Translating literally to "Mad Bullet 99," which is the Korean term for a gas grenade, Jiraltan99 is a name that stirs up weird feelings in Korean people. Once while at work my boss caught me with a Korean dictionary translating the song "바보처럼 살련다" ("Live Like Idiots"), and he simply said "Don't listen to that song." He was simultaneously offended by the band name, the song title's implication, and the disrespectful verb tense of the song. It doesn't take a lot to offend people in South Korea.
These guys were the flagship skinhead band of Korea in 2003 and 2004, when Captain Bootbois vocalist Donghyun was in the army. They were a great live band, partly for their preference of vocals in their native tongue and partly because everyone who saw them play tended to know all the vocals themselves.
Their vocalist, Seungpa, was basically the Korean Joe Hawkins--he was wild, unpredictable, and always up for either verbal or physical sparring.
He had a, uh, special relationship with me, and would always taunt me by reminding me that my name, Jon, is a popular Korean name for pet dogs. In retaliation, I named a kitten after him:
In retaliation, he nicknamed my then girlfriend (now wife) "Mongol Mary."
Unfortunately he was one of those guys who would be all skinhead as fuck one year, and then the next year he'd sober up and try to stop being a jerk. When I first saw Jiraltan99, Seungpa was sporting a pompadour, and a tattoo I'm sure he regrets by now:
Still, it never kept him from taking his shirt off on stage. A few months after that picture, he shaved in again for a year or so, then he officially went into the Skinhead Retirement Plan: rockabilly.
At that point, he gave up the band, and never got back on stage, not even for his new genre of choice. Jiraltan99 was finished, without leaving us a quintessential recording--except for one song on the Skunk Label compilation, and one poorly recorded split album with a band I've never heard of.
The remaining members, Seokyoon and Jongwook, started their own band, Dirty Small Town, who will be spotlighted on this site in the near future. However, Dirty Small Town lacked a good frontman, with the guitarist and bassist switching off vocals a little too frequently to follow along with and leading to the feeling that they're just backup vocalists and their lead singer is offstage. To their credit, they released a good EP with some well-produced songs. Still, their only good shows were when Seungpa jumped back on stage and sang "바보처럼 살련다."
Download the one good Jiraltan99 song, and their half of the split album here.
