Indecline ArchivesMain page is here. |
August 20 2005 Bye to Joey For Joey's last show in Korea, a bunch of bands came up from Busan for a show. Of course it wasn't advertised as Joey's going-away show, but afterwards they got out the tables and brought out a ton of beer and we all drank inside and said goodbye to Joey. He has been missed. |
August 13 2005 Annie Unity adopted a puppy who wandered into her work during a rainstorm. Although Annie developed her enemies, I always liked her. She has very coarse fur that feels like a rat's. Unity and a few other people rented a small apartment together which was nicknamed the Waeg Cave. Over the next few months scene politics would get in the way and ruin everything. |
August 7 2005 Suck Stuff vs 13 Steps A while back, someone swiped all the money from the door at a Skunk show. According to my Broke article it was on July 3. We ran a hat around and among all the foreigners there the money was soon replaced. Chulhwan was so impressed that he booked this show as free for all foreigners. It was to be the ultimate battle between Suck Stuff and 13 Steps. Also, Reanimator opened. |
August 5 2005 Aura For a change of pace I followed Nevin to Aura, a club not far from Ssamzie Space that seems to cater to the hippie crowd. All in all the experience left me craving beef jerky, which I picked up on the walk back to the park. |
July 30 2005 Music Camp The big day that everything changed was July 30. Rux was invited to be on Music Camp, a big music show broadcast live on MBC. I begged Joey to bring me along, but he didn't find out until the morning of the show that Rux was free to bring whoever they wanted. Unfortunately I wasn't able to make it, but a whole ton of Korean punks joined Rux on stage. If you don't know what happened, well let's just say two Korean punks spent a few months in jail, Jonghee was threatened with jail and the closure of his club, and the rest of the punks were terrified of being attacked. It took a while and another scandal before things calmed down. Luckily it turned out one of Park Junghee's daughters was running some kind of rape camp, but that was okay, because as Park's daughter said, "It's not like they're old enough to get pregnant." |
July 16 2005 Ehwa Women's University There was an exhibition show for very little reason over by Ehwa Women's University. I came along and got a bunch of pictures, mainly of Suck Stuff and Things We Say, and I hung out with Jay and Spanky and the Cheongju boys. Plus I needed more pictures of tattoos for the tattooing article I was working on so you can see those at the bottom. |
July 3 2005 Drew and Something Fierce I was writing an article about tattooing in Korea, and Drew had a sob story about a tattoo he got here so I went to one of his shows and went out for supper with him after. Good times. |
July 2 2005 Never Daniel There was kind of a fad going on at the time, mostly instigated by Paul or myself, that whenever someone passed out they would get painted with black markers. We probably got the most ink onto Never Daniel, although it wasn't our most subtle work. The eventual idea was to make him a black man. The idea lost some momentum later when one of the victims was a homeless man sleeping in the park. It's been revived from time to time, most notably on Marc in Japan and Verv. |
June 29 2005 Rux Show When Rux released a CD a few months previous, they enclosed free tickets for a show they would play. So Jonghee was forced to put the show on, even though the band wasn't in good shape. His idea was to bring back as many former members as possible, as well as all the guest musicians he could get. The show was at Rolling Hall, the first time a punk show has been held there to my knowledge. Also note that a few of the older punks were experimenting with whiteface makeup, which will become important later. |
June 18 2005 BPJC Show I got some pictures of a few BPJC-connected bands. At this point BPJC really didn't make sense as a group anymore and really wasn't active as a label. |
June 4 2005 MR27 Burke brought his band out of hiadas for the first show in a long time (and the last show in a long time too). I think Sidney was on break from the army or something. This wasn't their permanent return yet. |
May 28 2005 Vicious Nerds The Vicious Nerds were back. Also, I met up with Kevin and Nicole, an American couple whose vegan diet meant they could barely eat anything. I took them to a place I was pretty sure was vegan. It turned out to be mostly vegan when they threw an egg on the hot plate at the end of the meal. |
May 25 2005 Paul's First Suck Stuff Show Suck Stuff lost all its original members except Chulhwan, so he had to get a whole new lineup. Difficult considering the band for so long had been defined as Chulhwan + Houk. Although worried he would be too "lazy," he got Paul to play guitar. This was their first show with the new lineup, also featuring Kiseok on drums and Jungjae on bass. |
May 20 2005 Bye to Amanda and Jane Amanda and Jane were due to leave Korea, so we all felt like this kid with his popsicle. The only cure was trying to get a piercing and lots of yogurt soju. Amanda's brother Aaron would come back to Korea soon to stay with us. |
May 17 2005 Bye to Megan I didn't really get many pictures. I think we were all sick or something. Also don't miss the pictures of Samia's giant cat Orange. |
May 15 2005 In the Park We showed up late at night in the park to find things going kind of weird. Urchin was messing with street lights and even managed to turn one off, and Jane was in a box. |
May 15 2005 Date These don't really belong here, just pictures of me and Jung drinking while Megan is elsewhere. |
May 14 2005 Hongdae Park Show It's not that often that there's a punk show in the park, but it should happen more. It's always fun to get pictures of people watching the bands. This show had Shorty Cat and Spiky Brats. Plus we saw the swing kid who would spend a minimum of one hour each day on the swings. |
May 13 2005 Insadong One good place to visit when you're in Seoul is Insadong, which has an amusing market with some interesting stores. I'm always up for visiting the toy store, which had recently expanded. |
May 12 2005 Children's Grand Park We went in search of an aquarium or something at Children's Grand Park but it had closed down. Instead we ended up exploring the park and having a pretty good time, which came to an unpleasant end when Paul started having relationship problems and had to leave in a hurry. |
May 11 2005 Namsan We took Megan up to Namsan for a look around, then back to Samia's place for pizza and cats. I found out that Samia's voice is the English guide on the Namsan gondola, which was kind of like she was following us. |
May 7 2005 Skunk Hell Benefit Saturday was a fun show. Trash wore her "I'm with Stupid" shirt so I went around and got as many pictures of her with various stupids as I could. Also, Paul was reunited with a former drummer in an unpleasant way. Let's just say when Paul is going to buy you a drink, something is up. This was the first show for a lot of new people, most memorably Jesse. He and his friend Josh had tried to find Skunk the week previous but got lost from Sangsu Station. |
May 6 2005 No Brain Skunk Hell had two benefit shows. The benefit of course was Skunk Hell which is always just barely staying afloat. The first show featured No Brain. |
May 5 2005 Amanda's Birthday For Amanda's birthday we all got wasted at the soju tent. It hit Oh Laewal the worst, who passed out and nearly drowned in his own vomit. Burke helped him to a cab and he headed for home, unaware of the grinning happy face etched on the back of his head, which would become my signature. |
May 3 2005 Dongdaemoon Paul and I took Megan for a walk around Dongdaemoon, where we revisited the grey market we'd explored a few months previous. We also went to the pet section near Chungmuro where Sukie got to see some puppies. |
May 2 2005 Bowling My friend Megan came to visit from China, where she'd been teaching English in Wuhan, which is the sister city of Cheongju (and has a similar oasis of punk music unusual outside of Beijing). I was unemployed at the time and so was Paul so we had plenty of spare time to hang out with her. On the first night we went bowling. The Korean punks had recently become obsessed with bowling, and would go to the lanes a minimum of five times per week. I had tried to arrange a soccer game but they laughed it off because bowling was better. I played one game and was sufficiently satisfied that I haven't felt the urge to go bowling again in two years, one month, and 13 days, and still going strong. Megan stuck around with the Koreans to bowl another game. |
April 30 2005 Same Old Story It was a busy weekend. Friday night I went out to the park and wandered into a ska show, where I had a very brief skinhead dance-off with a big Korean who will go unnamed. Saturday was a typical Saturday, but this time we had more explosives. Have a look at the pictures. Sunday was May Day, so I went to Gwanghwamoon to meet Nevin and do some riotin', but by the time I showed up, everyone was leaving. Across the street was the Hi Seoul festival to try to convince people that Lee Myung Bak isn't such a shitty mayor as his actions reveal. Things We Say was playing, but I didn't want to pay to get in and have my money go toward bulldozing more of Dongdaemoon. On Sunday Rux went on hiadas, having already lost a guitarist, and now their bassist Hyungshik as well. They had a final show at Shunk Hell, along with GumX, who are losing a member as well. I can't seem to find pictures of that. This was also the night that I first invented skinhead collector cards, with the original five pictures of Orc, Seokyoon, Oh Laewal, Jiwoong, and of course me. |
April 23 2005 Group Sex Night Here's Urchin sitting below a now blank law, silently thanking the gods of guitar that he's not the center of some gross sex scandal. Spiky Brats were filming for a music video I never ended up seeing. We also had a fun time after the show in the park. Philip, a Canadian who made it up to Skunk for his final weekend in Korea, crashed my scooter into a wall. I would've gotten mad, but I rode my bike around the park with Paul and a third Korean passenger and we wiped out too, so maybe gravity was in a bad mood that night. In the morning we met an incredibly drunk foreigner who seemed to think he was Jesus. He tried to steal a bike by burning through the lock with a cigarette lighter, and then Paul punched him out and he landed on broken glass. Not quite how a saviour should act, but he was pretty fun. I made some recordings of his ramblings that I could probably find on a CD somewhere. |
April 22 2005 Paint Paul walked by Skunk and noticed that the front wall and entrance stairwell had been painted over. I went by and photographed some of the damage. It turns out the events of April 16, described below, had been discovered by the landlord. When the two foreigners wandered up the stairs to have sex, it turned out they chose to brace themselves against the door to an apartment, and somebody was home. This did not make the landlord happy, and he demanded that Jonghee have a lot of the exterior paint covered. He meant just the wall out front but they painted over the stairway too by accident. Jonghee had to go through a lot of hoops to keep the club from being shut down. I wrotean article for Broke about the whole incident. |
April 16 2005 Drunk Foreigner Night It wasn't an out of the ordinary show, but things got a little out of hand when a couple of foreigners drank more than they could handle. One girl who I'd brought to Skunk the first time got into the drink box soju, and a soldier got wasted too and decided he was in his hometown again where I guess public sex is legal. The girl went up to the washroom during the last band and didn't come back. When I went outside after the show, it turns out many Koreans (and Joey) had heard her further up the stairs a few flights above Skunk messing around with the soldier. I went up to find the two of them coming downstairs with the GI's friend, a blonde chick who seemed more sober. She swore she had just arrived before I got there, but there was a creepy threesomey vibe. Anyway it ended with the girl throwing up on the stairs and not remembering anything, the guy being chased away by me, Jay, and Murray. I later found out he went off and got into another fight, getting himself arrested and busted for drinking under 21, being in Hongdae, and of course fighting. We never saw him again. Also, we had a great night of drinking until dawn. |
April 5 2005 Captain Bootbois CD Release Donghyun was on a break from the army so he came back to Skunk Hell to release his band's first full-length CD. It ended up sounding great, but at the time I was unfamiliar with them as they hadn't been active lately. Luckily there were Koreans who still remembered them. This show ended up being smaller than it deserved, possibly because we were all still recovering from Champion's tour. |
April 3 2005 Drinking After Champion Tonight's drinking was probably the creepiest, and the debaucheriest as well. Dokyo13 convinced everyone I'm a neo-Nazi, all because I shed his blood for the White Race. Oh wait, I shed his blood to win possession of the basketball. I know it's accidental, but I must be the best neo-Nazi in Asia (not counting those fucks in Russia). I also found out my friend Jongo is a boxing champion, so we did a bit of sparring in his room. When we got back to Seoul I ran into Orc and Yunggi in the park. I'm pretty sure it was Yunggi who spent Saturday night in a jail cell. |
April 3 2005 Champion Day 3 I had another adventure to Chungju. This time we went by bus, and it was a fairly large group. I'm glad I got to spend some quality time with Nevin. A lot of people might think by the way I acted this weekend that I'm an asshole about straight-edge and I crossed the line several times. Yeah, a little bit. I have my conceptions about what straight-edge is, just like everyone seems to think they know what skinheads are. For all the dumb stuff I did, and if you were around me you know what it was, I did it because I had the opportunity. The concept behind straight-edge interests me and--especially after Saturday night--I think we all need to look at how we drink and what we do and re-evaluate how far we let it take us. This is a critical point in Korean punk's history, and we need our wits about us when all the bad shit goes down. |
April 2 2005 N*A*R*C I stayed out of trouble. After the show, I took off with Jay and Spanky to see Kingston Rudy Ska in Bar Nana again. Together, we formed N*A*R*C, which you can only join if you go with me to see Kingston Rudieska play. Nowadays thanks to the Slackers tour it's a pretty big crew. |
April 2 2005 Champion Day 2 The second day was the big one, in Skunk Hell. It wasn't very common at the time to have a hardcore show in there, but this one worked out fine. It was the largest crowd, even bigger than most of Champion's Japan dates. There was no direction inside where I could point my camera where there wasn't something to photograph. Honestly, during a straight-edge tour, all of us non-edgers were dumber, drunker idiots than normal. A lot of people need to take a step back and look at what's happening. Apparently there were a huge amount of fights that night, but none of them were near the venue, and none were punk vs straight-edge. As far as I know all of them were Koreans vs Koreans, and a few of them sound pretty bad. I heard Joey say that one of the skinheads spent the night in jail. We're on thin ice here, just like punk is on thin ice anywhere in the world. We all have to make sure we don't mess it up for everyone.
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April 1 2005 Drinking After Champion Afterwards I followed a bunch of Korean punks back to Chulhwan's home in eastern Seoul. Far eastern Seoul. I taught them all about Beer-core, which is supposed to be the opposite of straight-edge. You draw circles on your arms and drink a lot. |
April 1 2005 Champion Day 1 The Champion tour began in Anyang. It was a small show, and one of the openers cancelled, but Champion weren't daunted by the small show. |
March 26 2005 Ssibal Noma Hamnida It was Yeongsoon's birthday so he came up to Seoul with his band and we did some quality drinking. Plus I made up a new birthday song for him. |
March 22 2005 KMA Awards Rux got a surprise when they were nominated for a KMA (Korean Music Award). According to Joey some big music producer had come to his senses and figured out Korean pop sucks, and decided to try putting talent ahead of hype. I went along as part of the Rux entourage because I thought it might be interesting. Turns out it wasn't much more than a Christmas pageant with a short Vassline set. I wrote it up in journal entries which turned out to be mostly futile. |
March 20 2005 Punk Picnic On Sunday the plan was to have a picnic at Yeouido. The only flaw was expecting the Korean punks to be awake and in the park by 1:30. We finally got around to heading across the river around 3. It was a good time and we played a game of steel-toed soccer. Paul brought Sukie who injured her foot somehow and had to be taken to a vet. |
March 19 2005 MF Crew Show 13 Steps had just released their CD down in Cheongju, but this was the first time their CD was available in Seoul. In the end the CD turned out to be overproduced, as they'd sent it to some knobcheese in the US whose name literally was Douches. Also this was the release of the first issue of Broke in Korea, our zine. |
2005 Short Cat The highlight of this show was a new girl band who was either calling themselves Short Cat or Shorty Cat. Or maybe it was Urchin's drunker-than-normal performance. |
March 2 2005 Exploring Dongdaemoon with Paul Paul took me on a tour of Dongdaemoon to see the seedier side. We found a seedy grey market that sold power tools and sex toys. We also slipped inside a building that looked like it had been destroyed by fire. On the way down we saw a sign that was totally in Korean except four letters: "CCTV." We knew we could get in trouble, so we hurried off down the nearest alley. As we walked, a police car pulled into the alley behind us. Paul was worried, and I told him to just keep walking and act natural for as long as possible. The police car pulled up right behind us and blared its siren. We kindly moved out of the way for it to pass, and it did. I could see the driver chuckling to himself as he noted we were foreigners and therefore clueless about what predicament we'd gotten ourselves in. |
March 1 2005 The "We Are Fucked" Show This show was for the drummer of Suck Stuff, who was going to the army. To complicate matters, he was also the drummer of Fuckers Everywhere, Blood Pledge, Vicious Nerds, as well as a few more bands I think. |
February 25 2005 Bradshaw I saw a little bit of Bradshaw before I headed to DGBD. |
February 25 2005 The Return of Crying Nut Crying Nut got out of the army, and to celebrate they invited a couple psychobilly bands from Japan for a big stadium show. A few days before, the psychobilly bands played in DGBD, the newly opened version of Drug. There was a rumour Crying Nut would play but it didn't happen. |
February 20 2005 Townhall Records Show Townhall Records started in Anyang but moved to Seoul as soon as possible. It's supposed to be a hardcore label, but this show had a variety of bands. Townhall Records shows are usually good because you get to see a lot of new and younger bands. |
February 18 2005 People's Records Showcase People's Records is a label from Japan that does a lot of promoting throughout Asia. I ended up with a bad impression of them from a story I heard from Bradshaw on Saturday night. Bradshaw had recently learnt he would be going to Japan soon. Where most people would be thrilled, Bradshaw wasn't sure what to think. Burke put it to him this way: "You'll have a great time. Girls in Japan love black guys." Anyway, it turned out a Japanese guy who was fluent in English was within earshot. He heard and got angry at Bradshaw. Then he went and got all his friends angry at Bradshaw too. Bradshaw was terrified when he moved to Japan and has spent his entire time there hiding from what he sees as a racist culture. On Friday night Paul showed up with Sukie, but they stayed outside because Sukie doesn't like cheesy Japanese punk. |
February 17 2005 WASP and Piggy Piggy I met up with Paul on a Thursday night and we headed over to WASP so he could see Fuckers Everywhere. We only caught half their set which was a ripoff. Afterwards we went to Piggy Piggy where there was a ton of Japanese punks from People's Records who were on tour in Korea. |
2005 Ska show in Skunk Hell This show highlighted the fact there was really only one ska band in Korea, but they still tried to fill the bill to have an all-ska show. By this time I was bored of Dub Spain and unimpressed with Ghetto Bombs' attempts at incorporating ska. I didn't take pictures of Kingston Rudieska because I was enjoying their set. Best thing about my photos was all the drinking going on, underage and otherwise. Also we had an arm-wrestling match late in the night, in which I beat Seungpa (but only after he'd arm-wrestled six other people and was getting tired). |
February 5 2005 Kingston Rudieska in Bar Nana Kingston Rudieska was playing monthly shows in Bar Nana in Itaewon. I tried to make it to as many shows as I could, and dragged along whoever I could with me. For this show Paul and I rounded up a bunch of GIs we'd never met before and brought them down there. |
February 5 2005 Dirty Small Town show I don't think this show was particularly special for any reason, but all the skinheads showed up for a group photo for an upcoming Hon Label compilation that never came out. We had a minor skirmish because of an army guy, but the other GIs took care of it. They freaked out when they heard one guy inside say he was a scout. He was hammered and they thought he was there to spy on them, so they kicked him out. I met the guy several months later and he swore he was there only for the music. It didn't help he was being a little too rough on the dancefloor. Afterwards Paul and I rounded up some GIs and we went to Itaewon for a ska show. |
January 30 2005 One Year of Skunk Hell Skunk Hell celebrated its one-year anniversary with a short but high-energy show. There were only four bands, but I mainly focused on Couch. I also got a lot of pictures of Paul, who had recently returned to Korea permanently (well as of June 2007 anyway). He wasn't in any bands ad he spent most of the show making sure the dance floor got a lot rougher. He ended up making friends with a bunch of the soldiers who were there. He also punched me full-force in the ribs. Here's a picture of him with a GI we nicknamed Too-Tall, who was consistently the shortest guy around. |
January 27 2005 Suck Stuff Music Video Everyone came out on a cool Sunday afternoon to film a music video for the Suck Stuff song "One Unity." I had a scooter so I was driving around delivering people and things. |
January 26 2005 Tsunami Tribute Show Shortly after the tsunami devastated a large chunk of South Asia, the Korean punks decided to put on a show to raise awareness. Note I say raise awareness, not raise funds or collect charity. As far as I know there was no charity for this show beyond using the name of the tsunami. Around this time everyone was dressed a lot more colourfully. Quite a few Korean punks had colourful hair dye jobs, which made them a lot easier to photograph in the dark. |
January 17 2005 Playing Pool The good thing about living in Hongdae was that I could see pretty well anyone whenever I wanted. Chulhwan invited me out for dinner and then we ended up playing pool with Jonghee and the Couch people. They paired me up with Urchin (whose nickname was about a month from being born) because he was the best and I was the worst. I taught him a bit about casual profanity in English, and he taught me what you're supposed to do when the pool table doesn't have pockets. |
January 15 2005 Benzene CD Release My first show back in Korea was the Benzene CD release, which wasn't all that exciting. The high point in the show was my first time seeing Things We Say. |
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Jon underscore Dunbar at Hotmail
010-3212-2812
No long distance calls please; they won't work.
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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.