SOUNDTRACK: COREYAH-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #41 (June 30, 2020).
Watching Korean bands mix traditional and modern instruments is really cool. Korean traditional instruments (like the geomungo) are really quite unlike anything the West has produced so I love seeing them in action. But merging them with electric guitar (and plastic hand clappers) makes for such an interesting juxtaposition.
This week we’ll publish four Tiny Desk (home) concerts from around the world. We begin in South Korea. Today [is] the music of Coreyah. According to the band, the name represents “inheritance,” and that’s evident in the way this six-piece presents old or traditional Korean music with a modern twist.
If you’re going to mix up such disparate elements you can pretty much do anything.
It’s an uninhibited vision of Korean traditional music with some psychedelic rock, Balkan gypsy, even sounds from South America and Africa. You’ll see and hear instruments including the daegeum, a large bamboo flute and geomungo, a large Korean zither that lays on the floor.
When translated into Hangul, the Korean alphabet, Coreyah means “whale,” which is the group’s good luck charm. The music was recorded in the band’s music studio in Seoul, with COVID-19 shutting down most of the country. Strict social distancing is still ongoing in South Korea, though they are streaming their concerts to fans.
And just a note from the band: The geomungo player in this video is Park Dawool, as Coreyah member Na Sunjin was forced to miss this recording due to a personal emergency.
“Till the Dawn” features some great flute playing from Kim Dong Kun on the tungso. There’s a heavy riff on the geomungo from Park Dawool while Kim Cho Rong plays the double headed drums. Kyungyi play a more stanadrd-looking drumkitm but it is hardly typical. I really like the instrumental break that is just flute and geomungo.
For “Yellow Flower” Ko Jaehyeon plays jagged guitar chords accented with flute. This song is quieter and singer Ham Boyoung has some kind of device that she is holding, but I can’t tell its purpose.
For the final song, “Good Dreams” percussionist Kim Cho Rong moves to the front to play the chulhyungeum which turns out to be like a slide guitar geomungo.
I could watch them play all day.
[READ: July 2, 2020] Weird Al: Seriously
I had been seeing ads for this book in my Instagram feed for months. So I decided to finally check it out.
Back in the day, I used to really enjoy reading academic books about non-academic subjects. There was a whole series of “The Philosophy of” various pop culture things that was fun. It often seems like these books overthink their subjects. Not that the subjects aren’t doing the things that the authors suggest, but I do have to wonder if the authors see a lot more than the subjects do.
That certainly feels true here. I’m not saying that Al doesn’t think about race or gender when he writes songs, just that he probably thinks “this will be funny” a lot more.
There’s an (obligatory) introduction by Dr. Demento (no offense intended to the good Doctor, but if there’s a Weird Al thing, Dr. Demento will be involved).
The Introduction talks about how critics can’t believe that Al is “still” around–even Al jokes that every album is a “comeback” album. It also talks about how diverse Al’s fans are (in age, if not necessarily race) and how they pretty universally are a friendly and jokey lot.
I know a lot about Al. I’ve read a few biographies and liner notes. But it’s always nice to get something new.
The first chapter is biographical. I learned that Al is Yugoslavian, Italian and English–what accounts for those curls?
There’s also some general information that I didn’t know–like that in the 1950s, people thought the accordion might have a prominent place in rock n roll. The Three Chuckles had a lead accordion player. We know how that turned out. (See the joke, “What do you call ten accordions at the bottom of the ocean? A good start”).
Over the years I’ve heard a lot about Al’s influences: Spike Jones, Allan Sherman, Stan Freberg and Tom Lehrer, but this book talks a bit more about some of the individual songs that influenced Al.
I’d often wondered how Rick Derringer ever got involved with Weird Al. Turns out that when Al asked permission to record “I Love Rocky Road,” Jake Hooker of The Arrows (who originally did “I Love Rock n Roll”) also managed Derringer. Derringer was looking to get into production.
The book talks about how much Al was influenced by Mad Magazine–both for content and for general laughs. He was the magazine’s first ever guest editor. He also created (with some help) a New York Times crossword puzzle.
The first section of new scholarship is called “Policing and Playing with Language.” It talks about how Al sings clearly so you can hear the words–words are very important for a parody to work. It also looks into how many types of jokes all uses.
Not to mention the song “Word Crimes” which aggressively tackles language usage.
“Sugar and Spice and Everything nice” talks about the general consensus that Weird Al is a nice guy–and yet often mocks those who are not so nice. But even when he insults and makes fun, the general sense is that he’s attacking behavior not people.
“President Al” talks about the fans who wish that he’d replace trump in office. Remember when someone pickaxed trump’s star on the walk of fame? (It is perpetually defaced). Al asked that nobody do that to his star, “unless at some point in the future I do something unfathomably monstrous and evil, in which case, go ahead.”
People thought it would be justice to replace trump’s star with Al’s star since Al is pretty much the antitheses of trump–nice, friendly, smart, funny. Although the town of West Hollywood voted to have trump’s star removed, they have no jurisdiction over that. Some fans even suggest just replacing trump with al in the office.
It is also true that Al makes fun of himself (or that he makes himself the butt of many of his jokes) as “The Art of Self-Deprecation” lays out. Al is white, nerdy, tacky, fat and square.
One thing I did not know is how much Al fans love “Dare to be Stupid” because it’s saying it’s okay to be different. It’s an early song that I never really got into–I feel so un-Al.
Another thing the book taught me was the things he has done online since he more or less agreed to stop releasing proper albums. He did a song with Jon Oliver called “Please Don;t Nuke Us North Korea” which I had never heard of. He also did a goo on the presidential debates called “Bad Hombres Nasty Women”–he didn’t write it, just moderated it and then the Gregory Brothers mashed it together.
The book also mentions some lyrics to songs that Al never released (and never will) like “It’s Still Billy Joel To Me.”
Whats the matter with the songs he’s singing / cant you tell that they’re pretty lame
After listenin’ to a couple of albums / well they all start to sound the same.
Some of the most intense chapters with the most thoughtful research are “The Woke Joke” and “Joking Gender” about how Al addressed render and race in his songs.
Nathan Rabin who wrote a great Al biography comments that “Al is an extremely white man who has managed to do a fair amount of ethnic material through the years yet has remained beloved.” Like “White & Nerdy,” and “Amish Paradise.”
Initially Coolio spoke out against “Amish Paradise” claiming his song was too goo for that treatment. But then he publicly changed his mind and admitted he was wrong (more people need to do that).
That was probably one of the least smart things I’ve done over the years. I should have never been upset about that. I should have embraced it like everybody else did. Michael Jackson never got mad at him. Who the fuck was I to take the position that Ii took?
Then there’s an interesting look is at Pretty Fly for a Rabbi which shows how many of his fans think he is Jewish and how many get a little upset about this song (Jewish stereotypes) when they find out he’s not.
Al likes to take on toxic masculinity. Whether that’s what he is consciously trying to do in his songs I guess we’ll never really know. Like when he wrote Taco Grande was he undermining the overt sexism in “Rico Suave”? The book savages Gerardo for boating about his sexual prowess and then living up to it (taking advantage of more than 500 women while he was married). But did Al really intend to subvert masculinity with this song or was it just funny to make it about Mexican food. Doesn’t really matter, the song is hilarious either way
“Trash Day” is a song I never though too much about because I didn’t know Nelly’s original “Hot in Here.” The original is a horrifically sexist song and Al’s parody is about garbage. But in the parody the woman is in charge, So is he tackling sex and gender by transforming the horrible song into a joke? I wonder how much success Nelly sees from a Weird Al parody? Or R. Kelly with “Trapped in the Closet.” Did R. Kelly gain anything from Al’s parody? Fans? record sales? Or just mockery for how much better Al’s song is (and that Kelly’s song is unintentionally funnier).
Another interesting revelation is that Al’s label wanted him to make a few songs that he didn’t want to (early in his career). The label suggested he parody Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want To Have Fun,” but he didn’t really want to, so he made the “lame” track, “Girls Just Want To Have Lunch.” (Nathan Rabin calls it second-rate and it tend to agree). They also wanted him to make a Christmas song to cash in on Christmas music so he made “Christmas at Ground Zero”–not what they had in mind. It is interesting how his songs can change over the years–people now that think the song is about 9/11 even though it came out some fifteen years earlier.
So this was an interesting book. Intellectual, but not too much (even if it does quote Roland Barthes). The tone is one of admiration and appreciation an even the most die-hard Al fan might learn a thing or two.
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