Tuned In – Interview With Rock ‘N Roll Radio
How did Rock ‘N’ Roll Radio meet and form a band? How long have you been playing together?
We all met about 10 years ago while working as technicians for a famous Korean rock band called YB. Actually, Minwoo and Minkyu have been friends since elementary school and have played in bands together since middle school. In high school, Jinkyu started playing with them too. The three of them made a band together called Go Go Beat, but then Jinkyu got fired from that band. I actually got fired from my old band around the same time, so Jinkyu and I started a new band called Burning Flowers but nothing significant was happening with that. Minwoo and Minkyu were pretty much in the same boat. We realized that we all needed each other to move forward so that led to the start of Rock ‘N’ Roll Radio. We actually chose our band’s name from the title of a Go Go Beat song.
Last year you won the Korean Music Award for Rookie of the Year, what did that honor mean to you?
It’s a very prestigious award, and we were honored to win, but we couldn’t be happy and enjoy ourselves while receiving the award. That’s because the awards ceremony was packed with EXO fans and EXO was nominated for Rookie of the Year too. Thankfully, the Rookie of the Year prize was awarded towards the end of the night, and EXO had already won two other awards from other categories that point, so their fans weren’t too angry when we won Rookie of the Year. But we still apologized to their fans during our acceptance speech … just to be safe!
What musical act has been most influential to you in your musical journey?
We saw YB perform many times while working as technicians for them. That taught us not only how to perform music, but also how act as professional musicians. Recently, we watched Crying Nut – who are also widely considered the godfathers of Korean punk – perform and were really inspired by them because we noticed that hardly anything had changed during their two decades together. We learned that you always need to do your best no matter when it is or where you are.
