IndieClub

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Letters from the road
Sun King in Korea- letters home from a local band on tour Part 2

The gigs are going well and we’re selling lots of CDs. The gigs have their share of unusual occurances as well. One night, Kweesu (that’s Chris in Korean) changes the lyrics to one of the songs to suit the air force guys that are there. He sang something about “the Army sucks”. The Air Force guys loved it, except the club was on an Army base. Gweggy (Greg) and I thought we were gonna get killed, but Kweesu weasled us out of it. We keep getting requests for the this “80’s” crap. This one group of officers tell us, “Play some Motley Crue!” I reply, “Man drop and give me 20 pushups for that!” A big “ooooooooHHH!” from the enlisted men. We played this big outdoor festival for 3 days and the audience was all local Koreans. We didn’t know what to expect. By the 3rd set, we had all the ajimas (older women) bouncing their children on their laps to the Metallica’s “Seek and Destroy.” Can you say, “Twilight Zone?”
Speaking of the Twilight Zone, this Korean place is a trip, I’m noticing more and more unusual things here. Take the food for example. There’s the delicious “goat juice”, complete with a devil-like goat for a logo. Apparently it’s a tasty beverage made from various goat excretions, “Mmm, mmm”. Or you can slurp down some live squid tentacles, but you should chew them first, cuz they’ll use their suction cups to suck on to the roof of your throat, choke you, and kill you. And there’s one time Gweggy and I had the following for lunch: raw squid pancakes, BBQ cat on a stick, Little Debbie peanut butter bars and Gatorade. That’s rock-n-roll baby! Yeah! An interesting meal to say the least though. We did pass on the “fly sack”; huge bowls of boiled fly larvae of some kind. And just the other night we’re having dinner with these girls and I discover the unforgettable flavor of grilled chicken butt on a stick. Some of the food is really good and healthy though.
Then there’s the Korean music scene - yikes! It seems that Korean pop music is just a bad copy of american pop music. Just listen to the hard- rockin group “Deli Spice”, the wannake punkers, “Crying Nut”, or the severely Alice In Chains-like “Noise Garden”. The big hair bands are still hip. I just heard the 180 beat per minute drum machine version of “Stairway To Heaven”, sung in Korean of course. Just try and use your imagination. While in a local gym last week I noticed that the aerobic instructors don’t use a tape with a workout’s worth of music on it. Instead, I had to suffer through an entire album played on 78 speed. It was Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”. When one exercise was finished, the aerobics instructor would move the needle of the record player to the next song like SCRAAAAATCH! Then “Beat It” sung by the chipmunks would play. OK, I’m done, time for a shower. But not in this gym. There was no shower, just this bath house type set up with all these naked Korean dudes layin around and none of them near the bath. They all stared at me when I walked in. No thanks, I bailed.
And the club scene is kinda strange too. With names like the Led Zeppelin Club and the Yes 90215 Club, who would dare not have a good time? We stayed at the Doug In Hotel (no it’s not a whorehouse) in Taegu City for 2 weeks. This is where they grow all the Miss Koreas. The women there were extremely exotic and beautiful. They’re mostly college students and outnumbered the men by about 5 to 1 (really, we counted). The streets are so choked with hot chicks that you can’t even drive! Anyway, Gweggy knows this guy who owns a club near our hotel. He graciously takes us out to this really nice club downtown. Everyone there is dressed really nice, except for us. We’re told that we seriously look like real gangsters. I notice the waiters all suddenly rushing around in their tuxedos. It seems that part of their job is to find single women in the club and bring them to our table. Obviously, I’m a little skeptical, but these are not “drinky girls” or hookers, they’re just regular girls out with their friends. There’s just not nearly enough guys in this city to handle them. We had a good time that night and wound up with a table full of girls. They eventually loosened up.
The next day, Gweggy and I ventured out into town. Kweesu cruises with his Korean fiancee. As we walk around, hundreds of girls stop in their tracks to stare at us. And they ain’t shy about it either. It’s as if we’re walking around naked or something. No we’re just American. In fact I didn’t see another American or Anglo of any kind in this city, just Koreans. All these cute girls have a really gross habit though. As they smoke cigarettes, they spit these huge nicotine brown loogies into ashtrays lined with wet napkins- aaaah! It takes a little (more like a lot) getting use to.
There’s some other funny things here too, like this hasn’t been enough so far. A shoe store called “Do Ice”, a brand of beer called “Green Bud”, a clothing store called “Get Used”, things like that. Parents here have their kids just pee or crap in the street so you have to watch your step. And there’s this one town called Song Tan which I call “Say Tan”, that has devils and demons all over the streets, on the store fronts etc. We all agree that there’s a distinctively evil vibe here. Oh yeah, the phone prefix - 666. For real!
Our accomodations have been pretty nice so far, but with a few exceptions. The hotels don’t have fire escapes. They have ropes that you tie to a hook, then you climb down the rope out of the window to escape. This seems fairly reasonable, except the ropes in each room are all the same length, ie. we’re on the 6th floor but there’s only 2 floors worth of rope in our room. Gweggy, ninga - like in his approach to hotels here, always looks for the quickest way out of the room before he unpacks.
Our transportation has its moments as well. we got on this city bus to go sightseeings the other day and the driver packed it so full that we could hardly breathe. It really sucked. I do feel sorry for the 2 schoolgirls who developed an intimate relationship with the wrath of my armpits. By the way, it was the wrong bus and we wound up far away from where we were trying to go. I finally got a good nature fix and some fresh air too. Apsan Mountain has this nice park with rides and trails that lead to these temples. You can ride the chairlift up through a tall pine forest to the top of the mountain. From there you can see the entire city of Taegu. It’s a freakin huge city of about 10 million people. Or you can go for a prayer at an elaborate buddhist temple. We tried this except the service abruptly ended when Gweggy entered the temple without bowing his head.
I tried to get another nature fix the other day by going to the beach on the Yellow Sea. Boy, we ain’t on Maui!! Barbedwire, trash, and the overwhelming smell of raw sewage and rotting clams. On the way back to the hotel, I’m cruising through these rice fields and I notice this loud buzzing sound. I look up to see that the sky has become black with huge mosquitoes...and they’re all after me! I cover my nose and mouth as I literally run for my life. Obviously, I survived. We’ve got 3 more months here and who knows what will happen next. We’ll be in Seoul for the next 2 weeks and I’m sure I’ll have plenty of material for Part III of this journal. You can write me at mailto:clarknaberschnig@hotmail.com.

Aloha, Pau for noww!
Kwah-Ku (Clark)

• MAUI TIME * July 6, 1999 *