As I get older, I find myself thinking more about what got me here. I don't really like talking about race online, but today, I'm remembering the one time seeing Asian representation directly impacted me in a life-changing way: John Myung (long thread)

I grew up in the 90s and 2000s, which meant Asian kids only played classical. After all, the musical Asian role models of the time were people like Sarah Chang and Yo-Yo Ma. Asian kids never listened to or played rock/metal/funk/jazz. Those genres were "for white and black kids".

And, like many of us, I grew up with a rocky relationship to my race. Getting accused of not being Asian enough by Asians and non-Asians alike--it got to the point where I inconsistently went back and forth between the American pronunciation of my last name or the Korean one.

The "most Korean" kids listened to k-pop and rap (yes, k-pop existed before Twitter) and they never let me forget it. But despite all that, there was one Chinese-American kid I met in middle school that shared my tastes in music--his name was Chris.

Chris was very different from me at the time--he was loud, energetic, and unafraid to do what he felt like. One day he started convincing me to start a band with him--mainly so that girls will like us. I was a hard maybe, but mostly because I didn't know how to play bass yet.

Chris started researching bands to cover and imitate, but along the way, he found a number of Chinese metal bands at our public library. He showed me all of their ridiculous album covers and we had a good laugh. But one day, he introduced me to a band called "Dream Theater".

"Their bassist is Korean, man!", which didn't hit me very hard then. "So what?", I thought, "he's probably some FOB they found." I booted up Kazaa to get as many Dream Theater albums I could find. Among the albums was the video from start of this thread that dated back to 1995.

Myung spoke in the video and holy shit the dude had an American accent. I eventually found an interview with Myung--he was born and raised in Chicago to Korean parents. To top it off, he goes back and forth from saying the American pronunciation of his last name to the Korean one

Seeing and hearing all of this was the closest anyone had ever said "you can have this too" to me back then. I joined the band, begged my parents for a bass, and we roped one of Chris's friends, John, into playing drums. We were our school's all Asian rock band (John's Filipino).

Years later, I started a band in college that played at shows like MAGFest and PAX East. Years after that, I started Pentakill with two friends at Riot and had a full circle moment when Derek Sherinian, one of Dream Theater's keyboardists, played on our first album.

I'm not sure what would have happened if I never saw Myung. This pandemic has given me a lot of time to think and I realized that I'm happy with my life so far.
To quote Myung, "There's a bass solo in a song called 'Metropolis', where I do...a bass solo." He's not a talker.