The Storm – Boy & Bear

It’s been 5 months since I’ve recorded a cover. I’m really proud of this one (despite the timing issues I’m having). Another place to improve! Please share this one around if you like it.

You can find all my covers on my YouTube channel: http://youtube.com/jackbanh/

Less than 2 years after the original Korean release, Girls’ Generation (a.k.a. SNSD) released a Japanese version and re-did the music video. This makes me so happy. It’s just as bright and cheerful and filled with dancing Korean girls.

Jack covers Delicate, by Damien Rice.

Another day, another cover. A friend let me borrow his microphone recently and I’m still learning how to get the best sound out of it.

Gee by Girls’ Generation

It’s filled with cute Korean girls, it’s saturated with colors, the pace is frenetic, and the chorus is frustratingly catchy. I watched it and every time it just assaults my senses and I keep coming back for more. The song just echoes and grows to occupy every empty space between my brain and my skull and before you know it, I’m sticking my butt out, wagging my finger and singing along.

And there are so many girls. Basic math tells me there are 9 of them but it feels like so much more. Every shot is just so crowded visually and there are cute smiles and pouty frowns and hips thrusting and coy little dance steps. I get the feeling Korea has really perfected the craft of manufactured boy bands and girl groups.

Yes, I might be going crazy.

Flashback to 1998: The palpable anticipation to party like it was actually 1999, World Cup fever and Ricky Martin’s Cup of Life, Aero Smith’s epic ballad I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing, and Green Day’s Good Riddance riding on the coattails of Seinfeld’s final episode. Meanwhile, I was trying to fit into my suburban Catholic school without much luck; my report cards always mentioned I needed to participate more in social situations and make more friends.

I discovered music was one way in. The cool kids in class listened to Metallica, Nirvana, Korn, Foo Fighers, Marilyn Manson, Sepultura and some other names long evicted from my memory. I picked up on a few songs, borrowed a few CDs and pretty soon I was… still a lonely kid. But at least now I had music as an outlet.

For all the criticisms of their academic standards, this high school did have a well-staffed music program. Surprisingly so, now that I think back on it. Some very patient guitar and drum teachers that tolerated a never-ending stream of angsty teenagers halfheartedly picking up instruments in the hope that they’d finally get noticed and/or laid. My classmate was taking guitar lessons and I signed up with him. My parents were surprisingly ok with this idea; they always wanted me to learn an instrument, they just couldn’t get me excited about one.

I shared weekly lessons with my classmate for 6 months. During that time, I learned a few chords, I passed the entrance exam for a better high school, I developed a crush on a blonde girl with freckles. The first instrument they rented to me was an electric guitar that was more of a mauve abomination. It played well enough for my beginner lessons but it weighed a ton and I managed to break two of the machine heads when it slid off the wall it was leaning against and collided into the floor. The replacement they gave me was a much more modern white-on-red Stratocaster. Played like a dream and I felt like a rock star.

I left that school behind and said my goodbye to the guitar and to the blonde girl with freckles. Like all teenagers, I was ready to give up on my instrument. I was headed to an elitist school full of music scholars and I wasn’t interested in learning about theory and classical style. But my parents insisted I should at least own a guitar. So it was with typical teenage reluctance that they dragged me into a music store and asked to be pointed to the beginner guitars. It was there I picked out a starter kit — a white-on-black Squier Stratocaster with a gig bag and a small amp. It’s spent most of its life propped against my closet door.

Over the many intervening years, I’ve picked it up for short spurts. Learning to sing sad breakup songs as my fingers toyed with the metal strings. Sometimes I’d pick it up and imagine playing on an intimate little stage in a old-fashioned coffee house. Other times, I’d imagine some enchanting girl that would just sit on my bed and listen to me play my saddest songs that I wrote just for her. But most of the time, it remained propped against a wall. I brought it with me to Seattle and it enjoyed being propped against a wall on an entirely different continent.

Well, yesterday was momentous because I finally got my Strat a $10 guitar stand.

My black and white Squier Strat on the left and my new Taylor Big Baby on the right.

Also, I bought him a sibling, another guitar that was probably built in Mexico. I forked out $450 for a Big Baby and it’s a guitar that is so much more suited to me. The Strat is cheap and worn, a symbol of teenage rebellion that never quite lived up to its expectations. The Taylor is smaller but warm, round and surprisingly loud. He’s that plain-looking boy that doesn’t say much but sings like an angel. All he needs now is a name, any suggestions?

I’d be lying if I said I’ve never kissed my guitars. *cough*

I continue to have a crush on Nataly Dawn of YouTube music duo, Pomplamoose. I don’t think her voice is necessarily suited to some of the covers she does but when it works, it really scratches a certain music itch for me. A little bit Feisty, Cat Powery, jazzy? I’m not sure how to describe it. Somebody on Reddit says she looks like a female Michael Cera. I say that actually sounds kind of cute.

So soft and wilting and musical on its own. All this great nostalgia framed in a new way. So delicious.

As a bonus, here is Jimmy Fallon pretending to be Neil Young. May not be available to people outside the US.

1. Music videos of the Top 50 singles on rage
2. Whatever radio my dad listened to in the car
3. Songs are downloaded à la carte and shuffled on an MP3 player

For the past few years, it’s been less and less radio to the point where it’s almost zero. But the sad fact is that I actually miss radio. I absolutely hate the horrendous advertising voices there but I love the mix or when they play one of those hits from my childhood that I would never add to my own collection but adore nonetheless. There really is value in having a curator that decides what flows from the speakers to your ears.

Thankfully, the internet is slowly moving in to fill that gap. We have more intelligent music shuffle courtesy of Pandora (which is about as repetitive as pop radio stations) and last.fm. These are just two of many services let you rate songs and they will pick based on your loves/hates and what other relationships it can determine from its vast amount of user replies and music categorizations.

We have podcasts that replicate the radio shows of the old days and cater to every ridiculously niche topic you can think of. When I drive, sometimes I want music and sometimes I want to learn something interesting. Get the juices in my mindgrapes flowing. I’m kind of an NPR whore and I listen to This American Life, Radiolab, Planet Money and Car Talk.

Finally, internet mixtapes. Ooh, these are a new frontier for me. I’m still skeptical of a lot of mixes but someone linked me to Radio Friendly Unit Shifter ’09 which is just an incredibly fun mix of 90s alternative rock. Perfect for driving; I’m so glad I burned this on to a CD.