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Ahhhh Liberation Day. I could kiss the Japanese for their crumbled empire, retracting in defeat to their diminutive isle fifty-ish years ago and leaving the Korean work-horse to declare a national holiday in proud response. Little did those Japanese know that in abandoning Korea, they were incidentally granting much-needed reprieve to overworked ESL teachers much further down the historical archipelago. And so I thank you Japan, immortal failure of colonization, for providing me with a Tuesday free of tests and constructing stupid cardboard houses for pigs to build and wolves to blow down. It was thoughtful of you to leave Korea in August.

While many locals celebrated their freedom from the villainous ILBON with traditional activities like visiting theme parks or the omnipresent "Grandmother's House", we looked elsewhere. Everland is mad crowded on holidays and grandma always makes us bottle three tons of rotting cabbage for kimchi when we stop by. No, grander plans were afoot: we had secured our places at a more modern massacre of Korean folk. On the anniversary of this country's reborn autonomy, they were haphazardly trying their luck on the basketball court against the New World Order, America's Dream Team.

Of the motley crew of nationalities opposing the U.S.A. in the World Basketball Championship, Korea is among the motliest. I have mentioned, I believe, the silly state of professional basketball here. After a grudging and lengthy battle with Seoul's public transportation system and face-melting heat, we arrived at Olympic Park to learn that things have not improved since. It was interesting to see that many Korean supporters were healthily attired in NBA jerseys; futility leads to some whimsical, disjointed scenarios. For example, a drunken old man trying to impress a hot booth girl outside the stadium with his awkward jump-shot, airballing completely and hitting her right in her squealing face. Stuff like that.

Inside, one quickly learnt that attempting to hydrate oneself with beer was a poor idea, especially when the effort of lifting the can to one's lips resulted in a cascade of sweat equal to or greater than the net liquid in the beer. But dammit, we tried.

To their credit, Team Korea started off okay. They had prepared some decent plays to move the ball around and find an open outside shooter (as the battle under the net was lost from the onset, clearly). But when you have guys like LeBron James and Chris Bosh flying around like fucking airborne Jesuses (Jesii?), even the best plans tend to break down. Within minutes, the game became not a question of who would win, but whether the Americans would double up on Korea's score.

Korea's defense quickly degenerated into a series of sexual molestations but the Dream Team, unphased, continued to throw down dunks like a Harlem Globetrotter exhibition. One particularly riveting play involved half of Korea's team lying prone and injured in their own court, perhaps taking a cue from their flop-happy soccer team, while the Americans pranced downcourt and made yet another spectacle out of two points. The crowd roared with every dunk, but they roared louder whenever a Korean somehow sank a ten-foot jumper against all odds; peals of Korean pride rolled throughout the stadium periodically despite the lopsided score. That's the mentality here: always fighting, always down but never out.

But they still lost. Bad. Despite being given a variety of bizarre free-throw penalties by sympathetic referees, Korea was submarined by fifty points, victims of sporting assassination in an era where culture is the new colony. However, the fact that the results of the game were universally expected and, indeed, the subject of many rueful head-shakes and sardonic anticipation made it okay somehow. Down but not out: Japan probably would've lost even worse. And everyone got to see motherfucking LeBron James! In Korea!!

Everything seems cooler when it's in Korea, especially something you could see back home that would be no big deal. You could go to a Flock of Seagulls reunion show here, and it would be badass just because it's LIVE IN SEOUL!!!

So imagine how much more badass it would be if there happened to be a good band in Seoul, or perhaps two good bands. At the same time. And the show was frustratingly sold out for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks, but it just so happened that the promoters released a fat block of tickets to discourage scalpers on the day of the concert. And the venue was coincidentally just three minutes from where a basketball game had been lost by a courageous squad of overmatched Koreans. And the bands were METALLICA and TOOL. LIVE IN SEOUL!!!

Needless to say, my final holiday in Korea immediately became the best.

Crowds milled outside the stadium, Westerners trying to look unexcited and "oh yeah, we're totally used to this kind of thing back in Sudbury," and Koreans trying to look metal - which doesn't work particularly well, given the country's aversion to tattoos and piercings and willingness to don ridiculous T-shirts with Lars Ulrich's leering goblin face. We wandered into the venue, none too soon, because before we even had a chance to relax and say "Holy shit, we're seeing TOOL! IN SEOUL!!!" we were seeing Tool. In Seoul.

Maynard and crew strode unobtrusively on-stage before maybe 1000 onlookers and immediately launched into "Stinkfist", which is a damn good thing to launch into under any circumstances. Mohawked and energetic, I'd never seen Maynard quite so accommodating or, dare I say, congenial: he bantered sparingly without the scathing admonishments of the crowd that he's usually fond of. I guess maybe he figured Koreans wouldn't get sarcasm.

It was pretty funny to watch people rush into the stadium once they realized their posturing outside meant they were actually missing the show. Tool ripped through a fairly straightforward set: lots of Aenima, "Vicarious" from 10 000 Days and, of course, "Sober". 8 songs, 1 hour, in and out before people knew what hit them. It was like a backseat-of-the-car fuck between shifts at Zellers. I think maybe Tool decided that since their name was about an eighth of the size of Metallica's on the banner outside, they were only responsible for an eighth of the set time. Still, the deed was done; an afterglow left.

As the light died and the stadium filled like a bucket of faces, anticipation built. The sound-check and light guys screwed the crowd around with dummy dims and tantalizing guitar jabs, but Metallica took their sweet time getting to business. We amused ourselves in the meantime by watching hordes of fans try to circumvent the harried and understaffed security team by jumping barriers and rushing the stage. There is possibly nothing funnier than watching a man in a three-piece suit and earpiece chase a tiny flailing Asian girl into a throng of Metallica fans. New and interesting methods of jailbreak were developed to adapt to defensive reconfiguration, involving daring jumps over concrete ravines and elaborate distraction ruses.

I had never seen Metallica before, and I think Lars is a gigantic tool for his part in the whole Napster thing, but wow. They finally took the stage to an enormous roar that groped the sky, and went and went and went and went. Sticking primarily to older stuff from Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets instead of pumping St. Anger (like I semi-feared), Metallica did strange and wonderful things to Korea. All around us, people who couldn't speak a word of conversational English were screaming and pumping their fists along to every song, from "Unforgiven" all the way to "Seek and Destroy". It was strange, to say the least: perhaps we've been teaching English the wrong way. Maybe the key lies in metal, as it rightfully should, and we've been too blind to see it.

Bare-chested kids flailed umbrellas in air-guitar glory. Headbanging ensued. Stage rushes swelled and petered out and swelled again whenever a security person left to go to the bathroom. Two hours passed and Metallica left, fawning and heaping praise on a hungry crowd. Who out there bought St. Anger? Not me, but I downloaded it. It was okay. And then I paid 80 bucks to see your show and I'm a lot happier spending that 80 bucks than I would've been spending 18 on your new CD.

I don't think they heard me say that though.

Then Metallica returned for the predictable encore and left and returned again, somewhat less predictably this time, and a large number of people outside the stadium on their way home were made to feel foolish for doubting the tenacity of metal.

And standing on the edge of all this, life felt pretty good.

... until we saw the line-up to get down the stairs into the subway station. Sometimes the afterglow smells like sweat, sometimes it's saying "fuck this, let's just get a cab." Sometimes Japan has to fall down for me to have a wicked holiday. IN SEOUL!!!

[Seoul] [Korea] [Olympic Stadium] [Dream Team] [basketball] [Tool] [Metallica]

Posted by Chris at 11:00 AM >> Commentations (1)