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Shin Joong-hyun Boxset Coming

July 24, 2011 / Mark / 0 Comments

At long last, it looks like a music company is coming out with a (legitimate) CD compilation for Shin Joong-hyun. Light in the Attic Records is presenting Beautiful Rivers And Mountains: The Psychedelic Rock Sound Of South Korea’s Shin Joong Hyun 1958-74, apparently coming out on Sept. 24. But 14 songs with big liner notes, it looks like a real winner.

I’m just curious about the quality of the recordings on this. Most of the CDs issued of Shin’s music (and the other music on that period) have been terribly remastered, with low sound quality and often at the wrong speed. Even the big 10-CD Shin Joong-hyun Anthology boxset was rather substandard.

Although I must say, the presence of my Wall Street Journal article in the center of the liner notes to Shin’s Anthology is probably one of the proudest parts of my quasi-journalism career.

Cool Stuff from DJ Soulscape

July 24, 2011 / Mark / 1 Comment

DJ Soulscape has apparently started blogging in English, contributing to the Egotripland website. There are only a few posts so far, but articles include Soulscape’s new record store (in the same building as his studio in Seoul) and Kim Wan Sun performing live in 1987 (which I do believe Matt at Gusts of Popular Feeling has posted before, but it is still good).

Blockbusters, Korean Movies and More

July 18, 2011 / Mark / 0 Comments

– Kim Kiduk is pissed off. Again. This time, he sent out a press release for POONGSAN (which he wrote and produced), complaining about how hard it is for different kinds of films to get screens in Korea, which tend to be dominated by blockbusters (sorry, no link… but I have been looking for one).

Which is true enough … although I notice that this sort of rant rarely talks about the responsibility a filmmaker has to audiences, to make something they might want to see. Or the responsibility of audiences to see non-blockbusters. If there were hordes of people pushing to get into indie films, which were being forced out of theaters while still doing good business, then I would be much more sympathetic. But if a theater owner can make X dollars with an indie film, and 10X with a blockbuster, why should the owner take a loss? Just to make Kim Kiduk and other self-important artistes feel better? That’s culture?

Ezra Pound had a great quote:

Music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance… poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music

And I think there is a similar delicacy to movies. They atrophy when they get too far from the dance. They might be a slow dance, a tango, a Lindy Hop or a late-night techno crunk, but they still dance.

(Of course, everything atrophies when it gets too close to money, so the opposite is not great either).

– Anyhow, I think my point is, if people are not enjoying the art you think they should, maybe you should do something about it, rather than just complain. Get aggressive with social media and personal marketing. If audiences don’t “get” your film, engage and work with them, help show them what there is to get.

Or turn to writing or comics (much cheaper than making movies). But if you want to spend millions of dollars to tell a story and it is not your money, don’t be surprised if people get all money-minded.

I also hate it when indie musicians complain about not being well supported in Korea, but then do precious little to make the scene better. They sit around complaining about how everyone else is failing, but do not take charge of their own lives and careers. Happily, though, that is beginning to change, and I think a lot of bands are being a lot more active about promoting themselves, getting better, and building the scene.

– After being out about a month, TRANSFORMERS 3: DAFT SIDE OF THE LOON looks like it is following the last two Transformers movies, making oodles of money at the box office in Korea. TRANSFORMERS was the top foreign film ever in Korea when it came out, with 7.3 million admissions. TRANSFORMERS 2 did slightly better with 7.4 million. And now, TRANSFORMERS 3 has 6.9 million admissions and is still going strong (637,000 admissions last weekend). So I think it has a very good chance of overtaking both of its predecessors.

(Of course, AVATAR kicked everyone’s butts last year, topping 13 million admissions and becoming the biggest film ever in Korea).

– HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 2 did okay in Korea, in its debut weekend, with 1.7 million admissions — okay, but not great. But whenever a HARRY POTTER film comes out, I always remember what it was like when the first one was released. I was working at the JoongAng Ilbo at the time, and when a reporter asked about the title, I thought it best to go with the story’s original title: HARRY POTTER AND THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE. Turns out Warner Bros. hated that (they wanted the American dummy title, THE SORCERER’S STONE), and yelled at the reporter. A lot.

HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS was really huge, but standards have really changed since then. It opened on 295 screens, about a third of all the screens in Korea then — today, there are around 2,000 screens, and big openings can get up to 900 screens. CHAMBER OF SECRETS was the biggest opening weekend Korea had ever seen then … with 1 million admissions. Today, plenty of films have opened to over 2 million.

The first two Potter films had around 4 million admissions (if I recall correctly), but since then, the others have been in the 2-3 million admission range.

– I’m pretty ambivalent about DEATHLY HALLOWS: PART 2, for what it’s worth. Yes, I was one of the lemmings that saw it opening weekend. It was definitely the most action-filled of the Potter films. And the CGI was really impressive — at times, even beautiful. The contrast between it and the first couple of Potter films is incredible (with their second-rate effects, bad child actors and really dull direction). But despite all its good points, I can barely remember DEATHLY HALLOWS 2. And at its core, HP is yet another “chosen one”, might-makes-right superhero story, far more American than British (despite the public school trappings). And it makes me want to re-read the original BOOKS OF MAGIC miniseries.

– The Korean film SUNNY is still chugging along, doing impressive business. It opened May 4, but it is still in third place, with 6.9 million admissions. But of course I have not had a chance to see it, so I don’t have any real opinions about it.

– Oh, POONGSAN has had nearly 700,000 admissions since its release on June 23, in case you are interested.

Ethnic Music in China

July 17, 2011 / Mark / 0 Comments

There’s an interesting article in the New York Times about ethnic music in China, and the difficulties China’s 100 million minorities face. Colorful, traditional performances are usually okay, even embraced by authorities, but songs that threaten the status quo can create difficulties for performers.

“About 80 percent of my songs are about hardship,” said Aojie a Ge, a Beijing-based musician from the Yi minority of southwest China. “But can I perform these songs? Of course not. I still need to survive.”

And I quite liked this part of the story:

The son of a cow herder and member of the tiny Buyi minority, Xiao Budian left home on his 19th birthday, spending his high school tuition fees on a one-way train ticket to Beijing. “I wanted to see what was on the other side of the mountain,” he said.

Mr. Xiao initially lived with his older brother, a rock musician who had amassed a collection of foreign music and movies during his years in the capital. One day, Mr. Xiao heard Bob Dylan singing “Blowin’ in the Wind” in a documentary about World War II. “It was so simple, just a voice, a guitar and a harmonica,” he said. “But its power was tremendous. It was like an atom bomb.”

Xiao’s story reminds me of Hahn Daesoo and the other Korean rockers of the 1970s who tried to use music to fight against the authoritarian government of the day. It’s funny how something so seemingly unimportant as music can hack off the powers that be so effectively and so often. I tend to be rather pessimistic about China, but stories like that one gives me hope.

Asian Film Fest, Transformers, and Less

July 1, 2011 / Mark / 0 Comments

– Amazing to see that the New York Asian Film Festival is 10 years old already. And ever better to see the fest getting such strong reviews in the mainstream press. A key quote:

But whatever it lacks in red carpets and seafood towers, it makes up for in the quality, quantity and variety of films. As it celebrates its 10th year with a program of 40 features, showing Friday through July 14 at the Walter Reade Theater and Japan Society, it’s time to acknowledge that this outsider actually belongs in the top tier of New York’s film festivals, next to some very serious, very inside gatherings.

– What is there to say about TRANSFORMERS 3? Everyone knows it is going to be bad and everybody knows it will also be spectacular. And T3 is definitely the most bad and most spectacular of the series. Once again, Michael Bay presents a world where everyone — young people, adults, robots — act like 20-year-old coke-heads. Basically, it is the cultural equivalent of sucking down too much Slushee (or frozen Margarita) too fast.

But all things considered, T3 is the worst of the bunch — surprisingly humorless and murderous. TRANSFORMERS 1 had the advantage of novelty: it was amazing to see giant cgi robots that felt so heavy. TRANSFORMERS 2 was terrible, but for reasons I cannot explain, I found it mildly amusing and did not hate life when I left the theater. But TRANNY 3 is just terrible, with the deaths of thousands (hundreds of thousands?) casually ignored, and all the “heroes” grimly promising to kill their foes throughout the film.

(Well, there are at least two Spock-related jokes, included because the main new robot is voiced by Leonard Nimoy… they are kind of witty, I guess).

Me in the Joongang Ilbo

June 18, 2011 / Mark / 0 Comments

Just in case you have not gotten enough of my yammering about K-pop, you can read more in this week’s Joongang Sunday. It is only in Korean, though, sorry.

Thanks much to the reporter, Chun Sujin, for wading through my endless verbiage and extracting the best parts. My wife was quite impressed with the translation, too … so if anyone is upset by anything I said, I guess I cannot blame anyone but me.

Dark Sides, Conquering Europe, and More K-Pop Stuff

June 17, 2011 / Mark / 2 Comments

In the wake of SM Entertainment’s quite successful concerts in Paris, the BBC has come out with another takedown of the K-pop industry, ominously titled THE DARK SIDE OF SOUTH KOREAN POP MUSIC. And for the most part, Lucy Williamson’s story is quite good. The story does not really break new ground, except for getting the members of the K-pop group group Rainbow to complain about their low wages on the record, but it is still worth a read.

Some highlights:

But the industry also has a less glamorous side: a history of controversy and legal disputes over the way it treats its young artists, which it is still struggling to shake.

That is, I think, a fair thesis. It says that there has been trouble, but the industry is trying to get past it. The courts have sided with the artists on several big cases involving unfair contracts and the Fair Trade Commission has tried to create better ones for the industry. But, as one lawyer notes:

“Until now, there hasn’t been much of a culture of hard negotiation in Asia, especially if you’re new to the industry,” says Sang-hyuk Im, an entertainment lawyer who represents both music companies and artists.

Attitudes are changing, he says, but there are some things that even new contracts and new attitudes cannot fix.

Williamson’s story mentions an artist union, but does not follow up the thought. It seems to me that if the performers were willing to get together, they could change the industry pretty radically overnight. After all, if management insists on treating pop music like a factory, it makes sense that the workers and apprentices treat it like a factory, too. And with so few workers earning 90 percent of the revenues, the top 10-20 groups and artists could potentially have a huge say. But, given the background of most artists and the structure of the biz, that is just not going to happen.

Contrary to some opinions, pop music has been a big part of the Korean music scene for years. In fact, there was probably a lot more diversity in the Korean music scene back in the 1970s, when you had trot, rock, folk, and pop, all with significant followings. Of course, money was tight back then, the recording technology generally was not great, and you did not have the elaborate pop culture industry to mold and perfect pop stars.

But even back in the 1970s, you could see many similarities to the music industry today. Back then, you had a small number of labels controlling access to studios and the airwaves. Also at the time, you had artists complaining that they did not make any money from their recordings, with the bulk of their revenues coming from concerts. And you had artists like the Hee Sisters or Lee Myoung-hoon (of Fevers) who were at least as famous for their looks and dancing as their music.

(Luckily, there is a book on its way all about the history of Korean rock and pop music from that period. I hope to be able to mention more about it soon.)

So, if the problems with Korean pop go back decades, to pop music’s origins in the 1970s, what can be done to fix things now? To be honest, I am not sure. With all respect to Bernie Cho (the head of the digital distributor DFSB Kollective, who is quoted in the BBC article), I do not think undervalued digital sales has much to do with the problem, and is probably more a symptom than a cause.

I suspect that this is another issue that internationalization is going to help with. As Korean artists get out and play other countries more, working with global artists, they are going to discover other ways of doing things. Not only are Korean artists getting out more, but international music labels, like Universal Music Group, are coming into Korea, working with the Korean companies in a variety of ways.

Despite the best intentions of government officials (and, often, their less-than-best intentions), learning by example is far more powerful than government directives. Look at Korea’s movie industry, which was helped far more by creators studying and working abroad than it was by the Ministry of Culture or Korean Film Council.

The question is, as always, will the industry be able to get its act together in time, before the next, hungrier competitor comes along? I do not think K-pop is in danger of disappearing, but people and the media are always on the lookout for the next big thing. The world today is full of music producers and performers who are studying the Korean example, looking to take it to the next level. After all, improving conditions for K-pop’s artists is not just about making the stars rich, it is about making the entire industry healthier.

Six (Hundred) Degrees of Wikipedia

May 25, 2011 / Mark / 0 Comments

Over at XKCD, Randall posits an interesting theory:

Wikipedia Trivia: If you take any article, click on the first link in the article text not in parentheses or italics, and then repeat, you will eventually end up at “Philosophy.”

So let’s try, starting with, say, K-pop:
K-pop -> musical genre -> genre -> literature -> fiction -> narrative -> Latin -> Italic Language -> Indo-European Languages-> language family -> language -> communication -> meaning (philosophy of language) (oh so close) -> Aristotle -> Greeks (doht! getting colder) -> nation -> sovereign state -> state -> social sciences -> umbrella term -> superset -> mathematics -> quantity -> property -> modern philosophy – philosophy

It works! I was going to try two or three more terms, but that was way too much work.

Long, Long Road

May 18, 2011 / Mark / 0 Comments

I cannot believe I never sat down and listened to all of Hahn Dae-soo’s first album, LONG LONG ROAD (1974). At least never before this evening. But I have been listening to it repeatedly for a few hours now and really loving it.

Of course I have listened to Hahn’s stuff before, here and there. But it never quite worked for me before. But something about listening to Hahn’s wailing on the opening track “Bring Me Some Water” just clicked. The other tracks are all much more mellow, than that opener, but still pretty strange and interesting in their own way. Great stuff.

You can listen to “Bring Me Some Water” here:

Mark James Russell

Page 31 of 90

Shin Joong-hyun Boxset Coming

Cool Stuff from DJ Soulscape

Blockbusters, Korean Movies and More

Ethnic Music in China

Asian Film Fest, Transformers, and Less

Me in the Joongang Ilbo

Dark Sides, Conquering Europe, and More K-Pop Stuff

Six (Hundred) Degrees of Wikipedia

More Links and Things

Long, Long Road

Young-hee and the Pullocho

Pop Goes Korea

K-Pop Now!

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