All right, new Dramabeans game! Based on several suggestions made in my recent song repost thread, I’m trying out the idea of profiling some indie/underrated Korean musicians outside the sphere of general kpop music, with songs and background information and such as. I don’t know how often I’ll do these, but hopefully I can manage a semi-regular system.
But how to make it more fun? Add FREE STUFF, of course.
So today I’m picking one of my favorite indie artists, Oldfish, and throwing in a FREE GIVEAWAY. I’m giving away FOUR FREE CDs of the Acoustic Movement album. You can listen to a few tracks below the cut.
The rules?
Leave a comment. Be sure to leave your email address (won’t be visible to the public) so I can contact winners. You can comment as many times as you like, but you’ll only be entered once to win.
I’ll post up the winners next Friday (is a week too long?), and keep an easy-peasy link/notice up at the right sidebar.
On May 7, Epik High rapper Mithra Jin issued a public apology on variety show Goldfish for rude remarks made toward Min Kyung Hoon of the ballad group Buzz.
The rapper had hosted a radio show on music portal site Melon, “Mithra Jin’s Music Date,” in a special New Year’s broadcast back in January, after which he was criticized for insulting other artists. Mithra Jin explained that he’d been a little looser than his usual style that night, and should have been more careful when he said:
“The Nuts’ Ji Hyun Woo and singer of 1988 [old-fashioned] ballads Min Kyung Joon… The ones who don’t bow [in greeting] properly are all 1984′ers. You’d think their necks were in a cast.”
Tablo clarified, saying the press had misreported the statements. I’d say they really did, because the first article I read made Mithra Jin out to be rude and abrasive, but a second report printed the full quote, which is much less incendiary:
“The Nuts’ Ji Hyun Woo and singer of 1988 ballads Min Kyung Joon. Why are these kids born in the Year of the Rat so tall? They’re at least 184cm — the kids who don’t bow are all 84′ers. You’d think their necks were in a cast.”
(It’s a little convoluted, but it was meant as a play on words, with 184 cm => born 1984, Year of Rat => 2008 is Rat Year => New Year’s radio broadcast.)
But, Tablo conceded that although the comments toward Ji Hyun Woo weren’t that bad, Mithra Jin had been a bit unfair to Min Kyung Hoon, and DJ Tukutz even extended his own apology as well.
The show put Mithra Jin on the phone with Min Kyung Hoon, and although Min was unable to answer because he was in the middle of his own TV appearance, Mithra Jin apologized, saying, “I made some rude remarks about you in the past, and I want to take this opportunity to apologize directly. I’d like if we could have a drink sometime in the future and talk.”
Bit of a side rant:
I swear, Korean media really needs to get its act together. I’ve always been kind of wary of the press, but sometimes it’s hard to tell just how much liberty the reporters are taking in telling a story. As you can tell above, the simple omission of a sentence can drastically alter the tone of a statement. I’ve read at least four different articles all reporting this same story, and each source has “quoted” Mithra Jin differently. Western press has strict rules on quotations — anything that wasn’t explicitly stated must reside outside the quotation marks or be set off by brackets, so there’s no confusion as to what was exactly stated. But Korean media almost always paraphrases — within quotes, outside quotes, willy-nilly. The same “quote” can have slight wording variations in every source that chooses to quote it. It’s ridiculous. It’s like there are no standards for professional reporting — and perhaps there aren’t.
I just finished going through all my song posts and re-uploading all the expired links. Bejeebus!, I have a lot of songs posted. Since re-uploading is a daunting task, I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do about expired links in the future — they go dead if they haven’t been downloaded in 60 days, and I don’t have the patience to scour through them on a bimonthly basis. I should probably be surprised that most of the links were still alive. (Although someone actually went through and reported all my Shinhwa links specifically! Grr. Thanks a lot for making my job harder.)
But I saw some links that went dead or were less-downloaded, and figured I’d highlight some — songs I particularly like or which may have gone overlooked initially.
(If I put up too many of those audio players, my browser tends to freeze, unfortunately. So if I don’t put up the audio player for the song, I’m putting up a link to the page where you can listen to it.)
For instance:
INDIE ROCK/POP
Bluedawn - “Tabula Rasa”
The Bluedawn duo (Han Hee Jung aka Dawn on vocals, Jung Sang Hoon aka Ssoro on guitar) released their debut album in 2003 and has since put out a second full-length album and a dual EP album. They broke up in 2006; I believe Dawn is continuing on with the new group Invisible Fish. [ Download ]
First off, huge thanks to Luv, who, aside from making me fantastic headers for this site, is responsible for the photos above and the first clip below — which is remarkable for its fairly clear audio given how loud it was in the club. Thanks also to happyroach at soompi.com for her awesome close-up photos of the event.
Onward.
American-crossover hopeful Se7en held his album preview party last night at the Hollywood club Highlands, where he performed three songs from his upcoming debut album.
In a nutshell? If you’re a Se7en fan, the event was probably a success because you got to see him performing up close and personal in a relatively small club atmosphere. No way you’d get this close in a performance in Korea, or Asia. Promotion-wise, the party was packed and people were screaming with excitement when Se7en took the stage, so another plus there.
If you’re me, though, neither a Se7en fan nor hater, merely curious to see the atmosphere and wishing him well despite being rather dubious to his crossover appeal, the event was a mixed bag.
Clip: Se7en performing the second song of the night, “Money Can’t Buy Me Love”:
Tablo was on MBC’s Goldfish — Radio Star program on the 30th, and revealed his bad history of dating the wrong girls.
He’d initially declined to answer the host’s question about bad exes, but when he was pressed to describe typical behavior, he “answered carefully,” saying, “Cheating was a given, and she lied a lot. I’ve also dated someone who lied and said she didn’t have a boyfriend when she did.”
The (persistent!) host Kim Gura asked specifically if he’d had money issues, and Tablo answered that there was one instance when one demanded a huge amount of money. Asked how much, he answered, “$80,000 or $90,000?” He continued, “When I told her I couldn’t give it to her, she accused me of playing around with her and made me out to be the bad person.”
He also said that because he’s so consumed with work when an album is about to come out, he tends to break up with his girlfriends whenever a release date approaches. But that’s not too unusual for the Epik High guys; Mithra Jin added that all three of them tend to get caught up in their work and have no time to date.
Tablo, hon, you’re just meeting the wrong girls. I know where you can find some really awesome, non-cheaty ladies.
