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Quotes from the weekend…

This weekend in Seoul, well, lots of things happened. Only the most important shall be noted, however. My baby, my first baby in the land of rock’n’roll, was finally recorded. That’s right, Deep End, my silly song about a foreigner taking swimming lessons at the Korean YMCA and finding himself head-over-heels infatuated with a lifeguard who speaks no English, has been recorded. We actually did quite well, making rather short work of it; I think everything was recorded within 3 takes except my solo, which took, I think, five tries to get exactly right. Still, the Cavare studio people all seemed quite pleased and perhaps even impressed.

Okay, the rest shall be conveyed in the form of scattered, contextless quotations.

Thai: “Well, during the holiday I saw Charlie Hunter live.”
Min Gyu: “Wow, cool.”
Myoung Jae: “And I saw the Flaming Lips.”
Min Gyu: “Wow!”
(slight pause)
Gord: “Well, I met the Dalai Lama.”
(laughter all around)

You know, I think to myself as I walk through the Yaksu subway station, transferring to the tan-colored line that leads to the studio, I don’t need to worry about running into her again. Seoul is so big, I could live here for two years and never cross paths with her. Really, I bet I never see her again. Seoul has too many people for chance accidents like that to really happen… Then I look at the guy in the sweater, walking toward the escalator, a little ahead of me, with the electric bass on his back.
Gord: “Seong Hwan!? Is that you?”
Seong Hwan: “Hi! Go-deu!”
Hmm. Maybe I was wrong about chance meetings? I think to myself, But maybe… maybe they’re not such a bad thing, either.

The following one is translated into English:
Gord: “Do you play in a band?”
Scary-Looking Mohawk-Sporting Korean Punk Rocker (SLMSKPR): “Why, yes, sir, indeed I do. We’re practicing these days, sir.”
Gord: “Wow, cool. So you play… punk rock?”
SLMSKPR: “Yes. We do. You’re in a band, sir?”
Gord: “Yes, I am, sir.”
SLMSKPR: “What sort of music to you play, sir?”
Gord: “Uh… um. Not punk. Maybe… middle-aged-man rock.”
SLMSKPR begins laughing uncontrollably.

(Seong Hwan’s muffled voice from studio control room): “Mhwah hwahwah wunhwuha hwahwanahwa.”
Gord: “What?”
(Myoung Jae is visibly perplexed, and unable to figure out what Seong Hwan is saying.)
Again, Seong Hwan: “Mhwah hwahwah wunhwuha HWAHWANAHWA!”
Gord: “You want to put a chicken in the fridge? What, man?”
Myoung Jae: “Seong Hwan’s on crack, man.”
Thai: “ELEGANCE-UH!”

(also through the control room audio relay)
Seong Hwan: “Like Kenny G! You make!”
Gord: “I’m gonna break your ass in half, boy.”

Gord: “This friend? He, plays in that band, uh, Cocore.”
Drummer across the table, with a confused look: “Huh?”
Gord (face flushed): “Er, uh, no, sorry. We were talking about Cocore before. Uh, he plays in Ghetto Bombs.”

“Look, I only have 29,000 won. If you want I can give W1000 in the morning. I can’t get it, I can’t go to the bank machine at this hour and I have no idea where I am…”

Myoung Jae: “I want [censored]! Now!” (Pause.) “I’m not kidding!”

Thai, Myoung, and Gord at the sight of the lead female singer of the band Tiger Rock in her terribly short plaid skirt: “!!!!!!!!!”

Myoung: “Where are you, Gord?”
Gord: “I don’t know. Somewhere. Sleeping.”
Myoung: “In Seoul, right?”
Gord: “Yeah, I think so.”
Myoung: “Are you okay?”
Gord: “I don’t know.”
Myoung: “What happened?”
Gord: “Uh… uh… later. I think I’m gonna need hand gestures to really tell you this story.”

The bassist of the band The Oh! Brothers has a great schtick he uses when an encore is requested by the audience: “Uh, we can’t play an encore. We need to take a bus back out to the suburbs were we live, you know…”

You know… the more I think of it, there’s at least one film-script worth of material just in this life as a member of a rock band in Korea. At least one.

But I’m hoping for stories with nicer middles… forget endings, I don’t think about endings anymore, just extended middles and fade-outs.

Last, but not least, we have a possible title for the EP we’ll put out this summer: “Muff Time In A Noraebang.” Sometimes autobiography is strange, but you know, if you can laugh at your own life, you’re in a lot better position to decide what to do next, I guess.

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