Sunday, May 10, 2009

K-pop Concert Photos and Videos

Yesterday was a long day. I brought a friend along to the concert so I had to pick her up in Torrance before heading to Hollywood Bowl; it was a lot of driving. I left my apartment before 4pm and didn't get home until 1:30am this morning. The concert itself was long, from 6:30pm until almost 11pm since there were many peformers and each had to sing 3-4 songs. As expected, I didn't understand anything that was said since 99% of the time everyone spoke Korean. Overall the performances were pretty good and there were a lot of crazy fans. I thought I was going to be the oldest guy at the concert but there were a lot of older people, probably there to listed to the opera singer.

However, the sound engineering, especially near the end (when all the big-name acts were on-stage) was terrible. They had the volume cranked way too loud and you could barely hear the vocals over the distortion. I'm not sure whether it's because the instrumental tracks were mixed incorrectly for the Hollywood Bowl sound system or if the sound techs were incompetent, but I couldn't make out much of the lyrics (that I don't understand anyway).

Here are some photos. Our seats were in Terrace Box 1322 which is much much closer than I've ever sat at Hollywood Bowl. The face value on the tickets were $125; I paid $75 each for them.


Lots and lots of people in line to get in. The security check was almost non-existent. I should have brought my Sony DSLR and more food. Anyway, all the photos and videos are from my Panasonic DMC-TZ3.


The place was packed with people... mostly Korean I assume.


Some guy singing the Korean national anthem. They also sang the US national anthem right afterwards.


A choir from Korean Airlines. Not sure if they're actual flight attendants or professional singers dressed like flight attendants. They sang 3 or 4 songs.


TaeYeon of SNSD singing a duet with Lee Juk. She got a lot more cheers than the guy and it was his part of the concert.


Baek Ji Young. I missed her other concert in March because I was in China so I'm glad I got to see her this time. I recorded two videos and managed to delete one by accident... it was a song I really liked too. :(


It was still pretty hard to see clearly. I would have paid double to sit up closer. I also had to decide whether to take photos, record a video, look through binoculars, or just sit back and watch/listen. :)


Hollywood Bowl at night. It got pretty cold when the sun went down.


Lena Park. She was born in Los Angeles and attended UCLA. She sang Josh Groban's "You Lift Me Up" with Jessica from SNSD, another ABK from San Francisco.


The fans didn't know it was Jessica at first. You hear the loud cheering at 0:20 into the video when they figured it out.


Kim Tae Woo and Son Ho Young (MC) from g.o.d. I didn't listen to them much before but they put on a good show. It was a mini-reunion of sorts since the group disbanded awhile ago.


SHINee


SNSD or Girls' Generation. Only 8 out of 9 girls showed up. Yoona is probably back in Korea shooting her K-drama.


Yuri and Sooyoung


Gee! I've watched so many performances of this song (on Korean music shows: Inkigayo, Music Bank, Music Core) that it was weird seeing it live. Same for TaeYeon when she came out to sing the duet. It felt like I was watching TV (or my computer monitor) when looking at the large screens next to the stage.


I guess SS501 was the headline act since they sang last and did the most songs. I haven't listened to them that much either before the concert.


U R Man. They put on a pretty good show. Lots of teenage girls (and some ajummas) were going crazy around us.


Fireworks


Some more fireworks. They didn't shoot off any really large fireworks this time.

I'm still pissed (at myself) that I deleted Baek Ji Young's performance of her "lips" song. I uploaded a total of 7 videos to YouTube. All together, there was ~1.6GB of photos and videos on my camera from the concert. I was worried about running out of memory (4GB SDHC card) but ended up running out of battery first.


The song I recorded and deleted by mistake... :(

I enjoyed the concert. Depending on who comes next year, I may go again if I can get even better seats and bring along my DSLR and zoom lens.

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