7/24
KOREA/JAPAN Oi! FESTIVAL
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click on the pictures to go to the image gallery (like 100 more photos there bro)
ok, I went to another wish-we-were-english-punk show just last night, but damn. How can I pass up something as delightfully absurd/Quixotic as a ‘korea / japan oi festival’??
the first thing I noticed was: hella dudes wearing like 20 year old Fred Perry shirts (i.e. the ‘official skin shirt’) that they bought on Ebay for like 400 bucks. There’s something ill about a shirt which got famous for being a ‘regular workin’ man’ shirt and now it’s like a ‘priceless collector’s item you only wear on special occasions’ shirt. But also a lot of the guys were rocking terrycloth towels, (which is like the JAPANESE working man’s #1 accessory) with their boots and braces. So there was some like integrity or whatever there. Plus, how can you not love it that something as plain and inoffensive as a towel has become like a symbol of Class War?
They copied the fashion and music but somehow forgot to copy the traditional skin definition of a ‘fair fight’ (i.e. fair fight = “5 big guys all kicking one little guy cus he looked at us funny.” ). Apart from this lapse, it was a hella fun evening and even tough guys were all smiling. The Oi! Panda came out early, and as his fame grows more and more people are wanting to wear/use him. Particularly awesome was this: I finally got just the right combination of alcohol / oolong tea, drunk at just the right pace, to the point where I would achieve an ideal state of intoxication WITHOUT the drawbacks (memory lapses, Doing Dumb Shit I Thought Was A Good Idea At The Time, nausea). The problem was, I have no idea how fast/slow I drank, so I don’t think I can replicate this. If only I could print out a Master Log File of my life.
Also problematic: I heard some greasy dude say to a girl as he was leaving, ‘I gotta go DJ.’ Claiming to be a DJ has GOT to be the worst line to say to a girl ever. It’s right up there with ‘wanna smoke a bowl?’ in terms of pure pathos.
But good news: a bunch of us invented this new dance which is basically like a chorus line if rockettes wore docs? All doing high kicks and shit. This was good fun.
Mostly I just hung out outside during the Japanese bands and went inside to rock to the Korean oi. But here’s the deal: most of the Korean bands just straight up vanished after they played. They didn’t really hang out and socialize. Weird, considering like 6 bands came all the way to japan just for this show! It’s like. . . was there some beef? Or were they worried about the Immigration Police raiding the joint? I dunno. But that was kind of a bummer.
the bands:
1 ? DICK SPIKE ?
these guys were in their 40’s it looks like. They were all mugging and smiling and seemed really happy to be there. Sounded kind of like the toy dolls only less catchy?
2 ? SAMCHUNG (korea)
just totally random of a band. Not oi, more like, ‘NYC HAWDCOAH.’ But not even real HAWDCOAH?the guitarist had this huge afro, for one thing. The vocal was this little pit bull-lookin’ motherfucker who looks like he lifts weights with his neck. But he didn’t move at all. What’s the point of having lots of big smelly muscles if you’re not going to get agro on stage? Anyway they ruled just for one reason and one reason alone: encore? SKREWDRIVER.
3 ? TABLOiD PLAY
fun. the singer was kind of charismatic and had big eyebrows. Um. Sorry, I really can’t comment on the music, because what the hell? I’ve never heard OI before really, and now I’m supposed to be able to tell the differences between 12 different bands’ sounds? Sorry dogg. It all sounds like 1-4-5 to me.
4 ? RUX ? korea
the singer was hella cut. Not like in a big bulldog way but just in a general hot dude way. Like his muscles weren’t so huge but they were way more clearly defined than most of the big guy’s muscles. On the other hand, his Mohawk was all falling down in his face and causing him to look like some shaggy-banged duran duran 80s jackass. I guess COUCH used up all the hairspray in Korea.
5?couch ? korea. Best band!!
Holy shit they were good. even if the drummer weren’t the cutest thing ever (she is), and even if they didn’t have the biggest spikes of any humans (they do), I would still say they wre good because why? THE MUSIC, DUMBASS. pretty much all tonight’s bands have this ‘ALL ANTHEMS ALL THE TIME’ aesthetic going on, which is kind of a drawback of oi. It’s like eating nothing but jellybeans for a week. You need some non-anthems in there to clean the palate. Anyway, everyone tried to have anthems but only COUCH’S songs FELT like anthems, if you follow me. It was literally impossible to NOT sing along; even though I didn’t know any lyrics. I was just yodeling in fake hangul.
6 ?jiraltan 99 (korea)
these guys were basically gay porn. I mean look up ‘skinhead’ on google and like you can’t even find any pictures of nazis or bands. . . seriously most of the sites are porn. It’s like googling ‘asian’ or something. And when you have skinheads that ARE asian, well, damn. And all taking their shirts off and sweating profusely, and having like crazy insane FRED PERRY LOGO TATTOOS on their pectorals, you are basically daring like every rice queen in a mile radius to quietly spurt into his CKs. They’ll just look down and see this stain and be like, ‘huh, I guess JIRALTAN 99 must be playing a show around here.’
7 ? OI! VALCANS
I don’t remember their music at all. The singer was basically Paul Bunyan the nazi lumberjack. Awesome.
8?SPIKY BRATS(korea)
they had some insane haircuts but honestly they didn’t act crazy. You really shouldn’t be allowed to have hair that is crazier than your onstage actions. That’s just false advertising. If you have like 1 foot spikes, I’m going to expect you to jump high in the air and vomit. If you have 2 foot spikes, you had better break all your instruments and knock a tooth out on the microphone. And if, like samchung, you have 3 foot spikes, you’d better play 8 million solos on every instrument simultaneously while lighting yourself on fire, bitch! If you’re not going to act as crazy as your hair, then you should get your hair confiscated and held in escrow. But who should decide what is crazy? I think we need an independent citizens’ review committee. Also, I blame the media.
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More good news: amidst all the drunk punx and the skinheads and dangerous characters there was this perfectly adorable group of 4 homesick Korean aunties who showed up I guess hoping to hear some Korean music? And they were all like Tipper Gore-d out by the goings on. It was pretty hilarious and I sort of wanted to comfort them, you know, buy them some hot chocolate and take them to nore-bang and sing some ballads and junk. But fuck it, I had rocking to do and there was no time to waste.
On the girl front, shit was pretty fly. Right as I was going home I hella talked to the singer from DRUNK BOIS. We talked for like 30 minutes. She showed me her huge collection of self-inflicted scars and I showed her my cigarette burns. She was like, yeah my scars are all red and puffy because I’m allergic to metal. Which strikes me as a bit like saying, ‘i’m allergic to getting shot in the head’ or ‘i’m allergic to falling off cliffs.’ Also odd, she didn’t seem pissed about the actual mutilation ITSELF, just the ‘allergy’ that messed up the AESTHETICS of the mutilation. Anyway, more proof that only girls with problems like me. I gave her a small plaque, engraved with the words, “congratulations! You are the 151 st batshit crazy broad to like me. join the club!”
You have no idea how hard it was to find a Hangul engraver at 3 am in that neighborhood, either.
But the absolute cutest woman there, or, probably, anywhere, ever, at all, was the drummer for COUCH. Aside from it being cool to see a woman break the ‘glass ceiling’ (the ‘rock ceiling?’), she was a good drummer AND had this fucking awesome schtick where she looked like she was this heartbreakingly sweet and innocent 12 year old girl . . .until I noticed she had fucking sleeve tattoos and was chainsmoking. But somehow this did nothing to diminish her cuteness. Like, she could be vomiting up 14 Kirins and you’d be like “awwwww~~! How adorable. Would oo wike a wowwipop?” and then little fluffy bunnies would be swimming around in the puddle of puke. Serious, it was that much.
Also she thought I was a total loser jackass, which I don’t need to tell you how much of a turn-on THAT is. Homegirl didn’t speak any English OR Japanese. Frankly she didn’t speak any Korean either because she was passed out. so I had to draw a little diagram to illustrate the point that every single guy in the place was utterly in love with her. Arrows were drawn, little stick figures with spikes for hair and giant pounding hearts. Of course by the time I finished drawing it, she’d woken up from her black-out and wandered off, nowhere to be seen.
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