Chapter 101
“First, I should point out that… British Steel is an album released in 1980. It’s a bit of a stretch to call “Living After Midnight” a ’70s song. You could count it as 1971–80, I suppose.”
“Hmm, true.”
Seoha looked embarrassed. Myeongjeon turned to look at the other girls.
Of course, they had been giving it their all before, too… But even if you give something your all in everything you do, there are still degrees to that all, aren’t there? They say a lion uses all its strength when catching a rabbit, but could the effort it puts into hunting a buffalo really be the same as what it uses to hunt a rabbit?
But Myeongjeon felt that this time, they would definitely have to put in quite a lot of work. Of course, there was no telling what kind of missions would come in the later rounds. Still, somehow, even if those missions turned out to be difficult, they did not seem likely to be as difficult “in terms of ability” as this round.
“Let’s take this a little more seriously this time. We have to write an original song, too. Get ready to practice. I’ve already asked the school to let you leave early. I’ll be writing the song throughout class, too…”
“Your mom is right next to you. Is it okay to say something like that? That you’re not going to listen in class?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
Hyein seized on Myeongjeon’s solemn words. As her friends burst out laughing, Myeongjeon awkwardly tried to explain. Why was she doing this when she knew that wasn’t what he meant…? She was making him feel embarrassed.
* * *
Seungjae watched the video displayed on the screen. A girl playing guitar as though nothing were unusual. Yet the sound spilling from her hands was enough to make passersby stop in their tracks.
“Was this from when she first started busking?”
“Yeah.”
“She’s no joke. I thought the theme would give us an advantage. And when they did “White Room,” I initially thought Seongmin, you were the one who suggested it.”
They were watching Ha Suyeon’s very first busking performance—a video of her playing “Layla” and “Voodoo Child” as street busking. The drums and bass had clearly never played together before, and despite countless timing mistakes and moments when their playing fell out of sync…
Her skill covered all of it with a single guitar performance. If anything, the drums, which should have been leading the rhythm, were following the guitar’s timing, and the bass seemed to be watching it for cues as well.
“I told you they brought it up first. They said it was a song they liked so much that it was the name of their YouTube channel. I thought they were joking, but the fact that it was true seriously gave me chills.”
“The good thing is that the others don’t seem to be like that. But looking at how quickly those kids are improving, maybe that won’t be a problem? I was seriously fucking shocked watching Seoha play drums this time.”
Seungjae recalled how Seoha used to play. Back then, a drummer would occasionally come to their live-club shows and say, “I’m Horan… Yoo Seoha. I’m a fan of yours, and I play drums…,” making sure to emphasize that she was their fan.
She was an unusual high-school-girl fan, and a drummer on top of that, so Seongmin would sometimes check her skill… and Seungjae had seen it, too. She had possessed surprisingly solid fundamentals and technique for her age.
But the problem was that, like most kids who made music at that age, she had a strong tendency to look down on fundamentals. And since there was still a considerable gap between her and Seongmin, he had simply told her, “Come audition when there’s an opening for a drummer.”
“Exactly. I have no idea how hard they worked her. Her fundamentals were practically… It was like she’d done nothing but practice them after every meal.”
“And it’s not just the drums. She plays both bass and keyboard well, too. Overall, I think those members are about on par with us. As for guitar—sorry, Jaehyeok—but that kid is much better than you.”
“Hey, normally I’d still say I’m pretty good, but I couldn’t compete with her. Some crazy kid showed up.”
Bassist Ha Sugyeol shook his head.
“When I was that age, I got people saying, ‘Wow, you’re amazing,’ just for fooling around in a hobby band and clunking away at a school festival. What was it she did, again? I heard she went to Myeongjeon’s guitarist tribute concert and even performed a solo live.”
“Why would she go to Myeongjeon’s guitarist tribute concert? What connection does she have?”
“You didn’t know? Apparently, she was his student. His last student. That guitar is one of his belongings, too. She even collected his effects pedals and uses them.”
The room grew noisy for a moment. Seungjae calmed the members down, then looked at some of their other performance videos—busking performances they had done on the street when their EP came out, videos uploaded to YouTube, and so on.
“Looks like we really need to prepare like hell.”
“I know. I thought it would be tough, but I didn’t realize it would be this tough.”
Seungjae had chosen Group Sound… for several reasons, as he had explained during the recording, but ultimately because he thought that if they were going to clash someday, sooner was better. Winning in the finals would have had a greater impact, but wouldn’t losing during the process be better than losing in the finals?
But after investigating Group Sound in greater detail once more, he found himself thinking that perhaps they should have met in the finals after all. Of course, there was no guarantee they would have met there.
“Still! This is a match we can win with confidence. No, we couldn’t ask for better conditions! They’ll come at us at full power, but this is our home ground. I’m starting on the composition now, so don’t call me. If it’s really urgent, come to the studio. Got it?”
At the band’s answer, Seungjae pushed away from the desk and stood up. This was no longer the time to fool around.
* * *
Muzaku’s guitarist, Jung Jaehun—the man who had broken his guitar string during the recorded stage to sabotage Group Sound.
He had not done it thoughtlessly, either. He had his own reasons and things to say. There had been some provocation, but also his own competitive pride. The only problem was that the world was not as easy to deal with as he had thought.
Every Muzaku member who had said they would fight alongside him kicked him out, saying, “Did we tell you to make it that blatantly obvious?” And Velvet Monochrome, the band that had egged Muzaku on, advanced to the next round in silence without saying a word.
“They’re all fucking bastards.”
Jaehun thought he had lost everything in a moment of rashness. Of course, life was long, and being kicked out of a band did not mean he was doomed. But from where he stood, he could not see any future ahead.
It was at that moment that a KakaoTalk message arrived from someone whose name he did not recognize.
“Have a seat.”
The person who had called him was the leader of Ullim Stones, the band that had been eliminated from the audition earlier. What had his name been? He seemed to share the same surname as Jaehun.
“I’m Jung Woojin.”
“Oh, right. I’m Jung Jaehun.”
After they shook hands, silence lingered for a while. Jaehun had come after seeing a KakaoTalk message that said, “[I’d like to meet regarding the audition.]” But he wondered why this man had called him. They had nothing to do with each other.
“Your voluntary withdrawal this time. It’s related to Group Sound, isn’t it?”
“…What? How did you…?”
Instead of answering, Woojin took a sip of coffee and continued with what he wanted to say.
“I have bad memories involving Group Sound, too. If you’re willing, would you like to do something together about it?”
“Uh…”
Jaehun thought about it. The truth was, he did not hate Group Sound. He had only wanted to screw over the PD, and Group Sound had merely been chosen as the means. If there was anyone he hated, it was the Muzaku members who had egged him on, then kicked him out when he actually went through with it.
But getting back at Group Sound did not sound so bad, either. It was not as though he had anywhere lower to fall.
“I won’t do it if it’s something that could identify me.”
“It isn’t anything like that. I just need you to give testimony. I don’t really have anything to offer you, though…”
Woojin said that and laughed self-deprecatingly, looking almost like Jaehun himself. Two men with nothing left. Jaehun gave a feeble laugh and prepared to hear Woojin out.
Their reality was that they were doing something strange simply because they resented a group of high-school girls who were doing better than they were. And yet, they thought they were struggling at the end of their lives. Life was a continuous process of justifying oneself, after all.
* * *
“The 1970s… I don’t really know.”
The four had gathered at a café after leaving school early under the pretext of their broadcast schedule. They ordered coffee at Starbucks, brought it over, and took a sip before Iseo confessed that.
“Isn’t that only natural…? None of us has ever lived through the 1970s…”
“We’re not talking about living in the 1970s. We’re talking about the music of the 1970s. You don’t actually have to have lived through it.”
The girls seemed to be saying strange things simply because they found it frustrating. Myeongjeon was just drinking his sweet coffee. He was the only one who knew anything about the 1970s. The others would know only superficially. Seoha might know something, since she had dug into metal, but the other two would have no knowledge of that world at all.
“If you were born in the 1970s, how old would you be?”
“Wouldn’t you be in your fifties now?”
“Wow, that’s completely ancient. But if you listened to music in the 1970s, that means you were at least a teenager back then. So you’d be, what, almost seventy? Sixty? Gasp. A super fucking denture.”
Iseo seemed to have blurted it out without thinking. But for some reason, Myeongjeon felt angry.
‘Was calling me a fucking denture really necessary?’
At first, Myeongjeon had not thought much of it. But the more he searched the internet, the more he got a sense of how kids these days used profanity. So, basically, once you got old, you became a target for ridicule?
Myeongjeon did not think he had lived as an old person. Of course, people on the internet said that thinking so was itself proof that he was old, but in any case, wasn’t age ultimately a matter of the mind?
Even if your body grew old, if your mental age remained young, then you were young, not old. Besides, his body was young now, too. Of course, it was a different sex from before…
“Suyeon, have you ever listened to any music from the 1970s?”
“Lots. Didn’t you guys perform some of it, too? I think I made you play a few songs… “The Man Who Sold the World,” for instance—the song I played as a session musician on Juhyeon’s track—was released in 1970. And “Spread a Carpet in My Heart” came out in 1978.”
“That doesn’t sound like very many.”
Really? Myeongjeon scratched his head. He had thought he had made them play quite a lot, but when he thought about it, there really were only a few. As he thought that he should have whipped them a little more and given them more advance training from the beginning, Myeongjeon opened his mouth.
“We can listen to them now, at least. But the 1970s covered such a broad spectrum. It depends on which direction we choose.”
The history of rock was so varied that there was far too much to talk about. In the early 1970s alone, hard rock surged forward, prog and glam emerged, and punk got its start… After the eras of blues and psychedelia had come to an end, most modern rock genres were born during that period.
And if they did not limit themselves to rock? There was even more room to branch out. To put it crudely, they could pick almost anything and insist it was from the 1970s, and still find a reference to support it.
But Myeongjeon planned to focus on psychedelia and progressive rock above all else. They were the kinds of music he preferred and mainly listened to.
‘The problem is coming up with inspiration…’
“What were the people who lived in the 1970s like?”
As he was thinking that, Hyuna posed a question. What had the people who lived in the 1970s been like? Well…
“There are people who say those days were nice to live through. My grandmother always says things like, ‘The old days were better~’ too. They say people had more warmth toward one another back then, more fellowship, and all that…”
“It wasn’t very nice. What would have been nice about it? Did electricity even work properly back then? Did they have TVs? TVs were still black-and-white then. They only became color in the late ’70s.”
Myeongjeon recalled the old days. He had been the child of a fairly well-off family—it would have been impossible for them to buy him a guitar otherwise—so it was only natural that they had owned a color TV. But in many other people’s homes, even having a black-and-white TV meant they were rich, and many had none at all.
And that was not all. From what his neighborhood friends from that time had told him, many homes had pit toilets. Even when he went to a friend’s house, the bathroom was usually outside. Apartment buildings were completely out of the question. Parasites, disinfecting everything, and so on…
“There was a lot of talk about bedbugs last year, right? Back then, bedbugs were part of everyday life. People sprayed DDT to get rid of them, and they still got passed from one person to another. There weren’t many refrigerators then, either. At school, kids beating people up, extorting lunch money, and causing a commotion was just normal. It was not a time that was pleasant to live through at all.”
Myeongjeon reminisced about those old days. There was a phrase like “the good old days,” but Myeongjeon had always believed that the present was better than the past, then as now.
What had been so good about the past? Had they had the internet? YouTube? Even when it came to music, back then they had to cling to their fathers’ trouser legs and pay eye-watering sums to bring home foreign albums. There was no sheet music, so they had to transcribe songs by ear, and without a way to record them, they could never be sure they had gotten them right.
“Suyeon, you talk as if you actually lived through that period.”
“What?”
Myeongjeon’s muttering had been almost a lament. Hearing it, Iseo blurted that out as though something seemed strange. Myeongjeon was flustered, and Seoha chimed in.
“It’s so vivid. Were you possessed or something? When you were in the hospital, did someone from that era possess you or something?”
“Ha, ha… hahaha…”
“Horang, I think you’ve read too many novels.”
Seoha’s joke struck Myeongjeon right where it hurt. Unable to answer it properly, he laughed, while Hyuna looked at Seoha as if she found her ridiculous and spoke. Seoha put on an aggrieved expression.
“It’s not that I lived through it. I just mean it seems that way when you look at things from back then…”
“Something about you is suspicious…”
Iseo did not actually suspect anything. She only said it because the flustered look on “Ha Suyeon’s” face was funny. At those words, “Ha Suyeon” grew even more flustered, her eyes inexplicably wavering.
After they spent a little more time like that, Myeongjeon came up with an idea. It was easy to sing about glorious memories. A paean to difficult times was fine, too. Even if it looked fresh at a glance, it was actually the easiest path.
‘But couldn’t we also sing about the people who were crushed beneath that era?’
A song about those who had withered away.
Who could tell a story about a subject like that? In the end, it seemed that Myeongjeon himself—the “denture”—was the only one who could. Of course, from other people’s perspective, it might seem absurd for a teenage girl to talk about something like that… But that was how it was.