Saturday, February 27, 2010

Club day in Hongdae

TV Yellow CD release party at Club FF

TV Yellow

도원경 (Do Won Kyung) at Club FF

Move over boy and girl bands -- the Korean indie scene is alive and well in Seoul. Last night we went to see our friend's band play a gig as part of Hongdae's monthly "Club Day," where you can get into 21 clubs for the equivalent of $18.

After trying out a couple other clubs, we spent most of the night at Club FF, where our friend's band TV Yellow was playing. Later in the night we saw 도원경 (Do Won Kyung), a famous female rocker in Korea. Do has been on the scene (and Korean TVs) for over 15 years, and the club was packed. She reminded me a little of Garbage's Shirley Manson -- a complete breath of fresh air after hearing Girls' Generation for the last 9 months straight.

Do played this song from 1997 last night
:


Compare that song with Girls' Generation's biggest hit, "Gee," which topped the charts in Korea for nine-weeks straight:


Ugh, I could write a thesis just on how much those two videos say about gender in Korea.

2 comments:

  1. Agreed, last night was a breath of fresh air after enduring months and months of K-pop. It's just sad it took us this long to find it.

    I think it's also worth mentioning the wealth of crap we saw last night though as well -- namely at a club called Freebird. We actually left this place once after seeing a bad adult contemporary band (think Dave Matthews on valium) and made the mistake of going back to see a Club Day "featured artist" at 1 am. We caught the tail end of a bossa nova band we'd imagined you might find on a cruise ship (my parents, unfortunately, were not there to confirm or dance to verify this) and then the featured band, which went along the same vein, only the members had more interesting clothing (a woman dressed kind of like Peter Pan, wearing glasses lit up with green Christmas lights). It still didn't make the music any more bearable.

    ReplyDelete
  2. PS, you two are married.

    PPS, KIM YU NA!!!!!

    ReplyDelete