Toon by Lee Scott, words by Iwazaru After the embarrassing failure of North Korea’s Unha (the galaxy) 3 missile last Friday morning, officials in the North waited four hours to inform the journalists inside the country to cover the event, and others surrounding the 100th anniversary of founder Kim Il-sung’s birth, that the reports they’d [...]
By Scott Freeman Now it’s time to turn the clocks back to 1962 and go to Detroit, Michigan,USA. Dee Edwards, born Doris Jones, records her first single as a solo artist, “You Say You Love Me,” at the young age of seventeen. It would be the only single she records for Tuba, just one of [...]
By Scott Freeman
The Beginning Of The End was one of those early to mid seventies bands from, you guessed it, Nassau, Bahamas. One of the many sounds that was going down during this time period was island funk, music from the Caribbean that was making waves on the U.S. mainland. The Beginning Of The End was a supreme example of island funk.
The core of this group consisted of the Munnings brothers—Raphael, Liroy, and Frank.
They recorded two LPs: Funky Nassau in 1971/72 and The Beginning Of The End in 1976. (I do have a copy of the Funky Nassau LP, but alas it is only a reissue. An orginial copy would go over $100. But the whole album does kick absolute butt and is worth tracking down!!!) Several singles were also released, mostly from their first album. “Funky Nassau,” the 45 you see here, was a hit single in the U.S., reaching #15 on the Billboard Top 100 and #7 on the Billboard Black Singles Chart.
Toon by Lee Scott, words by Iwazaru
Does justice ever come? The scores of expats scammed out of bundles of cash by crooked travel agent Kang Wan-koo have been asking this question for months and months, some longer, and with the beginning of his trial scheduled for 10:40 a.m. on Tuesday, March 13, the question is as relevant and weighted as ever.
What justice will be served by the Seoul Eastern District Court to the repeat and relentless criminal Kang who when put out of business last fall and prohibited from doing further deals, relocated, reloaded and continued to scam unsuspecting travelers out of their money? Even as he sits in jail his scam continued to play out as one traveler explained on March 7: “wow not sure how i missed all this with all the press this guy received – i showed up at the airport feb 29th was first in line for a flight i wasn’t booked for (bad news) ~ did however get a ticket from one of the agents on site and did get home (good news).”
By Scott Freeman
A couple of years back I heard this 45 on an Ebay auction—that’s what I love about Ebay is that sellers sometimes offer bidders sound samples of their items—and later bought this 45 off of a different website. Scant information of Eddie And The Atmosphere exists. I know nothing of the outfit. I have seen a couple of different 45s off of the Libra label in the past, but I have also been unsuccessful at uncovering any information about the Libra label itself.
There is a plethora of information, however, about two of the names listed of this 45: Billy Dawn Smith and Otis Blackwell. I discovered that both Smith and Blackwell were born and raised in Brooklyn. Smith was a noted doo-wop artist of the 50s and Blackwell gained popularity as a songwriter during the same time. In fact, Blackwell was noted as writing the following tunes: “All Shook Up,” “Don’t Be Cruel,” “Fever,” “Great Balls Of Fire.” All great hits, to be sure. So Smith and Blackwell share a hometown with similar interests in music, but I could find no specific evidence of linking them together. This 45 is the only piece of evidence I’ve got.
By Scott Freeman
Many years ago I vaguely remember walking into a record store and purchasing an album titled “More Power To Ya” from Charly Records (see photo), a UK record company that specializes in reissuing soul, rhythm and blues, and jazz. I bought it on a whim—it must have been cheap—because I had never heard any of the tracks before. So I listened to this record a few times and then filed it in my collection. At the time, I wasn’t even interested in collecting soul and funk 45s like I am now. But one of the tracks off that album, Don Varner’s “More Power To Ya,” had a resonating effect on me and I never forgot it.
A few years later, when I became more interested in collecting 45s, I found a copy of this 45 on Ebay and had to have it. While the 45 was issued on the Diamond label out of New York City, the song itself comes out of Muscle Shoals, Alabama.
You wouldn’t think it, but Muscle Shoals has had a rich tradition in music and recording studios that started back in the 1960s and continues into the present age. Just about everybody who is anybody from the music business has recorded there at one time or another, from Wilson Pickett to Aretha Franklin, from The Rolling Stones to Bob Dylan. All of this musical significance is pretty amazing for a city that boasts a present-day population just short of 13,000.
By Matthew Lamers with photos by Dylan Goldby
“The broader term is New Journalism — think Wolfe, Capote, Talese and, yes, on the fringes, Thompson with the lizards in the shadows and a bottle of Wild Turkey within reach,” said Rodgers. “3WM does often subscribe to Thompson’s theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. There are times when a certain submersion in the subject is necessary which brings you beyond the facts and closer to the truth. In the end, the goal remains to provide our readership with a deeper sense of the story that may entail a certain level of subjectivity brought on by the proximity to the subject.”
Said Soper: “We are a weekly updated blogazine with inside-out reportage, interviews, images, videos and everything else we can frame into it that is provocative, smart, entertaining and takes on life here from the Korean Peninsula.”
By Scott Freeman
I’ve come to a decision. Now that we’ve come to the 10th installment of Funky Seoul Corner, I’ve decided to devote every 10th installment in the future to a 45 from the 80s. Now, when I say 80s music I don’t want you think Culture Club, Wham, Spandau Ballet and those kinds of groups. Nor do I want you to think of the 80s glam hair-bands, either. I state the aforementioned because 80s music, when we talk about it, usually has those kinds of referents. But Funky Seoul Corner is not about popular music of the 80s or about popular music in any era specifically–it’s about unknown and underappreciated music that deserves to be heard at least once, in my humble opinion.
Toon by Lee Scott and words by Iwazaru
With the election of Park Won-soon, the liberal independent candidate, in the October 26 mayoral election, the debate over free lunches, free college tuition and other welfare policies has dominated policy-making discussions around Seoul and the country.
One side that has emerged lately is that the increased cost of the free lunches is taxing local governments who have to allocate larger percentages of welfare spending to the free lunches away from other programs.
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