Rock band, Nemo, uses music as a venue to vent their political and social frustrations, urging our generation to just "Do It Yourself."
Interview with Nemo
January 18, 2004
Interviewed by Ken Quan and Herden Daza
Transcription by Jennifer Lee
Click here to view interview in RealVideo
Known for their blistering live sets and their politically and socially aware lyrics, this native Southern California punk rock quartet calling themselves Nemo has steadily gained an underground following. Eschewing the usual route of aligning themselves with a major label, these bad boys have chosen to support their independent debut “The Center Hall Sessions,” by tirelessly touring coast to coast. Forming in 2002 on the campus of UC San Diego, boyhood friends Daniel Park (vocals and rhythm guitar) and Sunn Wee (drums) decided to jam with mutual friend Yong Kim (lead guitar) who brought in his friend Abe Chong (bass). After many late night jam sessions in far too many lecture halls, the band has embark on their journey towards commercial success and artistic respect. To find out more about Nemo and when to next catch them live, please view www.nemorocks.com.
APA: Please introduce yourselves, tell us what instruments you play, what role you play in the band, a little about your background.
Daniel: We're Nemo. I'm Daniel, I play guitar and I also sing.
Sunn: I'm Sunn. I'm the drummer, I can keep rhythm.
Yongstar: My name is Yong, I play guitar.
Abe: I'm Abe, I play the base and I do a little singing.
APA: What does Nemo stand for and why did you choose that name for your band?
Daniel: Nemo came about really randomly. We had a show coming up, our first show, and we didn't have a name yet. So we all threw out a bunch of names and took a vote and Nemo's the one that won.
Yongstar: Yeah, we took a poll online.
Daniel: We asked all our friends. We had like four different names and we're like, "Which one do you think is best?" And everyone agreed on Nemo. But it was way before that movie came out too.
Abe: I actually took a Latin class and in Latin, Nemo means nobody. So that's kind of interesting.
Daniel: People throw out all these random things, like "Nemo, is it like omen backwards? Is that why you're called Nemo?" They really dig into it, but basically we just picked it up because we thought it sounded cool in the end.
Abe: Simple, sweet.
APA: Where and when did you guys meet? Were you at all concerned that the mainstream music was not ready or not accepting of a rock band composed primarily of Asian Americans?
Daniel: Honestly, as far as music goes, I've always believed, I swear to God, that America will accept a band as long as they have a catchy sound, or something that people can feel. I did have my doubts at first; I thought, you know, maybe because we were an all-Asian band people would not accept us. But other bands came out, you know, “System of a Down” gave a lot of hope. They were an all minority band but everybody loves their sound. When it comes down to it music is very universal. As long as you have a sound that everybody can enjoy, I don't think people really give a care what race you are or what culture you are coming
from, you know? As long as they enjoy the music. Of course, there is a little bit of discrepancy with what race you are. Sometimes people, when they find out Nemo is an all-Korean band or something, I know it does affect the way they think about us. But we're here to change the way those people specifically think, you know?
Yongstar: And hopefully music will transcend all color barriers. We all love music, and it's universal.
Abe: And the Warped Tour in Ventura, there were almost no minorities there. It was almost all white people, pretty much. But we got up there and played our set, and a lot of people were really supportive and they really gave us a boost too, you know.
APA: Back to the first part of the question, when and where did you guys meet?
Daniel: Me and Sunn met in elementary school. We didn't know each other that well back then, but we got to know each other, because the whole time we grew up, we went to elementary school, junior high, high school and then college together. So we've known each other forever. And similar story with those two. [Pointing to Abe and Yongstar.]
Abe: We knew each other in elementary school. Like, we had our own junior high band. He went off to college at San Diego and then I transferred there three years later. And he was all like, “Hey why don't you try joining our band?” And then I jammed with them. It was pretty cool, down in San Diego.
Daniel: So basically at one point or another, all of us ended up going to UCSD. That's how we kind of met each other.
APA: Your songs seem very emotionally impacted and at times very dark and heavy. Where do you get your inspiration for your songs?
Abe: Wow dark and heavy ... that's a new one.
Yongstar: Lyrically, I think Daniel can answer that one.
Daniel: Honestly – I know Abe feels the same way – lyrically we just write from our personal experiences; whatever is troubling us when we come up with a new song. Because for me personally, whenever we come up with a new song its just the melody first. And then I think about whatever is going on, whatever is the situation, whatever I'm feeling. I try to be as general as possible, and those feelings become our lyrics for our songs. And I'm pretty sure Abe feels the same way.
Abe: A lot of times, we'll make the music first and I'll see what emotions generate from that type of music and I'll start writing some lyrics to it.
Daniel: As far as influences go, we have a really wide variety of influences. My favorite, hands down, guitarist ever is Jimmy Hendrix. I think his stuff is beautiful; I love his lyrics. At the same time though, I won't be ashamed to admit that I love pop punk bands like Blink 182 or Green Day. I know Yong felt the same way. Actually, when Yong grew up, he loved metal bands like Metallica.
Daniel: There's a big difference of influences. And the big thing for us, though, is a lot of people will be like, “Oh that's pop stuff,” so they'll shy away from it. But we're not ashamed to like pop bands. But on the same point, though, a couple of us definitely like hard core bands and stuff
that are different genres. It's like, can we find a middle ground and find something that everybody can like? You know, bringing in influences from different types of genres.
APA: When you sing "D.I.Y." you speak of the unrealized goals of democracy. Was it your intent to use songs to express your political opinion and views?
Daniel: Oh yeah, definitely. I mean we're an all-Korean band, and when we started this band we had a vision. We don't want to make people feel like they're left out of the scene, but definitely when we started up we were an all-Korean band. And also, Asians in general, they don't have a voice in the media in America, you know? All we are is like Jackie Chan, Jet Li or whatever. We're just kung fu people, Bruce Lee influenced people. People sport Chinese tattoos, basketball players, whatever. I mean, they love our stuff, but what about us? What about the way we're thinking, what about the things that we're thinking about? And when we wrote "D.I.Y.," we wanted to have a really energetic song, something that reflected upon our frustration. "D.I.Y." honestly is just about as a race, a people, we're not doing enough. We're not sending out enough of a strong vocal point of view to sway the way people think about things. The LA riots happened. Who did we have to defend us? We didn't have anybody; nobody said anything, we just sat in the background like, "Okay whatever, this happened." We can't really point the blame at anybody, because our parent's generation didn't know how to speak English, we were too young. But honestly now that we've come to age, we need somebody who can vocally express that kind of point of view, someone that could say, “These are our feelings, this is what we think about the whole situation. Take it or leave it. If you don't agree with us, it means talk more.”
Abe: And one of the really cool things about punk music is that a lot of the bands that I used to like, I didn't know at the time, but I know that punk music can be really political; I mean it can send a message. I think the golden age of rock and roll was in the 60's and 70's and that's when there was a movement, protesting the war and civil rights. I think one of the greatest things about music is that we can send a message. I mean we don't always have a message, but some of our songs definitely have one.
Yongstar: That'd be pretty cool if people, if our fans can chant along "Do It Yourself," change the world to come around, just stuff like that. It's just really uplifting to have fans sing along to what you believe in, what you want to convey.
APA: Do you think this will turn people away from your music? People who don't agree with your views?
Daniel: I'm sure it might turn away some people. I mean, more often than not ... like when we first started making songs about political views, we thought maybe this might turn away some people from us, you know? Because America is still - a majority of America is still - predominantly white and Caucasians dominate the media and culture. But when I think about rap groups like “Public Enemy,” all their songs are about "White people are repressing us." But honestly if you look at the sales, all the people who bought the album were suburban white people. So you know what though, it doesn't matter where you're from or ... well it does to a certain extent but ... honestly, what they want to hear more often than not is true passion, true conviction and true beliefs, you know. I honestly believe we are speaking from true conviction, true beliefs, you know.
APA: You were the opening band to play at the 10th anniversary of the LA riots. Why was it important for you to support this event? Also many Korean American immigrants were hit hard by the riots. Is this why you choose to write many lyrics on the struggle of immigrants?
Yongstar: You mean like tribute?
APA: How does the experience of Korean American immigrants factor into your lyrics?
Abe: Well the 10th anniversary of the LA riots was actually our first show that we all played together. It was really important because it was for that cause, you know, the 10th anniversary of Korean rights. We're a Korean American band, you know, it's our first show. And it's just a common bond that I think all Korean American immigrants have, you know, that we go through our struggles together, we don't really have a voice, but then it's just that history, that we have together. So it's important, I mean, it's a big part of our lives so of course we're going to say something about it.
Yongstar: Yea, I kind of want to be critical about it and voice my opinion on that matter. A couple days after the riots, there was a mass parade in K-town, like thousands of people came. But the 10th anniversary, it was really disappointing to see the few number of people that did show up. And my favorite part of that day was the parade where we walked down the streets and we wanted to celebrate our pride and joy, you know, standing up for ourselves. I think it's really honorable for us to be representing Koreans in rock music; anything we can do to advance the community in any way. But it just really felt uplifting for me to be a part of that whole event. And I wish more people came out. The people who are watching this, I want them to come out to the 20th anniversary, 25th anniversary. You gotta come and support. You can't forget about stuff like this because this is part of our history, we are constantly creating and involving our Asian
American history. And people need to come out, voice their opinions, and you know, if we can do that through our songs, that's awesome.
Daniel: When that whole thing happened, it's just like it's really disappointing to see that not a lot of people came out to support the whole celebration or remembrance of what happened back in that time. But that honestly was a big factor of what influenced us to write “D.I.Y.” Because we always whine when we're with our friends or whatever and we say, “We're not doing anything to change the situation,” but here we have an opportunity, you know what I mean, to change the situation but nobody comes out and does anything. We always expect somebody else to come over here and magically make everything change. That's why we had the song “D.I.Y.” – “Do It Yourself” - because you can't expect anybody else to do it. We are in the generation now where we have to make a difference OURselves. We can't expect anyone else to make that difference for us.
Yongstar: Can't rely on our parents, you know.
Abe: And there's a lot of encouraging stuff. I mean a lot of shows that we do get invited to play at are like Korean centennial festivals and stuff like that. And then, the support there, it's not a big crowd but it's really like ... there's a lot of support, and there's a lot of encouragement. We played one in Oakland, and the kids .. you know the kids ...
Daniel: Awesome.
Abe: Yeah, I think the kids loved us. We went to New York, and we played at the centennial event there and there was like old grandmas and middle aged men and they were just cheering us on. I mean they didn't know what we were saying; they don't listen to this kind of music but they gave us the support.
Yongstar: Yeah, to see an Asian face on stage, it's probably a good thing.
APA: What's your fan base like? Is it mostly Asian?
Daniel: Yeah definitely at this point it's mostly Asian. But like we mentioned kinda before, we don't wanna make anybody feel excluded from what we do or our music in general. A lot of our music is written from a specific point of view because you know, either me or Abe, we write the lyrics. And we're both Korean American. But on the same point though, a lot of our lyrics though, are written in a way where anyone can relate to it, you know especially if you're a minority. So we've got that going for us. And at the same point I want to challenge people to listen to our music, you know? Everytime we play a show, usually we bring up a point that kind of challenges the audience. We play at a lot of rock venues and there's a lot of Asian people there to support us because they know about us, and they're our friends or whatever. But still at the same point are a lot of people there who have never heard about us, they have never seen an all Asian band on stage before. Just by us being up there and challenging them by the things we say makes them think, you know? And like thought is the spark to ...
Sunn: Action?
Daniel: Yeah, thought is the spark to action because without thought, people won't even move to action. But hopefully we can inflict that first initial spark in their brain where they think, "Oh, what's going on here, I've never even thought about these issues before." And they start to think about it more and more and they're like, “They got a point,” you know?
Abe: There's always the issue that with our all-Asian fan base, we're going to get pigeonholed as an Asian band that only caters to only Asians. It's really a struggle like trying to throw off that we're an Asian band. We've been playing a lot of shows with other white bands in our genre. And it is like a little uncomfortable at times, but you know to make it, like we're trying to, it's what we have to do, you know. We can't pigeonhole ourselves or limit ourselves to events like these, which are really fun and really great but then, we have to branch out. And that's where a lot of our struggles lie.
APA: Tell us something funny and unique about yourselves that most people don't really know.
Abe: Funny and unique?
Yongstar: I was in marching band ... I don't know if that's ...
Abe: Yeah, Yong played the tuba in marching band.
Yongstar: They say I played tuba, but I played the TROMBONE.
Daniel: Whatever, he thinks the trombone's like a sexy instrument, but whatever.
Abe: Well like, we mess up a lot on stage. I don't know if a lot of people know that.
Yongstar: Yeah one time, Abe, when he was first playing, his cord fell off his guitar and he was like, “What do I do?” And I was like “Plug it in, man!”
Abe: I started playing the bass like right when I joined the band. I had a lot of trouble, but I hope I'm alright now. We played some weird shows, you know.
Sunn: Warped Tour.
Daniel: We've played some cool shows like Warped Tour, like Sunset Strip, but in the same vein, we've played some really weird shows like events and small hole-in-the-wall places, we've done everything you know?
Abe: There was that band, you know called Opus Majestic and they had the clown faces, and they looked like KISS. And the lead singer had a little kid, and he painted his kid's face too. He couldn't be more than 6 years old. We've gone through a lot of stuff.
Daniel: We've played with all the types of bands you can think of, man. We've played with like hard core, pop, mellow, and everything.
Yongstar: Rap and hip hop, seriously
Daniel: We've done a lot of acts with hip hop bands too, it's weird.
APA: So give us a story about you're strangest road experience.
Daniel: I don't know about strange, all of our road experiences were pretty fun, you know. The last real road experience we had, we did Davis. We play up north every now and then, we try to make a point of doing that because you know, Yong and Abe are from up north. We also did a show in NY not too long ago. And that was a little different because it was for a festival, you know, celebrating the hundred years of immigration for Koreans. The people that were involved with the committee, they were like, "Oh there's going to be a famous Korean singer who's going to come out and sing for you at the end of the show." So we're all thinking of Korean pop stars or something, and at the end after we play our show, after us ...
Abe: We were hoping for like S.E.S. or something.
Daniel: The Korean singer came out, and we were like, “Okay.” It was like some old guy in his fifties, like old school, Korean singers. It's like ... I don't know how to explain it ... [imitates him]
Yongstar: Folk singer.
Daniel: In Korean, they were like ... [starts pretending to sing] and all the old ladies are there like, “Oh my God, he's so hot!” And we were all like, “What the hell is going on, man?” But that was fun you know, like, it was cool.
APA: So like that band .. like Opus? What was that like?
Abe: Oh, Opus Majestic? They brought their own fog machine and everything. It was like battle of the bands or something.
Daniel: And that guy had a twitch too.
Sunn: Was it like the lead guitarist?
Daniel: He had a twitch that was like [makes a face] and I thought at first he was trying to intimidate me but then I was like, “Oh a twitch.” Because every couple of seconds, he'd be like [twitches his face]. You know, I'm cool with you, why you gotta be like that?
Abe: Yeah, he was talking about like worshipping the devil and okay ..
APA: If you could change one thing about the music industry, what would you change and why?
Abe: I'd say make it easier for an all-Asian band. But one thing I noticed about the music industry these days is that a lot of it, especially bands in our genre, we have to do everything ourselves. Like we have to make, print our own CDs, we have to pay for it, we have to pay for our own recordings, you know. And it's hard to find sponsors, there are so many bands out there. And before, I think the music industry was a lot easier. If you were a band, and you had talent, they would take you in, they'd take care of you, they would give you good sound
and ...
Yongstar: I think what I would change is basically when you look at some venues they ask you to bring out a certain amount of people, and they ask you to sell presales. And our presale is just going to be Asian fans. And it's just going to perpetuate with like an Asian crowd, you know. I mean, when we had a show a long time ago at San Diego, we didn't have that much people. And
we want to play a show there again, now that we're more settled down, we're more exposed. And they wouldn't let us play again and we only had like 20 people i think ...
Sunn: No, we had like 5 people.
Abe: Prerequisite was like 15 people and we couldn't make that.
Yongstar: Well the whole pay to play idea is just really sad. I mean you're supporting the music industry. If you're supporting music, you shouldn't have that kind of quota to meet, you should have a venue where people can come and enjoy music, you don't have to meet a quota or have some criteria to play there.
Abe: Yeah, definitely the venues. Like venues on Sunset, sometimes they require 100-120 presale tickets and we have to start calling all our friends, make sure they come, and sell all the tickets. That's just one thing I don't really like about the music industry.
Daniel: A lot of them are just all about money. I remember one of our coolest shows we played was at the Viper Room. But they made us sign a contract. They were like, “You're going to have to bring at least 100 people.” I mean at the end of the night we had over 300 people there, but they really were pushing us. They were trying to jip us from our money too you know. We had the most people out of all the bands playing there and they were trying to jip us out of the money we earned from the ticket sales. It's just like, too many venues, too many people, too many promoters are more concerned about the money more than the music. They don't care what you sound like, all they want to do is make sure you bring out enough people to make the money that they want to get.
Yongstar: Yeah, the first question is always, “How much can you bring out? How many people can you bring out?”
Daniel: They don't care what you sound like. You can be the exact opposite of the kind of music that they hate, as long as you bring out enough people, equals how much money they want to make for that night.
Yongstar: Yeah at Viper Room, the manager because we brought out a lot of girl fans ...
Daniel: By the end of the night at the Viper Room, we brought a lot of people. At first they were like, "Who are you guys?" But at the end of the night, when we played, we brought like a lot of people, right, and had a really good time, they were like, "Oh we'll buy you some drinks, yo. Like how many do you guys want? Okay we'll give you like twelve drinks for free, whatever.” It's like whatever, you wouldn't have done that if we didn't bring out this many people, you know.
Abe: And it makes it harder on us because if we didn't meet that requirement at Viper Room, if we tried to get a show anywhere else on Sunset Boulevard, they'd call the Viper Room and see how many that we brought and the Viper Room would give us a bad reputation. And we'd seriously not be able to play anywhere on Sunset Boulevard or anywhere in the same area as in venues.
Daniel: Like after we played the Viper Room, every time we talked to another venue in the Sunset area, like "Oh, you guys brought out like 300 people to the Viper Room ... let me give you a call back." Two days later, it's like "Hey! You guys really want to play here? Yeah, we can totally accommodate for you guys." It's like great, now that you talked to them and found out that we made a lot of money for them you want us here. But it's like would you have thought the same if you didn't know that, you know?
APA: What is it about Nemp that makes you guys different from any other rock band?
Sunn: We're all Asian.
Abe: We're all Asian.
Yongstar: Yeah just look at us [points around] you know
Sunn: We're all Asian right here.
Yongstar: But you know, hopefully like I said, hopefully our music will transcend anything, you know? If you just see Nemo and you hear our music and go, "Oh, this is a good band." And then, "Oh! They're Asian, oh okay, it doesn't matter." You know, hopefully that doesn't matter. Yeah as long as we make good music and people are feeling it, it's kind of like constantly spurring change, or thought, like Daniel said, then I'm happy with that. I'm satisfied.
Abe: It's kinda weird, because as an all-Asian band, the one thing we want most is just to be like all other rock bands, which, as you know, are predominantly white. But then we have to be different in our music, but then we have to try to fit in with everybody else. So, I mean I guess we're different in that sense, that we're trying to be like everybody else but still be ourselves.
Daniel: At the same time, like we mentioned several times before, we are all-Asian - actually specifically Korean - but in our lyrics we are bringing up issues that does not get mentioned in the media because we don't have anybody to speak for these issues in the media. Even if it's not that big, you know, I mean we weren't slaves in America or anything like that, you know, we didn't have it as bad as some races have had. A lot of times people forget, though, that we do live on the planet earth, you know. We're all people and we're trying to make everything equal. On the same point though, at the current situation we are not at all equal. Even though we can be Asian, Indian, Black, Mexican, white, we're not all equal in America. I don't care who you think you are, or what you thought, or what you've been taught, the fact is we're not all equal. And hopefully, it's just music, but at the same point hopefully through our music we bring up another step and create an equality among different races in America. It's “Project America” because that's what we are. America is a project, you know, it's an experimentation. Hopefully through this experimentation we can build a blueprint for other futures.
APA: What are your future plans? Six months from now, a year from now, what do you guys think you'll be doing?
Abe: We have a plan. I mean, I think Yong knows more about that than I do.
Yongstar: We're recording our album…
Yongstar: Meanwhile, if people could keep on downloading our songs online, we're really promoting through the Internet. I think you have to use the Internet. So if you go to Nemorocks.com, we're gonna have some new songs on there that you can download so before you come to our shows you could hear some songs and what we sound like. And besides that, playing a lot of shows, promoting. Maybe if some record labels are interested, that could be a possibility. We just want exposure basically, you know, we want to just bust out; we don't want to just be pigeonholed.
Daniel: Also a lot of us are in situations where it is really hard to support our music financially and what not, so we're really pushing to find the right kind of label that can help support us with what we're trying to do. And also, at the same point, like what Yong said, we have this album that's coming out. Once we get the whole album recorded, we're going to have a couple of songs downloadable on our webpage. Also, we're going to have the whole album – it's gonna be on our webpage so you can hear it. The whole album won't be able to be downloadable, but you'll be able to hear what our whole album sounds like. So hopefully by the time you come on out to our CD party, you'll know what our songs sound like, you'll be pumped about it and we can make a really great impression on everybody who is out there to support us.
APA: Sun, any words? You've been quiet this whole time.
Sun: I'm pretty pooped right now, man. I'm freakin' tired. I'm the drummer … I'm dying back there.
APA: That's it! Thanks for your time gentlemen.
Nemo: Thanks! Thanks a lot guys.
Daniel: APA we love you!