Damn Idol — Episode 154
* * *
Yeom Seonghun was an ordinary man in his fifties.
Burdened by incompetent superiors and pushed around by capable juniors, he imagined quitting the company every single day, but…….
“Sigh.”
He was an ordinary head of the household who soothed his days with samgyeopsal and soju while thinking of his family.
In his youth, he had been a dreamer, trying this and that with friends, but it was all just memories now. The man in the mirror was a middle-aged man slowly going bald and developing a belly.
Feeling strangely unfamiliar with himself for having such thoughts out of nowhere, Yeom Seonghun entered his house.
It was a shame he’d grown apart from his teenage daughter, but his wife and daughter were still his everything.
“You’re home?”
“Where’s Juhui?”
“She was listening to music in her room.”
“Was she?”
He considered stopping by his daughter’s room, but washed up first.
But his daughter was waiting for him in the living room.
“Dad.”
“What?”
“Do you happen to know these people?”
“These people?”
What his daughter held out was some kind of CD case.
“An album?”
“Handle it gently!”
“What is there to handle gently? But who are you asking if I know?”
“The people written here.”
Inside the CD case his daughter carefully opened was something like a booklet, and credits were written there.
“Huh?”
But the names written in the credits were a bit strange.
Eric Scott, Yankoes Greenwood, Moscos…….
Weren’t these the very names of the heroes who had adorned his youth, packed densely together?
Of course, there were some names he didn’t know, but most were incredibly famous musicians.
At first, he thought they had just listed musicians they respected, but that couldn’t be it.
Wasn’t this the credits?
‘Is that it? Taking melodies and using them?’
Yeom Seonghun didn’t know the word “sampling,” but he understood the concept and thought as much. His daughter added from beside him.
“They say the musicians who co-composed this are super famous old-school people, so I was wondering if you knew them.”
“This is co-composed?”
“Yeah.”
“How?”
“Huh?”
One person, maybe.
As far as Yeom Seonghun knew, idols these days invested a tremendous amount of money.
So the company could pay a massive amount to recruit one master musician.
But it wasn’t one—it was eight.
Moreover, four of them that Yeom Seonghun knew for certain were legendary musicians who had shaken American popular music when he was in his twenties. Of the remaining four, he also recognized two by name.
“Sedalbaegil—who are these guys?”
“You know them too, Dad. ‘Under the Streetlight.’”
“Ah, those kids?”
“Yeah.”
“What are they, sons of politicians? No, that wouldn’t work. Politicians can’t… Then chaebol second-generation?”
That was all his limited imagination could come up with, but he didn’t need to imagine. His daughter, seeing her dad’s eyes go wide with surprise, excitedly began to explain.
Listening to the story, Yeom Seonghun was surprised once more.
Everyone in the world has a time that was their youth.
Now he was a middle-aged man with dimmed eyes, but he, too, had possessed a shining era.
Before going to the army, Yeom Seonghun had been in a band.
It wasn’t a profession; it was a hobby.
Back then, they weren’t called bands but “group sound,” and Korean music had always been a minor presence. How envious he had been when Japanese bands charted on Billboard and spread City Pop borrowing Tokyo’s image?
After returning from the military, he had drifted away from music to get a job, and after marriage, he had forgotten it completely, but…….
Seeing the names of the heroes who had filled his youth made him curious.
“How do you listen to this? Can I just play it on the computer?”
He’d asked because they didn’t have a CD player at home, but his daughter brought one from her room.
“What is this?”
“It came with the album goods.”
“Goods?”
“You get it when you buy the album.”
“This? How much was the album?”
“Thirty-five thousand won.”
If it were just the album, it seemed a bit expensive, but thinking they had given a CD player with it, it seemed cheap.
Yeom Seonghun didn’t know this, but the Standard version of Sedalbaegil’s 1st full album was 13,000 won.
The Standard version included a booklet, the album, two photocards, and a lyric book.
The Limited Edition was 35,000 won, providing the Standard contents plus unreleased photocards and a photo album.
And on top of that, a CD player was added.
So not only fans, but even those who bought Sedalbaegil’s album without joining the fan club all purchased the Limited Edition.
They weren’t interested in unreleased photocards or photo books, but the CD player was coveted.
At first, the dominant opinion was that they’d provide some cheap Chinese-made machine, but after watching Sedalbaegil’s album unboxing video on YouTube, those words vanished completely.
It had a neat deep-blue design, and the manufacturer was a small-to-medium enterprise famous domestically for audio equipment.
People wondered if Sedalbaegil had any intention of making money, but from Han Sion’s perspective, it was a kind of pet project.
He was a man desperate to supply every household in the nation with a CD player.
If the state would only permit it, he was someone who wanted to dip into his own pockets to provide “One Household, One CDP” as part of national welfare.
But Yeom Seonghun didn’t know this. From early evening, he began listening to Sedalbaegil’s album with the CDP his daughter had given him.
And he was moved.
The music of the heroes he loved could be felt everywhere.
Track 1, which shared its title with the album.
The moment he heard the brilliant guitar sound heralding the song’s intro, he thought of a white man with curly hair clenching a cigarette.
Eric Scott.
A man whose name was never left out when talking about the top three or top five guitarists.
The idol of guitarists evaluated to have elevated solo guitar performance to an unrivaled realm.
He must be in his sixties now, but in Yeom Seonghun’s mind, Eric Scott was forever in his thirties.
But Yeom Seonghun was just as surprised when he heard the guitar in the following song.
It was the intro of Gu Taehwan, who was receiving praise for having come into his own in this album.
‘What the hell?’
At Yeom Seonghun’s age, he didn’t particularly hold prejudice against idols.
Talk about idols being factory-made products or vocals that came out rigidly formed through repetitive training was something only people who knew about such things said.
Yeom Seonghun didn’t even know such things, so he didn’t even have that prejudice.
But the prejudice he did have was about the level of Korean music.
When Led Zeppelin played, Korea couldn’t escape the karaoke sound. When Eric Scott paralyzed Wembley Stadium with his guitar solo, Korea’s guitar and bass couldn’t break free from merely expressing rhythm.
Of course, this was a personal opinion containing a bit of prejudice.
Because there had been exceptionally talented genius musicians in Korea, too.
This prejudice might have come from the memory filter that said his own youth had shone brilliantly.
Because music had filled Yeom Seonghun’s twenties.
So he was all the more surprised.
Eric Scott, Moscos, Yankoes Greenwood…….
They were all being used as devices.
They weren’t the center of the music.
The center of the music was an idol group called Sedalbaegil.
Yeom Seonghun listened to Sedalbaegil’s album like that, and when he tried to listen once more, his wife scolded him and he put down the CDP.
Asking how he was going to go to work tomorrow.
In his dreams, he was in his twenties, on stage.
The next morning.
He borrowed the CDP from his daughter and listened to the album again on the subway while commuting.
Having arrived at work like that, Yeom Seonghun somehow ended up talking about yesterday.
And he was surprised.
“I liked Keith Richard better than Eric Scott, though.”
“Didn’t Keith Richard ride a bit on the Rolling Stones’ fame?”
“Come on, Chief. What nonsense is that? Keith Richard is a genius.”
“Still, for guitar, it’s Eric Scott.”
“Isn’t Eric Clapton the true aesthetic of slowness?”
“Ha, brings back memories. There was a café in Dongmyo that played the Billboard charts off the backs of LP jackets…….”
He wasn’t the only one who idolized musicians from that era.
His colleagues of similar age were all the same.
They had been away from cultural life for a long time, but they had simply forgotten.
“I ought to ask my son about it.”
“You can just listen to it directly on YouTube.”
“How do you do that?”
And so lunchtime ended.
The next day, most people ended at just talk, but the chief really listened to the album.
And he praised it to the skies.
What was corporate life?
It was best to do whatever your superior did.
As long as you didn’t particularly hate it.
And Yeom Seonghun witnessed several people buying the album.
He even saw them happy at having something to talk about with their children.
To Han Sion, the Billboard masters were not special people.
They were people he had met countless times through numerous regressions, and people he had worked with innumerably.
Therefore, having the masters co-compose was merely a publicity stunt.
They had overcome it now, but when making the album, Sedalbaegil needed publicity.
Something capable of creating a huge issue to break through Choe Daeho’s pressure.
But the masters who were familiar to Han Sion were a memento of someone’s most shining moments.
It allowed them to vividly witness that era they could never return to.
Like the time travel appearing in Sedalbaegil’s universe.
And so, the album began to sell quietly.
There was no hot issue.
Because the 40-60 demographic acted but did not speak.
But that was recorded.
Sedalbaegil’s first-week sales were 220,000 copies.
In the second week, sales didn’t drop due to the rush of reviews from the Billboard masters.
Many people bought the album late domestically, and group orders exploded overseas too.
Second-week sales were a whopping 340,000 copies.
It was rare for second-week sales to surpass first-week sales.
Therefore, people thought Sedalbaegil’s album sales would drop dramatically in the third week.
But they didn’t.
Overseas buyers reacting late to the issue and the quiet purchasing power of the 40-60 generation were added together.
Third-week sales were again 220,000 copies.
Total sales up to the third week were 780,000 copies.
From Han Sion’s perspective, it was nothing special, but…….
[The Power of Pure Music! Sedalbaegil’s 1st Full Album, Nearing 1 Million Copies?]
[Sedalbaegil’s 1st Full Album Establishes Itself as an Album to Listen to with Children.]
[Fathers’ Wallets Open to the Music of Heroes from Memories.]
In the meantime, Sedalbaegil swept first place on the music shows of the Big Three broadcasters.
With the situation turning out this way, some agencies moved quickly.
They believed that Sedalbaegil—no, Han Sion—hadn’t recruited the Billboard masters through pure music.
This industry wasn’t a place that ran so innocently; there was definitely some backroom deal.
But this was something Korean agencies were wrong about.
The masters weren’t people pure to the bone, as they thought.
But they had earned too much money and grasped too much honor, so when it came to choosing their music, they could反而 become pure.
The masters’ answer was simple.
[Send us the music.]
But those who sent their music didn’t receive any answer.
The only one who responded was Donald McGus, but.
[This melody progression is worse than what I made when I was ten?]
He only received a rebuke.
* * *
No matter how the world flows, musicians must keep their center.
The most important thing is having a sense of reality.
Our music has been shaking South Korea for three weeks, but we must not get drunk on it.
Once released, music possesses its own vitality.
Doing something to it won’t make the music any better.
There is only one way to make better music.
Making the next album.
While thinking that, PD Gang Seoku opened his mouth.
Because right now, it was the variety show meeting for M-Show, whose format had finally been decided.
“This program’s theme is a healing busking trip. We’re probably going to Spain.”
“Yes.”
“But that’s Part 2. Part 1 will be filmed domestically.”
Part 1?
“You all have to earn travel expenses domestically. Whether it becomes a super-luxurious healing trip or a dirt-cheap miserable trip depends on the budget, right?”
“So we earn it through missions or something?”
“No. Not money given by the broadcasting station. You have to really earn it. While hiding the fact that you are Sedalbaegil—with only your music.”