June Archives

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June 24 2006


Korea vs Switzerland
Well I guess everyone knows how the game turned out now. I decided to go downtown and see what it was like for myself. Even though it was 4am and there was a chance of rain, there were tens of thousands of people present. Overall, it was always under control and there was never any risk of anything bad happening. Well, aside from Joey falling off the roof or getting caught B&Eing. It didn't happen and we had a nice breakfast.

June 24 2006


In the Playground
Here are my pictures from after the show. We went for Mexican food, and then Verv and I left early. After that, things got a little hazy.

June 24 2006


Suck Stuff CD Release
Looking at these pictures makes me want not only a flash but a better camera. This one is starting to feel sluggish and unresponsive. I guess I am pretty abusive to my cameras compared to most other users. Well, at least I was able to pull a number of coherent images out of these pictures.

June 24 2006


Suck Stuff CD Release
There were only two bands playing this show, which is pretty odd. The openers were Reanimator, a tough band to photograph without a flash. Somehow I managed to get some passable photos. I guess. My outdoor stuff is a lot better of course. Tomorrow I'll show all the photos from the Suck Stuff set.

I also have pictures from the Korea vs Switzerland game. Well, not the game itself, but the massive assembly of people in red who gathered downtown that morning at 4am.

June 19 2006

Once again I didn't make it out. This time because my cat had an operation. However, I've started work on a project to recover all my old photos. There is some hope that the photos that were on Indecline before it crashed will pop back online sometime soon, so I decided to start at the beginning. Keep your eyes on this page for some really old pictures. So far I've gotten up the two shows I saw in 2003. You can see everyone looking a lot younger, with way fewer foreigners.

June 16 2006

I just thought I'd take this time to point out that I run two websites. This one, which is about things happening in the punk scene, and the other, which is about more Korea-specific goings-on. There are also a lot of pictures of Millie. When one is getting neglected, I'm often spending more time on the other one.

June 10 2006


Skunk Hell with no Flash
As I announced last post, my camera's flash is not currently working, and I don't know when I'll bother to get it fixed. This week's gallery is full of grainy, pixelated, blurry photos.

This is a good opportunity to mention our upcoming zine, Fuck The Internet Verv. It's been a secret for a long time, but quite a while ago Verv and I decided he needed to have his writing assembled into one zine. Rather than wait for him to get around to it, I volunteered to make it myself. It will be released very soon, and it will be glorious. In it you can read some of his classic writing like "The Pride Of The Zoo," "From The Beach Comes A Blind Man," and "Squirrel Race War," among many others. Unfortunately it is entirely in English.

I've had Verv on my mind a bit more than lately. Last Thursday when I was coming into work I had a vision of myself in an alternate universe, where I worked on a garbage truck with none other than Verv himself. Something about it just resounded within me. I could see that life as an ideal existence, one that Verv himself would probably love too. So what did I do? I made it into a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure story.

June 8 2006

Another week is passing with no new pictures. Actually, the flash on my camera has stopped working, so it might be a while before you see decent photos from me again. If you see me taking your picture, don't move around so much.

I've been listening to a lot of power-pop lately, thanks to a link I got on CSC. If you're interested in mod music and power-pop, this is the site for you. They have an extensive list of mp3s for download. By the time I got through A I'd already found a ton of great new bands. Here are some of the best I've found in the first letter of the alphabet.

  • Accidents - Blood Splattered with Guitars
  • Adverts - The Great British Mistake
  • Advertising - Stolen Love
  • Ail Symudiad - Edrych Tiwy y camerau (I think it's Welsh)
  • Amber Squad - Six of Me
  • Any Trouble - Turning Up the Heat

    • June 2 2006

    There were no new pictures this week, so I'll give you a little tirade on file-sharing. Specifically music, TV, and movies.

    I was very impressed to learn about the Canadian Music Creators Coalition, a group of Canadian musicians who have united in defence of fans who download music. The list includes a few names I had no other reason to ever respect, including Barenaked Ladies, Avril Lavigne, and Sum 41. There are plenty other names that might be obscure to non-Canadians, such as Sarah McLachlan, Chantal Kreviazuk, Raine Maida from Our Lady Peace, Dave Bidini from Rheostatics, Billy Talent, John K Samson from the Weakerthans, Broken Social Scene, New Pornographers, Metric, and Sloan. That last one, Sloan, is a pretty decent band, the one I'd recommend most of all of them. They've outlined three very important points:

    1. Suing Our Fans is Destructive and Hypocritical
    Artists do not want to sue music fans. The labels have been suing our fans against our will, and laws enabling these suits cannot be justified in our names. We oppose any copyright reforms that would make it easier for record companies to do this. The government should repeal provisions of the Copyright Act that allow labels to unfairly punish fans who share music for non-commercial purposes with statutory damages of $500 to $20,000 per song.
    It's worth pointing out that while suing music sharers is counter-productive, there are piraters out there who do it for a profit, not for the love of music. There are sites such as Korea's Bugs which earn money without giving any return to the original musicians.
    2. Digital Locks are Risky and Counterproductive
    Artists do not support using digital locks to increase the labelsĄŻ control over the distribution, use and enjoyment of music or laws that prohibit circumvention of such technological measures. The government should not blindly implement decade-old treaties designed to give control to major labels and take choices away from artists and consumers. Laws should protect artists and consumers, not restrictive technologies. Consumers should be able to transfer the music they buy to other formats under a right of fair use, without having to pay twice.
    I fucking hate digital locks. Any label that uses digital locks deserves a smack up the head. It's telling fans "This music is property of the record company. It is not yours." That automatically gets them a big thumbs-down from me. Seriously, do this and it makes your CD automatically shit. I've already had some harsh words for the Chinese band SMZB about the use of digital locks on their CD. How shitty is it that a band from China, the last bastion against capitalism, is putting their CDs in shackles? This is the one place where Communism might actually help you.
    3. Cultural Policy Should Support Actual Canadian Artists
    The vast majority of new Canadian music is not promoted by major labels, which focus mostly on foreign artists. The government should use other policy tools to support actual Canadian artists and a thriving musical and cultural scene. The government should make a long-term commitment to grow support mechanisms like the Canada Music Fund and FACTOR, invest in music training and education, create limited tax shelters for copyright royalties, protect artists from inequalities in bargaining power and make collecting societies more transparent.
    This last one actually doesn't have much to do with what I'm talking about.

    Music file-sharing is a great tool for musicians. Are you really worried that people are going to hear your music without paying? How else are people in Croatia going to find your music? And how many of you owe your musical inspiration to music you obtained through file-sharing?

    File-sharing is under attack right now, particularly Bit Torrent sites. It's thanks to Bit Torrent that I keep my sanity here. It's the only way I can keep up-to-date with all the TV shows I'm missing back home. Who can wait for Trailer Park Boys to reach Korea?

    The one show I'm particularly proud of is South Park. The creators of that show tacitly approve of their show being shared online. You can find sites like Mr Twig or Awesom-O where an episode will be online literally minutes after it finishes airing on Comedy Central. It's been helpful to Canadians, where our channels are always a few seasons behind what's current, and it's infinitely more helpful to me here.

    Here's a great article about how file-sharing actually improved a TV show's ratings. Both Battlestar Galactica and Doctor Who are mentioned having succeeded partly due to the word-of-mouth generated online by file-sharers.

    While you might assume the SciFi Channel saw a significant drop-off in viewership as a result of this piracy, it appears to have had the reverse effect: the series is so good that the few tens of thousands of people who watched downloaded versions told their friends to tune in on January 14th, and see for themselves. From its premiere, Battlestar Galactica has been the most popular program ever to air on the SciFi Channel, and its audiences have only grown throughout the first series. Piracy made it possible for "word-of-mouth" to spread about Battlestar Galactica.
    The same thing happened with Doctor Who--which, by the way, has possibly gotten even better with David Tennant taking over for Christopher Eccleston. The first (new) season has already aired in Korea, but we're a good way through the second season on Bit Torrent.

    Quite a few of my favourite torrent sites have disappeared over the years, some sued out of existence, some simply threatened into lawsuits. Recently the popular site The Pirate Bay was raided by Swedish police. You can read about it here. And guess what? No matter how many of these sites get taken out, more will pop up. There are thousands, probably millions of people who use torrents and will find a way to keep it going.

    When it comes to movies, file-sharing gets a little greasier. Here are three movies that I think you could build a strong case for downloading:

  • X-Men 3 - because its release is delayed in Korea for some reason.
  • Da Vinci Code - in the eventuality it gets banned in Korea.
  • Mission: Impossible 3 - because Tom Cruise is a bag of nuts and you don't want your money going to fund the war against Xenu's evil galactic empire.

    So there you have it. Don't feel guilty downloading music. If they don't want you downloading their music, let their tears fill the swimming pools in their Hollywood homes. Don't feel bad for downloading TV shows because you're not affecting their ratings (at least not for the worse). And don't feel bad about downloading movies so long as you stick to shitty, banned, or unavailable movies.

    • LINKS

  • Broke in Korea message board
  • Broke in Korea online zine
  • Digital Grotto
  • Comments for this page
  • MySpace Korean Punk group

    CONTACT

  • E-mail
    Jon underscore Dunbar at Hotmail
  • Phone
    010-3212-2812
    No long distance calls please; they won't work.
  • Mailing address
    Seriously, don't ask me right now.


    • Please remember that these photos are all copyrighted to me. If you want to use them in any way, there's a 90 per cent chance I'll give you my permission, and be able to give you a copy with a higher DPI.
    Copyright Jon Dunbar 2004
    Photos taken by
    Nikon CoolPix 950
    digital camera.