I’d been meaning to post about this guy for a while — he’s a Korean “folk” musician that’s been around for a while. I think he’s well outside the mainstream, and the few Koreans I’ve asked about him hadn’t heard of him. But I came across his music on a download site a while ago [...]

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Really intriguing fight developing between Sony ATV (publishing) and YG Entertainment (wikipedia entry here), who are one of two major Korean pop music conglomerates, over what Sony is calling copyright infringement. First, the tunes in question, then my completely unbiased opinions.
This is G-Dragon’s “Heartbreaker,” which as far as I know is still the No. 1 [...]

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Sometimes I want to post a song I like just for the heck of it. I don’t normally do it, because I think people don’t actually care whatever dumb song I’m liking. But if I can somehow connect it to the site, I’ll do it. I first heard the Box Elders “Hole in My Head” [...]

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IefLGxcpv6k

My wife was watching a repeat of this this music program last night — MC Mong doing his current single “Indian Boy.” I knew about the controversy surrounding the song, mostly as it’s reported by the Korean media, and haven’t really have time to get into it on here, but after seen the above live [...]

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Gary, Indiana’s finest. Dead at 50. Thanks for the memories — for being The Beatles of the 80s, and for being one of the strangest, truly unique characters pop music has ever seen.

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I’ll admit I was quite smitten when I saw the publicity shots for the new Girls Generation album/single/whatev’. Again, G.G. aren’t meant to be a flock of hotties, rather, they’re meant to represent a panorama of cute Korean women — the kind of girls you or I could actually meet while walking down the street [...]

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Actually, its not touring with Dinosaur Jr., but I just can’t allow myself to focus any attention on truly barfworthy Jonas Brothers, who the girls will actually be touring with. Besides, Dinosaur Jr. has a new album out with it’s old lineup and it’s absolutely fantastic…hence the purposeful mix up.

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Ok, I have to admit — the 2ne1 (pronounced “twenty one”) group I bagged on a week or so ago is starting to get into my head a little. I was at a Wa Bar with my wife the other night and I did one of those –hey, this is kind of good…who is this?– deals [...]

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A couple of things caught my eye over the weekend. First, Chae Yeon, who’s been around for a few years and is probably at the point in her career (she’s over 30) when — well, she needs to come out with a video so sexy that it’s banned from Korean TV. 
Guess what? It worked!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGTusBE93U0

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Quick music plug here, since I get to see music I enjoy in Korea once every 5 or 6 years. Bill Callahan, someone I’ve increasingly liked over the past decade of so, has a new album coming out Tuesday called Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle, and it’s just killing me. To support his [...]

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Incidental contact? Hard to tell from this photo, but Korean netizens have been in an uproar about this. The guy, Tak Jae-hoon, used to be in a popular singing group but now resorts to these sorts of weekend variety shows where, well, people fall down and laugh. The girl is Tiffany from Girls Generation [...]

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I know it’s baseball. It’s not life or death. But if you are American, and you would just as soon see the American team put a product on the field that’s worth your time, I have to ask you…
Are you satisfied?
If you don’t like Team USA you are most definitely satisfied. The team is now [...]

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I’m not a fan nor a hater of the Wondergirls, so I’m not about to get bent out of shape when they make complete asses of themselves on recorded media. But from a general perspective of humanity, I cringed when I saw this video of them being interviewed in English at an art exhibit called [...]

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Ed Note: Alight of Night by Crystal Stilts was one of my favorites of last year — you might remember them from my first EWC Fresh Tunes. I recently did an interview with Andy Adler, who plays bassist. As it turns out Andy is a Red Sox fan, and better yet, hates Red Sox fans [...]

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When I was in middle school my friends and I started exchanging mix tapes called Fresh Tunes. Pretty fresh name, eh? These were cassettes filled with our favorite songs of the moment. Fresh songs. In high school we burned CDs. Now we (sometimes) send songs via email. Not so fresh.
These are just things I’ve been [...]

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I randomly came across a single by Onra, a half-Vietnamese Paris-based producer/DJ type, called 7×7. While clicking around through some info on him I found he released an album earlier in the year called Chinoiseries, that was made mostly with records he’d picked up on a trip through Vietnam the year before.
I downloaded that and [...]

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I’m not a big fan of music videos at this point, but I can say that without question, I’ve never seen anything like this.
This is a Japanese metal band called Maximum The Hormone. The song is “Bikini Sports Ponchin.” Don’t get too excited. In that way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4L7DooT5T4

The director has a Web site called Yellow Brain found [...]

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Last week it was Rain, this time around it’s Dong Bang-shin-ki, who like Rain, recently came back after a long layoff, and much to my chagrin is more popular than ever.
However, the offending lyrics this time around aren’t as overt as Rain’s “my magic stick is spinning in your shivering body.” According to PopSeoul the [...]

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I don’t want to say I’ve nearly been killed for hogging the Karaoke mic (or as we call it here in Korea, norebang) but I am a 2-for-everyone-else’s-1-song kind of guy. I guess you could say I’ve killed the mic.
You’ll find my top 5 songs at the end of this post.
From BBC News:
A Malaysian man [...]

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This will appeal to just a few, but Jens Lekman, who is probably my favorite current singer songwriter in the world, played in Korea last night. This was a big treat for me. For those who don’t know him I’ll send you to Wikipedia and include a song at the end of the post.
His first [...]

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