The Two Koreas: What Happens When a Band of Music Critics Play NXNE

Stuart Berman is the singer of Toronto post-punk garage-rock band the Two Koreas, who performed twice at this year's NXNE festival. He's also the online editor of Toronto city magazine The Grid, overseeing and contributing to their daily NXNE coverage. Spinner asked him to write about what it's like to experience NXNE from both sides of the stage.

Since the the Two Koreas' 2003 formation, many have interpreted our name as a pun on the phrase "two careers, " owing to the fact that I, and others in the group, also work in the Toronto entertainment media. We've also made no secret of our admiration for the band Pavement, whose 1994 would-be hit single, "Cut Your Hair," famously riffed on the "Korea/career" homonymity. This fortuitous wordplay is actually just a coincidence -- we just really liked the name and started the band so no one else could claim it.

But at the North by Northeast festival the joke turns literal: this year I attended my 16th NXNE as a reviewer and, for the fifth time, as a showcasing artist as well. These dual responsibilities yield certain, peculiar circumstances -- and not just the fact I had to register twice at the festival's Hyatt Regency headquarters, but only received one complimentary swag bag. But over the years, I've come to embrace a few strategic tactics to achieve a harmonious work/rock balance at NXNE:

1. My most important decision regarding NXNE is not which bands to see, but selecting attire that is both office- and rock-show-appropriate -- the combination of loading in our gear at Queen Street club the Velvet Underground at 7PM and checking out the 8PM F---ed Up show at Yonge-Dundas Square negates the possibility of going home after work for a pre-gig wardrobe change. But I always make sure I have some deodorant and a clean t-shirt in my bag -- a certain amount of stink and sweat is acceptable in the moments after you finish performing, but if you're planning to continue your night and check out other bands to review, you don't want to stink up the crowd like that gross sweaty guy who's always trying to worm his way in and out of the mosh pit.

2. The Notes program on your iPhone is especially useful for both plotting out your band's setlist for the evening and jotting down review notes. They also eliminate the always awkward scenario of scribbling down your thoughts on paper in a dark venue during a performance, a gesture that instantly outs you as the rock-critic a-----e in the room; now, you can just blend in with all the other jerks ignoring the band onstage to check their Twitter.

3. If you want to have any hope of forming a coherent sentence in the morning, you must forsake taking advantage of the extended 4AM last call that NXNE affords local drinking establishments. After our Velvet Underground show, I ended my Thursday at Lee's Palace to review the midnight acoustic Evan Dando and Juliana Hatfield set, which provided a nice comedown after a night spent jumping around and shouting onstage; it also put me in a sleepy mood that ensured I was well-rested the next morning to write my review and edit those of other Grid contributors. That's right: while most NXNE performers are sleeping off their hangovers or gearing up for an afternoon barbecue-party set, I'm up at my computer thinking of colourful metaphors with which to describe Wild Nothing.

In his NXNE preview, Toronto music blogger and Spinner photographer Frank Yang, aka Chromewaves, described the Two Koreas as such: "local rock scribes form rock band, make surprisingly good guitar-rock record, get other local rock scribes to recommend seeing them and regret no longer being in bands." And he's right: our shows at the Velvet Underground and Reposado did attract an inordinate amount of music-journo friends who, granted, weren't actually going to write about us, but knew we could provide them with a safe haven where they could just turn off their brains for 40 minutes. (Our loud, droning, motorik rock music is good for that.)

But the really nice thing about playing NXNE, as opposed to any other local gig, is that we encounter actual "real people" from all over who don't know our back-story, don't know about our day jobs and therefore don't have any inherent biases about critics forming rock bands. After our Velvet Underground set, I was approached by a woman from London, Ontario who had heard our music on CBC Radio 3 and wanted to know what I'm singing about in our song 'Disco-Slave Songs.'

She was followed by a guy who had just relocated to Toronto from Texas and claimed our gig was up there with the Wire show at Lee's Palace in April as only good concerts he'd seen since he moved here. (As the old saying goes, if you can just touch the heart of one fan of abstract, dissonant UK post-punk, then it's all worth it.) And at our Reposado show, the bartender was so delighted by our cover of Brian Eno's 'King's Lead Hat,' he handed me a free beer.

At NXNE, you can't throw a free bag of PopUp chips without hitting a working critic; but when you're in band filled with them, it's arguably the opinion of non-professionals that mean the most.

Watch the Two Koreas' 'Midnight Brown' Video
See Spinner's Complete Coverage of NXNE 2011
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