French rock duo prepares for Olympic performance
Ko Ko Mo band / Courtesy of Ko Ko Mo
By Jon Dunbar
While the world’s winter athletes descend on PyeongChang, musicians are showing up too. French power-rock band Ko Ko Mo arrived Monday for the 2018 Winter Olympics.
Tonight they have a show in Seoul, and then they head to Gangwon Province for a couple Olympic concerts.
“We’ve performed at some big festivals all around the world but never at this kind of event,” Warren Mutton, vocalist and guitarist, told The Korea Times. “The Olympics? This is heavy, man!”
The two-piece band came to Korea in 2016 for Zandari Festa, during which drummer K20 got a tattoo of the band name in Korean as a memento.
“We knew a few things about the country but not that Korea was so much rock ’n’ roll,” Mutton said. “We’ve toured in China, India, Indonesia, but Korea is more fun.”
Their first show is at Club SHARP in Mangwon-dong, western Seoul, tonight at 8 p.m. Opening bands are the Monotones and DTSQ. The French Embassy and Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs sponsor the event, and cover is free.
This Saturday, they’ll appear in PyeongChang for two concerts. The first is at the Alpensia Cross-Country Skiing Centre at 5:55 p.m. during the women’s 4 X 5km relay. The second is at the Alpensia Ski Jumping Centre at 8:50 p.m. during the men’s large hill individual final.
“Like everywhere with K20, we will just play and have some fun,” Mutton said. “This is the only thing we always have in mind when we perform. This is the good thing about playing on stage: you forget everything about the external world.”
Despite having only two members, the band has a solid reputation for energetic concerts, often compared to Led Zeppelin, White Stripes and Black Keys. They can do more with two members than some bands do with three or four.
“The-two piece band has come pretty naturally,” Mutton said. “We can’t imagine having a third guy yet. We are just fine like this. And we feel very free on stage as well. Sometimes, less is more.”
Ko Ko Mo released their first full studio album, “Technicolor Life,” in 2017.
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