Jamie Finn, the main organizer of Seoul's Block Party festival, swore that last year's edition would be the last one, but here we are, facing another impending Block Party this year.
"Last year was so fun that, even though I swore it was the last one, I wanted to do one more," he told The Korea Times. "Even as we did the last one, I was planning to move down south. Ninety-five percent of the work for Block Party is done remotely so I thought, fuck it, let’s give it a go."
After last year's Block Party, Finn moved to Busan, which is a pretty good excuse to stop running a festival in central Seoul — Haebangchon and Gyeongnidan, to be precise. But it'll be back this Sept. 21 and 22.
"Our aims with Block Party are to put Haebangchon on the musical map and throw a huge party that features as many of the local creatives as possible," Finn said.
He admitted that the distance factor hasn't caused too many difficulties in setting up the third edition of the multi-venue festival, which features a solid lineup of musicians, as well as various other entertainers and artists.
"It would have been nice to have more face to face communication with the venues, the lack of which probably slowed us down a bit," he said. "And I didn’t get to put up as many posters in Seoul. But the distance has not been the issue."
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There are about a dozen participating venues, with 11 listed in an attractive neighborhood map designed by Charity Lynn depicting the mountainside area laid out on a gigantic dragon. The venue list includes neighborhood landmarks like Phillies, Casa Amigo, Southside Parlor, Pet Sounds, Boogie Woogie, Rabbithole and KYLDN Social Club and Rooftop, as well as newcomer Dialogue.
"These days I mostly try and cling on to the last bit of sanity I have trying to organize this festival," Finn said.
The musician lineup of this year's Block Party is, as usual, too much to easily comprehend. It brings together the best of the Hongdae scene with local neighborhood favorites, both Korean and foreign, representing just about every genre except for K-pop.
"As the main booker of the festival, the lineup is made up of stuff I enjoy," Finn said.
He said he is especially looking forward to Playbook, a side project of Kim Min-soo from Silica Gel, as well as Sombra, an electronic artist who is coming over from Japan, and Lee Min-hwi, an award-winning folk artist who debuted in 2011 in the infamous duo known as Mukimukimanmansu.
"I am also looking forward to getting drunk and dancing to Maddyxp, who plays right before my DJ set to close the first day," Finn confided.
He will DJ as "DJ Jamie," having cast off his former DJ name, Scouse Ramen.
"I stopped calling myself Scouse Ramen because I got tired of having to explain it to people," he said.
There are approximately 100 music acts performing, but Finn admitted he doesn't have an exact number.
"It's hard to gauge the exact amount as we're bringing in groups of performers," he said. "We have roughly 100 musical acts playing, though. When you include drag queens, comedians, wrestlers, DJs, artists and more, I think we around 150 total participants. Probably more..."
He also said he's especially excited about the non-music lineup Block Party offers this year, continuing its successful experiment in expanding into other arts last year. This will include Crash Landed, Dragdrinkplay, White Lies Burlesque, Pro Wrestling Society, Seoul Players, Seoul City Improv, Busan Comedy Club, Assssssdog comedy, House of Hex and Ataraxia pole dancing, as well as two magicians, Omid and Jiwan.
"I'm a bit of a geek for magicians," Finn confided.
There will also be a mini version of Hechyeomoyeo, the exhibition that manifests as a landslide of artists, which is also currently running an exhibition in Busan. Artwork will be displayed at the participating venues.
"As corny as it sounds, I'm very excited to see all my friends there," Finn said. "Block Party again falls on my birthday so I'll be just happy to party with everyone and dance to Pop Ents."
Block Party is also collaborating with Chillhops Brewing to release a branded beer, the Block Party Lager, which will be available at participating venues.
"We want people to wander around and find something unexpected. Maybe you came to see a certain indie band but you ended up on stage dancing with a drag queen, or you were surprised by a magician, or you got covered in sweat by a wrestler. We want that element of surprise. And we managed to achieve that last year, and hopefully this year too," Finn said.
"The only real change for Block Party this year is we have more stages and an even better lineup."
After launching the festival in 2022, Finn admitted that the pressure is mounting for the third edition of his brainchild.
"The thing that has been the most difficult has actually been just the fact that this is our third year," he said. "I think when you get to that stage, and once you start to develop a little bit of a reputation, people have higher expectations. Not just the ticket buyers, but the artists, the venue, everyone really. People stop talking to you like you’re a group of friends just trying to throw a party and start acting like you’re a professional business operation. Which I guess is a compliment, in a way."
This year, the music festival landscape of Korea, and even Seoul, has been more crowded than ever. Finn remarked that he's unaware of any competing festivals on the same weekend as this year's Block Party, but the weekend after, there are about eight.
"That's wild," he said. "The festival scene in Korea is going through a bit of an explosion, which is good and bad. Like, all the bands are getting paid, and that's a great thing. Plus there's a lot more diversity in lineups now, which was frankly lacking in music festivals here. The bad is that, eventually, there will come a point where there are just too many. And there aren't enough festival-going people to go around. The same thing will happen that happened in 2010 when the festival market became overly saturated, and most of them ended up closing as a result. I love festivals — I've been to about eight this year — and I wish it was more. So for the time being, it's great. But, we'll see how it is in a few years."
He added that there will definitely be one fewer festival though. "I'm not fucking doing this again," he said.
One-day tickets for Saturday are already sold out, and tickets for Sunday only are 45,000 won ($34). Two-day weekend tickets cost 70,000 won each.
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Visit blockpartykorea.com or follow @blockpartykorea on Instagram for more information and to buy tickets.