Jam Sessions and Love Motels

Last night, Jessie and I went to Kwangju with Shona, Rodrigo and Sarah. We were supposed to meet at the motel, but that proved to be more of a challenge than we had anticipated.
We were staying at “The Windmill Motel”, or “Winduhmill” as it is known locally. The first cab kicked us out when he could not understand us. The second did too, but luckily, before we had loaded our stuff. Jessie called her coteacher for help, and she told the third cabdriver the name for us. He still didn’t know where it was, but her seemed to have no problem driving in a random direction while he worked it out. Unfortunately, it wasn’t listed, so we decided to head straight to the Speakeasy and just hope that when we didn’t show at the motel, they would call us.
On our way, we finally got ahold of Rodrigo, who was in the lobby, and could hand the phone over to the attendant who could work things out with the cabbie. Yess!
Our first night in a love motel was a strange one. These places are like the private hold of a secret society. The parking lot had hanging tarp shreds hanging so that you could not see the cars parked inside. The desk in the lobby had frosted glass, except for a small area a stomach level with a hole to pass the key out to the customer/receive money. In the elevator, there was a basket to turn in your keys so that you did not have to interact at all with anyone. It’s completely incognito. I guess that comes in handy for the amount of affairs/frowned upon (to the point of ostricization) pre-marital sex.
Anyways, after that we headed to the Speakeasy, where I was to be playing the guitar and singing some songs, just like in days of old.
It turned out to be a lot like days of old, as the owner and his friend were basically the new little James and big James from Fionn MacCool’s. The place even came complete with “Fionn’s Broads” who danced the night away to such highly danceable hits as “The Other Side” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. One definite improvement over Fionn’s was the talent, as Dave, the co-owner of the place turned out to be quite a good guitar player. Another improvement was that I was allowed to play more than three songs, and my second set (originally to be one song) became four at the request of the audience!
We had a pretty good time, and I was allowed to jam along with Dave’s electric on th group jams at the end, which was pretty sweet. I was surprised that I could still pull off a solo after six months without an electric, but it came very naturally again. I’m sure the bends were out of tune a bit, but it still went pretty well.
There was an older couple from Naju as well, in Korea teaching in a hagwon that is associated with their church. Anyways, the guy got up and sang Karaoke, and it was AWESOME. He sang a Cat Stevens song, and then two Jim Croce songs, and he had this perfect AM radio voice, and did a really good job. Then his wife got up and sang a song I didn’t know, but she was really good to, probably even better than him. She was pitch perfect (at least to my drunk ears).
In random news, I ran into Katie Berger, a friend of a friend from my early Queen’s days. She was in the same form, dressed for a night at Stages and dancing with the Fionn’s broads. It was pretty neat, she was actually one of the people who came out to see me performing that first time at Queen’s, so I celebrated by performing “Happy Together” by the Turtles, as song I had performed with the as yet unnamed Riding Pine that night. It was so random that we ran into each other in Korea. It turns out that she is teaching in Kwangju, so perhaps more meetings will be happening in the future.
Her boyfriend was also there, and apparently is a really cool guy. So cool, apparently, that he necessitated a huge speech about it from Dave (the guitar-player co-owner). Anyways, he and his friends took to the stage at one point and requested to sing “Asshole” by Denis Leary. Thanks to the OAC farewell performance with Jim, I was able to do that for them. That was very fun and random, and I even threw in some “He’s a real fucking asshole!” harmonies. After that, her boyfriend asked if I knew “The Lemon Song”. Well, out comes the Zep fan, who’s been asleep for a few years now. That was FUN! He was really into it, and was screaming it out in his best Robert Plant impression.
The only downside of the evening was that there was so much time between performers sometimes, including a long section of mp3 playing when I was totally ready to go, and the rest in the gang were pretty bored of it.

And that was our big exciting night in the city.