February ArchivesMain page is here. |
February 23 2007 Edmonton Punk I've been doing pretty well the same thing for years at shows, taking pictures and putting them online. It all started around 2001 when I bought the Nikon Coolpix 950 (yes, the same one I've been using recently). All my old sites are still spread online over a web of Angelfire pages that crap out easily. So I decided to host some of the best here and tell you a little about the Edmonton punk scene. Through this link is a guide of every Edmonton punk band I got decent pictures of, plus a few of the familiar faces in the punk scene. The punk scene in Edmonton really got its shit together around the turn of the century, and for a few years there was a boom of great bands. Out of it, apparently the Wednesday Night Heroes and Our Mercury are still growing, but most of the others dropped off the face of the earth without leaving any record behind other than these photos. It's been hard for Edmonton bands to get attention outside of the city, even though some of them have been the best in Canada. I've always thought the Edmonton punk scene is pretty similar to Seoul's scene. Both are out-of-the-way places, rarely considered as cultural centers worthy of having punk scenes. But both of them were left alone to put together bands, and created some great music. Both of them have strong scenes with relatively little conflict. We've had our problems with the straight-edge kids who come in from Sherwood Park, but that's been pretty well it. Edmonton punk has a little more ska than Korea, and a lot less pop-punk and ska-punk. There's a good bunch of skinheads around there, and the white supremacists from out of town haven't had much luck taking root there. Look, I found a video of the cops coming to an Edmonton punk show. I was there when this happened, standing to the side and trying to figure it out. Too bad they let the moron in the Propagandhi shirt do all the talking. You can see Jebus there, who was promoting the show, and the cops get a few seconds of Les Tabernacles at the end before Rob yells at them to get out. And yes, there was plenty of drinking in the park and some drugs. My friend Adam was almost busted, but one of the guys he was standing with panicked and took off, so the cops chased him instead, allowing Adam to walk away. Ah, memories. Anyway, come see what I used to do before I came to Korea. |
February 20 2007A lot of stuff happened this year. So what better way to honour it than a round of handjobs for the elite of our scene. Nominations were accepted on the Broke in Korea message board, and the ballot was printed on the back page of Broke #3. Below is a form containing all the categories and nominees. To vote, e-mail your selections to jon_dunbar@hotmail.com. The deadline is March 1. Winners will be announced sometime around then.
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February 10 2007 Hat Trickers It's impossible to talk about the Hat Trickers without talking about a lot of things: the Adicts, Clockwork Orange, and Batman Returns. You'll see why. I've heard people say a lot of negative things about the show, but I'm going to sit on the fence and say I was too drunk to remember accurately. Keep in mind when in a similar condition I walked out of Guitar Wolf. These guys dress the part a little much but they still play the music straight up. The whole idea of "clockwork punk" is kind of ridiculous, but I'll let it slide so long as the bands are entertaining. And Hat Trickers was. |
February 10 2007 Never Mind the Punk Rock Show Here's the world's greatest fictional youth counterculture. No, I don't have a camera again. I jumped Mike and took his camera. Or grovelled shamelessly. We actually did the same thing once in September 2004 when my camera wasn't working properly. This was a big show, with the headlining act coming all the way from Japan. Unfortunately the Hat Trickers photos aren't ready yet as Mike's transferring them to me and it's taking a long time. Jonathan got his weblog back up over at Steel Robe, and took his own pictures of the Hat Trickers. He wasn't impressed with them copying a band copying a movie copying a book. His find of the night is the Nazi scooter that is owned by the Korean biker Nazi with an axe who chased Morgan one night. Damn that thing is hilarious. Also, Adam wants you to acknowledge his pictures. |
February 8 2007 Zines Not too long ago I introduced Broke issue 3 at the Soul Allnighter. This issue has a lot of writing from Jonathan which is found online at Steel Robe and Verv who posts his rants on our message board. I'm also releasing Fuck the Internet Verv issue 1, a zine I put together to distribute Verv's writing in an attractive format. This one has been sitting around for a while now, but Verv and I talked and decided it's finally time to unleash it on all of you. There is very likely some overlap in the material in Broke 3 and FTIV 1. Also, it looks like the crossword is sized wrong in FTIV 1. |
February 8 2007 Joey We finally heard from Joey. He moved back to the US almost two years ago and always complained about how much it sucked. Then in November he went quiet and we didn't know what happened to him. He finally left a brief message on Broke explaining he was okay and apologising for not stopping by to harass our n00bs. A couple weeks ago the three-year anniversary of the first time I met Joey passed, so here are the pictures from that weekend. Also, I just realised there wasn't any kind of anniversary celebration for Skunk this year, was there? This was the first show there too. |
February 1 2007 Gunhee in Indonesia It's been a while since Gunhee's been in Korea. For those of you who don't remember, he was the drummer in the two-man band Pulgasari with Nevin. He moved to Indonesia last year and seems to be taking root. I confess I haven't looked at his site in a while, but he had a really cool story about his first weekend out with the Indonesian punks. He has a lot of interesting things to say and I wish he'd write more. As he says, "Indonesia, among those who don¡¯t consider Germany, England, and the U.$.A. to be the only punk countries in the world, is known to have a sound, vast underground scene." I was particularly interested in his description of Koreans living in Indonesia. So, I live in Tangerang, one of the satellite cities of Jakarta, together with two of my co-workers, both Koreans, and both assholes. One of them, for instance, has no other joy in life than bitching about how corrupt the Indonesian society is, how hopeless the Indonesian economy is, and how uncivilized the Indonesian people are. ...Sound familiar? If you replaced a couple words, it would be a very good description of a lot of foreigners in this country. Gunhee makes the comparison himself: Most of the Korean residents in town, if not all, tend to regard themselves as a different species. They never admit that they are only guests. And they behave, to make it easier for you to understand, just the same way a lot of G.I. Jocks and other Amerikkkan scumbags* do in Korea. I already had enough of this ¡°so-glad-I-wasn¡¯t-born-in-your- miserable-shithole-country-but-living-as-a-foreigner-is-sweet¡± type bullshit. Please, no, not any more.Anyway, go have a look. He has a bunch of photos up of a day out with the Indonesian punks, and it looks like they had a good time. Sounds like the Indonesian punk scene has a lot more real estate than here, including a hotel exclusively for punks from around the world. *Before you jump down his throat and call him a typical Korean racist or something, remember that he had American friends. And also that one of his performances in Skunk Hell received the worst heckling I've seen in this country by some drunk disruptive soldiers, to the point where I told one of them to get the fuck out. |
LINKS
CONTACT
Jon underscore Dunbar at Hotmail
010-3212-2812
No long distance calls please; they won't work.
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.