Meena Bae drops to the ground alongside bandmates Myeongjin Kim and Megan Nisbet. Nora Grace-Flood video.
Drinking Girls and Boys Choir
Johnny Brenda's
1201 Frankford Ave.
Philadelphia
Oct. 30, 2024
Dressed in a schoolgirl skirt and socks, South Korean punk star Meena Bae dropped her bass, jumped offstage and started moshing the sea of men who'd been fawning at her feet.
A decade after the soft disappearance of the '90s Korean punk scene, Bae’s band, the Drinking Girls and Boys Choir, is bringing back its outdoor-voices brand of nonconformity. For the last three weeks, the band’s upbeat anger has showcased itself on stages across the United States, like Philly’s Johnny Brenda’s, where the touring three girl group played Wednesday night.
As someone who grew up just outside of New York City, I’ve seen my fair share of shows starring dirty white dudes with lots of rage and little talent. It was an altogether different experience Wednesday night to watch frontwoman Meena Bae hypnotize an apathetic crowd through School of Rock-style shin kicks and hardcore harmonies.
Between sweet smiles and a K-pop kind of kindness (“Are you guys having fun?” she asked the audience at one point. “We are, too!”), Bae poured an impossible but palpable energy into her performance. While her guitarist and drummer shredded in musical circles, intently focused on keeping their dissonant sense of rhythm driving forward, Bae’s face said it all. Her eyes cried out the meaning of the group’s screaming lyrics. At one point she dropped to her knees as though she were praying to god.
It became clear pretty quick: Bae was God. It may not be punk to kneel down on a pew, but it’s pretty punk to turn another nightly gig into church.
I later asked Bae how she learned to do that.
“I have lots of anger,” she said. “I have to scream my anger out.” She was introduced to the genre by the band Crying Nut, who is often credited with bringing punk to Korea in the 1990s. When she was younger, Bae and her friends would scream their Crying Nut’s big single, “Speed Up Losers,” in the bar as their “drunken” ballad of choice.
Korean punk may have passed its heyday, but political problems are ripe for the picking. “We have a lot of things to be upset about,” Bae said.
When we stop believing in the system, we have to find faith in ourselves. Unlike a bunch of “bad boys” screaming into the void about their own pain, “Drinking Boys and Girls Choir” battle their own outrage through mastering the art of the moment. Bae’s anger comes across as anything but — it turns into a transcendental sense of worship that honors everyone in the room.
I couldn’t take my eyes off of her, but Bae’s mind was elsewhere. While watching the stage from the balcony, I wondered how nobody was moshing to the music. I didn’t know what most of the lyrics meant, but the tight and pounding instrumentation was too much to stand still through.
The minute I had that thought was the moment Bae jumped into action. Like a tiny tornado she moved through the mostly male crowd, twisting everyone’s energy until they bounced off of each other like billiard balls.
Bae’s energy was so pure that I wished she would kill the bassline and commit to working the crowd. Once she was back onstage, I tried to fill in her absence — I started shoving everyone I walked past to leave a whirlpool of people in my tracks.
Once a spiritually bereft American, I’m now a disciple of the subversive schoolgirl.
Drinking Boys and Girls Choir are currently wrapping up their North American tour — find tickets to their final shows here. Listen to their latest album, History, here. They next return to Korea to write and record their third full-length album.
