A Guide to What’s Going on in Korea
I just wrote a little blurb about the rise of fun new places and shops around Hongdae. Far from complete, it is just a little essay about Indian restaurants and other fun things around. It was a decent-sized little essay, but I barely even scratched the surface. Did not talk about the humongous new Coffee Bean on the main street, the Coffee Prince coffee shop or the oh-so-classy cocktails in a bag at Vinyl.
Fun little mini-show coming this Friday at Yogiga. For an hour before Kim Deok-young’s new show Wave of Emotions opens, there will be folk music by Utsumi Kaya and Anaki Project.
Concert begins at 6pm, then the art show at 7pm. Wave of Emotions runs from May 16 to 24.
Singer Lee Sang-eun is going to be on TV a couple of times soon. KBS on May 17 (don’t know what time, sorry), and then on EBS on May 19 at 8:50pm.
Her concert at Club Answer in Cheongdam-dong is being billed as her 20th anniversary concert. Which would be a lot cooler if we were not the same age — instead, it mostly makes me feel old.
This is a couple of weeks late (well, three weeks), but I just discovered Janis Ian’s announcement that she was canceling her part in the Flower Power Peace Concert. And it is depressing:
The South Korean dates have been cancelled, for reasons too numerous to go into here, but among them are failure to pay in a timely manner, failure to communicate for weeks at a time, failure to provide visas and/or work papers or information about same in a timely manner, false advertising (saying I will be appearing in places I have not agreed to appear in), and other breaches of contract too numerous to mention here.
My apologies to anyone who was planning to come to the shows because of my own participation in them. We have been trying to resolve this, in good faith, for months now. With the show dates less than 3 weeks away, we finally gave up on it this morning.
The Japan dates are still on, make no mistake! I’ve worked with those folks for decades, and have no problems with them!!
Well, that was distressing. Very sad to see Korea continues to be such a shady place for concerts. Especially since people like Yellow9 have been trying to hard to improve things.
While there are, sadly, way too many stories like this in Korea’s concert annals, here is one of my favorite, the story of James Randi (aka “The Amazing Randi”), when a concert promoter tried ripping him off back in 1995.
Okay, I am not hearing much of anything about local Jeonju bands playing in Jeonju this weekend. But there will apparently be several Seoul bands playing there. Just in case any readers are attending the Jeonju International Film Festival and would like to catch a show, here is what’s playing:
In addition, I was told that Mineri is playing JIFF on Saturday night, but I cannot see anything about it on the JIFF website. Worth looking out for, though.
Looks like I will be in Jeonju this weekend, for the Jeonju International Film Festival. While I am there, I thought it might be nice to check out a live show or two… unfortunately, I know nothing about the Jeonju club scene.
Anyone out there in Internet world know anything about live music in Jeonju?
A crazy selection of shows this weekend — nine shows on Friday, twelve on Saturday and another seven on Sunday. Friday is Sound Day/Club Day, of course. But Saturday is even busier. And this list does not include several shows that I have overlooked.
Anyhow, since my screwed up calendar erases a day’s events at 12:01 each day, I’m reprinting the whole weekend’s schedule here. Or at least that was my intention. It is already Friday evening. At least here is Saturday and Sunday.
04/26/2008
04/27/2008
The Pentaport 2008 site is live. Although it appears to be at least partly under construction still.
The first list of bands is up, and so far it is not a lot different from what most people had figured out already — Feeder, The Gossip, Go! Team, Princess Superstar, Travis and Underworld are all playing.
In addition we now have End of Fashion, Hard-Fi, Ozomatli, London Elektricity and DJ Accomplice.
Among Korean bands, there is Lee Sang-eun, Broccoli Neomajeo, Galaxy Express, Lee Han-chul, and Sogyumo Acadia Band with Yozoh.
Plenty more to come, of course. The websites of DJ Darren Price and the band Paramore claim they will be playing at Pentaport. Organizers told me to expect at least one more big name/band. But I am sure there will be plenty of Korean and Japanese acts, too.
Just to refresh — this year’s Pentaport will be held July 25-27. Last year tickets cost 88,000 won for one day, 132,000 won for two days and 165,000 won for the whole festival. Pentaport is held in the god-forsaken part of Songdo, west of Incheon right along the west coast. There are a few hotels near-ish, but they usually sell out quickly. But taking a taxi from Pentaport to Shinchon cost me just 40,000 won (two years ago), so worse-comes-to-worst, it is pretty much affordable to taxi it.
Two more acts claim to be playing at Pentaport this year — Gossip and Paramore.
They join the other acts that unofficially have announced they will be coming — Go! Team, Feeder, Princess Superstar and Underworld.
Still nothing official from Pentaport organizers at Yellow 9 Entertainment. But the Pentaport website now says that the site officially opens on April 24 at 2pm.
It is not secret I am a big fan of ORIENTAL LUCY. So it is with a happy heart that I can report that the band is having a release party for its first mini-CD on Saturday. There will be a showcase and a couple of bands playing.
The fun begins at 5pm 7pm (OL’s latest email now says 7 o’clock) at the Hongdae club 500 (which is apparently close to the AA Design Academy, if you know where that is). Not sure how late the festivities will run, but as you can see in the concert calendar, Saturday (indeed, all weekend) is chock full of concerts. Come for ORIENTAL LUCY, and stay for the whole evening.
In case you cannot find 500, I dug up this poor map in the outer reaches of the World Wide Web… hope it helps.
