Jang Hyun & The Men "Woman Of The Evening Sun" 1972 Korean Psychedelic masterpiece…!!

This LP is something of a classic as far as Korean Psychedelic Rock goes. Shin Jung Hyun is the guitarist and writer and he is a pretty legendary figure in Korean Rock music. Side A features a number of shorter, more commercial styled songs with Shin Jung Hyun’s band The Men behind featured vocalist Jang Hyun. The first track on Side A is called Twilight and was recently comped by Now-Again on their Forge Your Own Chains international Psych compilation. Side B features two longer tracks performed by Shin Jung Hyun’s band The Men. The first is a long psych/rock burner called Beautiful Rivers & Mountains. The legend has it that Park Jung Hee (the president of Korea’s Military regime at the time) wanted Shin Jung Hyun to compose a song in praise of the President, Regime & the Blue House (presidential house). Shin Jung Hyun protested and came back with a song about the landcsape of Korea and for this protest he was jailed for a time. The second song on Side B is a slow number called The Lawn which is apparently a thinly veiled ode to Marijuana use, pretty heady stuff for early 70s Korea and a really solid listen from start to finish. …….

This album is a great treasure of Korean classic rock. If you haven’t figured it out yet, it seems like Shin Jung Hyeon (often misspelled “Hyun”) made all the music in Korea for a period of time. This album is decidedly moody and maybe one of the more subdued albums he ever did to my knowledge. It’s really heavy on the cheesy organ sounds and there’s an oboe on like every song. The opening song “The Evening Sun” sets the tone for the whole album and if you don’t like that song then forget it. My personal favorite song on the album is “Sound of Mind/마음의 소리,” but the album is mostly known for the song right after it “Beautiful Rivers Beautiful Mountains/아름다운 강산.”(Check out the Kim Jung Mi album to hear a shorter but more fun version of the song)

The comically evil president/dictator of the time, Park Chung Hee, asked Shin to write a song praising the administration and instead he wrote a 10 minute long song about the natural beauty of Korea and it also happens to be a love song (Link to lyrics). Supposedly, this confounded/angered his lordship and that’s when the government of Park Chung Hee essentially killed Rock and Roll in Korea. Rock still existed and Shin continued making albums, but the government started putting pressure on him and banning some of his songs, as they were not in line with the sensibilities of the mighty leader. Shin was also arrested in 1975 for smoking pot or something (duh. have you listened to this stuff?). There were other rock bands that took up the mantle, but it was still a huge blow to the scene and the Park administration encouraged the writing of nationalist songs and discouraged things that could possibly corrupt the youth, etc…and now we have K-pop! So yeah, I kind of hate Park Chung Hee, in case you didn’t notice that most of this album review is about what a bad guy he was. Anyway, here’s the album, which I believe to be a vinyl rip. It still sounds great though…….