Dear Korean Vacations and Escapades (Part III: Jisan Valley Rock Festival)

When you think of places connected with music scenes, Korea isn't exactly a country that probably tops that list. If you know anything at all about Korea and music, it's probably K-pop or some singer like Rain. And when it comes down to it, Koreans take their K-pop (Korean pop music) very seriously, even if no one else does. Most of the time, if you're not hearing one of the homegrown Korean bands or singers, you hear whatever is popular in America right now. This unfortunately means having students attempting to sing along to the likes of Ke$ha (and while I appreciate their efforts to speak English, I don't think the phrase "brush my teeth with a bottle of Jack" will get them that far in the world...) or asking me to tell them about Justin Bieber ("... I thought that was a girl?" "Teacher, NO!!")

A few months ago, however, there was a 3 day rock music festival held at a ski resort near Seoul. A bunch of my friends were going, so I figured that since I didn't really have anything better to do (it was part of my vacation time) and since I liked music, I might as well go along. Along with some Korean bands, random DJs, and other bands I had never heard of, the line-up was actually pretty good:

(These are the bands that I recognized, so I will assume they are the most famous and therefore worth mentioning)

Friday: Belle and Sebastion, Vampire Weekend, Massive Attack
Saturday: Mutemath, Pet Shop Boys
Sunday: Corinne Bailey Rae, Third Eye Blind, Muse

As I was just coming back from my trip to Jeju Island, I got there late on Friday evening, so I missed seeing Belle and Sebastion and Vampire Weekend. I did, however, arrive right before Massive Attack started, and I'm definitely glad I did, because they were absolutely amazing.

Massive Attack

Having reconnected with my friends, we explored the grounds a little. Massive Attack had played at the main stage, but there were 3 other stages set up for the smaller acts. At one stage the line-up was completely Korean coverbands, of which we saw over the course of the weekend ZZtop (with fake felt beards), The Tatles (Beatles coverband), The Dunch Boys (Beach Boys coverband), a Bob Marley cover who was actually very good, and The Deftunes (Deftones coverband).

Another stage was for smaller acts, which was where Corinne Bailey Rae played, and the final stage was for DJing and Electronic music. All around the area there were tents for food and alchohol (mostly for alchohol) and other vendors selling random stuff or promoting companies and such. All around the outskirts were areas for tents and camping.

Some of our friends had reserved tents and camping spots, and some had booked hotel rooms back in town, but we hadn't had the foresight to book anything in advance, figuring we'd just find something when we got there. Since the partying went far into the night, this something turned out to be a nice little patch of grass on the field with my backpack as a pillow and my towel as a blanket. Since the weather was nice and summery, it wasn't too bad, and I certainly wasn't alone in finding a random place on the field to sleep on.

THIS IS NOT ME
but it might as well have been...

The next day was spent wandering with different groups of friends, either casually relaxing by some food tent or other, or lazing by the totally awesome pool they had erected just for the event. The pool was awesome. It was right under one of the chairlifts, and it was HUGE. They had 5 different inflatable waterslides, as well as lots of cool floaty things in the pool to play with. Since the weather was super nice and sunny, we spent a good deal of time just relaxing poolside.

Pool. Notice the chairlift in the background.

In the evening, the bands started up. Unfortunately, Saturday's line-up was pretty lame. None of the bands were particularly impressive, and the headliner, Pet Shop Boys, was pretty horrifying. The Koreans loved them, but no one in my group of friends was particularly impressed. The music was simple, and extremely repetitive, and the performance was more of a modern art performance piece than anything else, with random dancers with boxes on their heads marching around the stage in brightly colored unitards. Very strange, and not the kind of thing that meshes well with my musical interests.

After a disappointing night of music, we ended up by the fire show, which totally made up for the lack of excitement in the night's performances:

We stayed there for quite a while, enjoying the spectacle and relaxing with the drum beats, until finally it was time again to find a quiet piece of lawn on which to curl up under my towel and catch a few hours of sleep.

By Sunday, everyone was pretty gross. No one had showered in several days, we'd all been sleepin in tents or wherever we ended up, and as I had already come from a week of traveling, I had been out of clean clothes for quite some time. As we were all in the same boat, however, no one really minded, and we just counted another swim in the pool as shower enough.

The last night of bands was definitely worth staying for. Third Eye Blind was fun. Corinne Bailey Rae was sweet and adorable, and played beautifully. Muse was exciting and energetic. By far the best evening of the week.

Some people left that night, right after Muse had finished playing, but we soldiered on another night, this time in a hotel that had been booked an extra night by some friends and was now fortunately vacant for us, and finally headed home the next morning, sweaty, smelly, and extremely happy.

Next time: Taiwan (Part I)!