Jisan Rock Festival!!

Again, sorry for the long delay in updating but I think you will enjoy this one. The last few weeks have been very busy for me, including some very fun weekends. About a month ago I along with around 20 of my friends went to a music festival near Seoul. The festival was from Friday through Sunday and the bands I was very interested in seeing were playing on Friday. Those bands were Fall Out Boy, Jimmy Eat World, and Weezer. This festival was not only for English bands but also for many bands from Korea and Japan as well. I decided to head to Jisan by myself on Friday because none of my friends could get off of work or they just didn't want to go on Friday. I woke up at 7am to catch the 8am bus to Seoul where I would then get a charter bus to the festival grounds. The whole trip took around 4 hours and around noon I was there with tent in hand, ready to camp and rock out for 3 days! The area is absolutely beautiful! It's a ski lodge in the winter time and the stages were set up at the bottom of the slopes to leave nothing but mountains and sky to surround everything. The camping areas were first come first serve so "prime" spots were being taken very quickly. I didn't want to be a mile away from the stages and all the action so I decided to throw my tent up in a little area where many other tents were. After clearing away rocks and sticks and setting the tent up, I decided to get in and see how things were on the inside. Unfortunately the "slight slope" that was there from the outside was on much more of an incline on the inside of the tent. I didn't want to move my tent and wanted to get down to start watching some of the Asain bands so I just decided to leave it...which would come to haunt me later in the night. Friday was great. Fall Out Boy (FOB) was by far the best band of the entire festival and I was lucky enough to be right up close to the stage to see them for now the 5th time.

I had met a Korean guy there who spoke very good English and he and I hung out for the day. I had mentioned to him that I had played the drums for quite a few years and FOB was one of my favorite bands. After FOB was finished playing the drummer came to the front of the stage and threw sticks into the crowd. The last stick he had he threw right towards me and I jumped up......the stick hit the palm of my hand.....and then bounced right out and hit the floor only to have a mob of people jumping and falling all over it :( Low and behold, the person on the bottom of that pile was Kim, the guy who I was hanging out with and he came up scratching and clawing and with a huge pull, he yanked the stick from everyone else and the stick was his! I gave him a huge high 5 and started to express to him how lucky he is. He then looked at the stick and looked at me and said "here, this is yours. This will mean a lot more to you than it will to me." I was shocked and yet again was surprised by the generosity that the Korean people have for anyone.

Weezer ended the day as the headliner for Friday. I wanted to get to bed early Friday because I knew Saturday and Sunday were going to be sleepless nights once my friends got there so I decided to turn in around midnight. Again, this is where the "slope" of the tent comes into play. If you've ever tried to sleep on a 30 degree slope with your feet going towards the bottom then you know what I'm talking about. I could not get comfortable for the life of me and I changed positions more times than I could count. With the level of "comfort" and the addition of extremely loud rap music being played sleep was a rarity Friday night. Around 3am the skies decided to upon up on us and let loose an amazingly large amount of water. It poured for about 3 hours but my little tent stood strong with only minor leaks.

Saturday came and I crawled out of my tent after a nice refreshing baby wipe bath and made some friends with the Koreans next to me who had already commensed drinking. They offered me a drink and I respectfully declined but they begged me just to have one cup with them so I decided why not. One cup turned into a great conversation and a few more cups to follow.....with Soju in attendance. My friends showed up around 11:30 in the morning and they had to literally camp a mile away. We all met up eventually and had a great time. Saturday was not a very good day as far as bands go but it was still fun.

Sunday was a great day but again, with the lack of sleep on Saturday and 2 days under my belt, I was getting exhausted. Luckily with more great bands on both the Asain and English side, I had enough energy to make it through. Jet and Oasis were the big bands for Sunday with Oasis headlining and I was very glad that I had the chance to see Oasis at least once. They put on a great show and we all really enjoyed dancing and singing to "Wonderwall." All in all it was an amazing weekend and we all had a blast. I'm looking forward to going again next year for sure!!


This video is during the Jet performance of "Do You Wanna Be My Girl." Most of my friends here are from Europe, England to be exact. Guy in red is Steve, yello is Matt, White is Ian, and a few others. Excuse Ian's white butt and Steve's use of the single digit finger :)