Pop Music Archive: Deulgukhwa / Deulgukhwa 1st Album (1985)

  • A reblog from Classic Korean Pop Music Archive that has a short biography and review of the group and their 1st album. Special thanks to a friend of R's for recommending Deulgukhwa.

19 April 2013 - Kpop playlist #2 [Investing in Polyurethane Discs]
21 February 2013 - Krock 4: Jang Ki-ha and the Faces
20 February 2013 - Krock: Shin Joong-hyun and Yup Juns - Volume 2
20 February 2013 - Krock: Shin Joong-hyun and the Yup Juns - Volume 1
25 Jan 2013 - Classic rocker Shin Joong-hyun
25 December 2012 - A semi-white Christmas in Wasu

  • Featuring music from J-Rabbit. Their Christmas album's soothing. It also has a cover of "All You Need is Love."
21 November 2012 - Ga-in's "Bloom" vs. Miss A's "I Don't Need a Man"
  • Comparison piece between two Kpop songs.
21 August 2012 -  Krock 3: Busker Busker and more from Lowdown 30
21 August 2012 - Krock 2: The Black Skirts
31 July 2012 - 11 months in music...Kpop edition
31 July 2012 - 2NE1 and to everyone who loves to grooving Kpop
  • R and I attended their concert in Seoul in summer of 2012. Quality show.

K-rock review: Sanulrim Vol. 1

Sanulrim's 1st LP (1978)

Sanulrim should've been written about sooner because I've played them more than any other Korean rock group as of late. Their swirling organs and fuzz guitar make an excellent combo. And what's above is true: Play track 1 side 1 of their 1st album, "Ah! Already?" below and hear for yourself:

The groove and melody attack immediately, eh? To me, the groups genius lies in how they took what would have been two-and-a-half minute singles and stretched them into longer '70s-style jams. What sounds like senseless indulgence and repetition isn't: The songs breathe. Maybe the band felt the same way because all of the songs on their debut run past the three minute mark. The tempos vary between ballad and uptempo, but the organs prevail.

Anyone who likes older pop and rock would enjoy these guys. Their first three albums got reissued as a combo package of CDs and SACDs recently, but I think it's gone out of print because it was a limited edition. Youtube has many of their songs though.

Despite the 1978 recording date, the production veers closer to 1966 due to the limitations of Korea's recording studios at the time. It sounds out of time because of

My Korean isn't good enough to understand everything in the lyrics, but most songs deal with pop topic mainstays like summer romances and unrequited love.

The blog Ghost Capital wrote about the group here.
A biography and review of their albums here.

Friday, February 6, 2015

Scheduling fun / Scrabble, revisited

Not so fun Friday: Out sick again thanks to knots in the stomach and a pain in the neck. 

School's "begun" in the sense of teachers and students returning to the school for classes, but I can't ascertain what, if anything, we're supposed to be doing these days. I wish I was making this up. The scheme so far has been that the students go to classes for a half a day and the teachers stay the whole day. I've overheard teachers talking about the students calling one movie shown in class "not interesting." None of my teachers have said anything about what to do in classes. Some don't even know if we have classes together. I find this strange: How is this possible that teachers don't know if there will be classes?

Or this one: One coteacher was out on a business trip and didn't tell me until an hour before we had class. This was Tuesday. I was at school all day on Monday and could have been informed in advance, but, like a lot of things over here, it didn't happen for whatever reason. Things like this have happened so often that I'm numb to the annoyance. Maybe this coteacher didn't know she had to teach? It's entirely possible.

What's been going on in the absence of lesson advice: I've been carrying on with bringing in sets of Scrabble and showing the students how to play it. So far so good!

For prospective EPIK teachers--I can't stress this enough: Get used to living with uncertainty.

Monday, February 2, 2015

Dispatch from an empty office in Cheorberia

3:55pm: 35 minutes until I can leave. It's my eighth and final day of desk warming in the vacated office upstairs at the middle school. Maybe four or five other people are at school or have been at school. The principal's been here at times because I've seen the light on in his office. He's held some meetings. My excitement because when the teacher of Korean that I talk to about novels came by to pick up a package.

Otherwise, it's been a solitary, lonely, and downright cold time here. I tracked the temperature changes over time today: The thermostat said 3.6C when I arrived at 8:30am. The overhead heater's efforts brought the temperature to 19.5C, which is hospitable, but it's only been above 15C since noon today. I've survived the cold by layering, but it's still difficult to type with gloves on. Going to the bathroom means putting on the overcoat and walking downstairs to the staff bathroom. It's not exactly convenient.  That's how it goes for those who desk warm. I've passed the time by reading novels, writing emails, and planning my exit trip.

On another note: I've often been asked about how Cheorwon or Korea's weather compares to my home state of Wisconsin. The answer usually goes something like this: "Wisconsin gets more snow and lower temperatures, so Cheorwon isn't so bad." What I leave unsaid--and this is something I didn't fully comprehend until this winter--is how the cold in Korea pervades everything. The temperatures may not dip as low as Wisconsin, but the place certainly feels colder more of the time thanks to the lack of central heat, the bad/nonexistent insulation, and the drafts in buildings in Korea. Even now, it's 19C but it feels chillier thanks to draft currents. Oh well. It's nearly time to leave. And not just leave for today--I've less than four weeks to go before this job concludes. 

*Anyone considering teaching in Korea should bring long underwear and thick socks.