The PK 27 -- Track 21

One cold November evening (namely, tonight) I sat around, trying to think of an additional PK 27 track, but I wasn't really contemplating the nature of Psychedelic Kimchi, nor was I looking to encapsulate the experience, per se. What I had been searching for was the reason as to why I began reading Sparkles' blog in the first place, and a track to accompany it.

I'd like to think that, initially, Sparkles' affection for Pac-Man legend Billy Mitchell -who is PK like a stepmotherfuck- is what sucked me in faster than Blinky gobbled up that ravenous, dot-munching yellow bastard.

Speaking of yellow, I then considered the idea that it was kimochi that drew me into the fold, but to be candid, I'm generally nonplussed by the yellow fever that characterizes my fellow contributors. May BoA beat me to death with a sack of used condoms for such sacrilege, I think that craving escaped me somehow despite the many attractive delicacies a Pan-Asian Buffet has to offer. (Having said that, I'd love to see another Nancy Lang interview, if you know what I mean.)

Part of me yearns to identify with the positively ghoulish adolescence depicted in a good number of Sparkles' early posts. Given that I know exactly the kind of guy he was during high school, I'm tempted to give in to such enticing, derisive affiliations, and had I fallen completely for the ruse, my musical selection would have been 1979, by the Smashing Pumpkins. Unfortunately, things are never quite that clear for me. Once in a while, the Spark liked to mix things up with a post that would exhibit -and elicit- feelings of kindness, warmth, beneficence, and all that other shit that I don't entirely apprehend.

I'd like to think of his motif -and why I began reading this goddamn blog in the first place- as whistling past the graveyard whilst surrounded by friends, but that's about as convincing as the plot of Labyrinth. Nontheless, since I won't submit 1979, I nominate Oleander's Are You There?, the caveat being that the song need be ingested via the context of the PK27, and that you envision Sparkles singing it tongue-in-cheek at a karaoke bar (or noraebang) amongst a party of his friends and family. Furthermore, the lead singer, Thomas Flowers, bears an uncanny resemblance to PK's very own Korea Sparkling.

Given that framework, I think the song transforms into what I sought rather nicely.



Bruno Martelli