Mosh!

Lil’ Wayne is busy on screen screaming into his vocoder about his revenge on the prom queen who jilted him when he was an overly tattooed disaffected teenager. If only she could have seen past all that ink, to the sweet lollipop goodness that lay beyond. I’m pretty sure that the confection was referring to his soul. Who wouldn’t want to lick lil’ Wayne’s soul?

The vid, kind of like the song, had a rock concert vibe to it, which had me reminiscing about my Nickelback concert days. Way back when I was a spring chicken—a.k.a. my salad days—I loved me my concerts and used to go to one pretty much every summer. It was usually Nickelback as they were my favourite band until some moron, I have no idea whom, went and told them that drenching their songs with lurid lyrics and crappy feel good lines which have no place being together on the same album, was a good idea.

These concerts were an absolute ton of fun. I remember going to the opening of some club (I forget the name it’s been so long, waaaaaaaaaaaah) with my real good friend Jaynee while I was job hunting in the Twin Cities the summer after I graduated from college. The two tickets cost about $120 bucks and we went there, dressed like it was summer out, but it was cold as shit.

Default was the opening band, and after running through some rather forgettable songs, they played their greatest hit ‘Wasting My Time’. By this time, I was half way to planet ‘plastered-beyond-all-recognition’ and had had several inappropriate conversations with absolute strangers who also felt totally comfortable poking my decently covered but ginormous ‘jubblies’ for fun.

Then the main act came on stage. By this time the air-conditioning had totally given up the ghost and the air was like a thick sludge. The club, which was filming the crowd, had huge screens showing the crowd through a fog-like haze of sweat coming off all the bodies in there. They had to bring out tons of water to cool the crowd down. All I remember was shoving my way to the front, to get as close to Chad ‘really hot’ Kroeger, pressing ever forward and moshing like there was no tomorrow. I drooled over the drummer, got soaking wet and had a fabulous time. All in all it was bloody fantastic.

This year, in NYC, Cali, and a whole bunch of other cities I am nowhere near, my fave hip hop group Epik High flew all the way from Korea to host a series of concerts. Totally missed them and now I am very sad :’(. I wish to mosh once more, to sweat in tandem with a thousand other people while screaming out the lyrics to tracks that are oldies-but-goodies, and listen when they try out new tracks on ya.

Some Seoul Music: Ibadi is just an all-around fabulous band, the side venture of Clazziquai's female lead. Akin to Nora Jones in musical style, her voice just blows me out the water, not with power, but with depth. Here's Morning Call a pretty, lilting tune, great for the car...

Let's Try Again: Of Music And Piracy

My previous post was actually supposed to go a little more like what will follow, but I got seriously side-tracked by my work drama, and needed to get it off my chest. Now I guess I can write this:

I have to say, I am an unabashed pirate (arrr!), especially for music. I pretty much just google the song name plus a couple of familiar hosting sites and I can find almost whatever music I want, with several caveats to that. My more recent musical tastes also contribute to that fact, seeing that I can't really just pop round to the record store and pick up the hottest Korean album.
Most of the time I refuse to feel guilty, but for Epik High's Map the Soul, I really do. Sort of.
A bit of back story first: Epik High is probably South Korea's premier hip-hop group. Featuring the talents of Mithra Jin, Tablo and DJ Tukutz, they have managed to successfully straddle maintaining mainstream popularity without becoming empty, overexposed and irrelevant. With K-music's every expanding pool of up-and-coming talent, they remain at the forefront, continuously experimenting with their sound. I was especially impressed my Remapping the Human Soul, a two-disk album which had some of the best production I have ever heard.

Due to creative conflict with their label, in 2009 Epik High went independent, creating their own label. With acts like Keroone and MYK helping them with their new mini album Map The Soul, they are taking a stand, trying to make their work directly accessible to their fans, both in Korea and overseas. They also embarked on a world tour, with stops in Japan, the US and of course, Korea. Tablo is the frontman of the group, a Stanford graduate, which his sometimes too-cerebral nature showcases. DJ Tukutz is their brilliant DJ. Mithra Jin is probably the least well known to me; he is the other rapper in the group and since he's all Korean all the time, there's absolutely no way for me to judge. I love them all anyway, they are brilliant.

Their first post-label release, as I mentioned before, is Map The Soul, which they decided to sell independently through their website www.mapthesoul.com. I can't buy it. Reason being that you need:

1) A credit card
2) A reliable postal system,

neither of which Nigeria has provisions for.

The fact is, there is no way for me to their music or any other K pop without scouring the internet for it. It is a sort of cop out, I know because If I was overseas I would say the cost would be too expensive to purchase all the music I have downloaded (TONS!). I hope one day, I can actually buy the book album. In reality I probably never can.

So this is my mea culpa of sorts. 정말 죄송합니다 (I'm really sorry) but I had no choice.

Some Seoul Music: Probably my fave track of Epik High's next to Fan, Music featuring K.Will (who continually frustrates me because he ALWAYS sings weepy, crappy ballads meant to show off his voice, but really just put people to sleep because they are boring and do nothing for his voice. Really.)