Day 8: B.A.P Concert!
I never intended for the B.A.P concert to take all day but there was so much waiting and running around involved that it did. Taheera was such a good sport and supported me and kept me company the whole time, BIG THANK YOU TO HER. The plan was to get there early, buy merch, leave and do other things before the concert but it ended up a little less relaxed than that.
The only stadium I knew at Olympic Park was the one we saw Big Show in, and it wasn’t the one B.A.P were in so we had no idea where we were going; we eventually found some B.A.P fans with merchandise and were able to ask them where to go and we probably would not have been able to find it ourselves for some time, haha.
We were in line for merchandise at 11:30am and it looked like this:
The concert wasn’t until 6pm. Apparently the hoodies I wanted had actually completely sold out on Saturday already--if I hadn’t had Music Core I would have totally gone on that day, augh. As the line slowly shuffled along slowly other things began to sell out too; the official whistles, the Matoki accessories, the photo sets… I was certain by the time we actually got up the front of the line there wouldn’t be anything left, which was upsetting.
We DID manage to score some stuff though. A lot was sold out but I got the official lightsticks for myself, June and Nate, some sticker sets, some clearfile sets, a face mask with B.A.P LIVE ON EARTH across it… and then when we wanted shirts we were told we had to go wait in another line. What?
Turned out they’d run out but were waiting on a new load. We had numbers written on our hands to keep our place in line, and it took about another hour before the shirts arrived--then we were told we could only buy one per person so my plans to get one for June in place of the hoodie I hadn’t been able to get her failed as well, ahh. Oh wellll.
By the time we’d gone through all of that it was about 1:45 and we wanted to dash back to Taheera’s place to dump all the merchandise and our bags and everything, but with how long travel time was everything was going to be a bit of a squeeze in order to get back early enough to line up to get in. We went to Tee’s place, changed into our shirts, freshened up and got ready to go.
Dinner was a quick bite at Lotteria on the way back (European grilled cheese burgers) and then BACK TO OLYMPIC PARK where we checked in our coats/bags and then stood in line until they filed us into the stadium itself!
This gigantic banner was stretched along the side of the stadium. It was pretty impressive, ahh~ I stared at it a lot while we were waiting in line, haha.
Inside we were filed into our standing area. We were in an amazing place! The stage had a T-shaped platform coming off it so the boys could walk up between the two standing areas and then out across the other platform, and we were alongside the centre walkway. So basically we could move towards the stage, or towards the end platform depending on where the boys were. We were going to be close no matter what!
We made friends with some other English-speakers in the audience, Roberto from Brazil and Astrid from Texas (same as Taheera!) and got to hang out
And then the concert began.
Oh my god.
You’ll have to bear with me because I’m writing whatever I remember but my memory’s pretty shitty and I don’t remember what order everything was in, ahhh… but you’ll get the gist of it!! Obviously we weren't allowed to take photos (we saw one girl get manhandled out after she was caught taking pics with a DSLR she was trying to hide) but I'll just write a lot.
Of course, B.A.P’s whole theme is that they’re aliens from another world, and the concert was presented as such; the boys had come to earth to ease the sadness of humans by bringing energy through their music. It might seem silly, but the way it was presented was fantastic, with several screens projecting space imagery and emulating taking off into space using image and sound. That’s when the spaceship descended.
The spaceship was a UFO made of lights that flashed everywhere, and it spouted smoke downwards onto the stage as it ‘landed’. From out of that smoke walked the boys, and the stadium absolutely erupted.
They started with Warrior, in really great white outfits decorated with gold, followed it up with What the Hell, which was a nice surprise. I was trying to swallow down my disappointment that Himchan wasn’t there… I had hoped that even if he hadn’t been doing choreo he might have been in the back singing anyway, but no, he was completely missing.
So when he came out for Secret Love, I almost burst into tears. He’s been missing for all of the One Shot promotions and all the events they attended, so it felt like I hadn’t seen him in like a year. Taheera can attest to the fact that I had a mini breakdown the moment he appeared on stage, oh god. I legitimately thought I was going to cry. He got the loudest screams too; it was like the Babies were trying to make up for all the lost time by screaming extra loud for him now.
He looked SO GOOD too; he wore the same sharp suit as the others, but with the jacket slung loosely over his shoulder so he could still have his cast against his chest. He looked so gorgeous mmm.
They had a little segment where they introduced each of the members. The member being introduced had to stand on a little podium that spun slowly, and they’d have to strike a pose while the other members talked about them and a bio for them popped up on the back screen. The poses some of them pulled, oh god.
A few notes:
- Youngjae is SUCH an attention whore and I love it. He was constantly looking into the crowd, smiling and pointing, making eye contact, seeking out his fans. At one point he made eye contact with me when I waved like a lunatic at him and he pointed at me too, rofl.
- Yongguk’s smile is so precious, he’s like a child; he loved whenever the audience sang along, he loved seeing everyone having a good time, he was just so energetic and happy
- Daehyun’s voice is amazing, oh lord. I mean it’s something we knew already but it’s just as amazing, if not moreso, when it’s live. He hit some seriously insane notes, there’s a reason he’s known as a power vocal, gosh!!
Zelo and Jongup, maknae line, were the most adorable pair. They had a duet together and they worked so well together, DANG. They covered Teach Me How to Dougie and Jump Around and it was just so much fun to watch. Vocal line Youngjae and Daehyun covered Price Tag, which was a stellar effort because they sang English lyrics and it sounded GOOD.
Yongguk had a solo because with Himchan gone they couldn’t complete the pairs :c he rapped one of the songs he had written, I think? And then two backup dancers crawled up beside him on stage and ripped his tank top off of him. It was pretty great. Apparently they had promised the fans abs at the concert and I guess they delivered, because Jongup had yanked his shirt up during his duet with Zelo as well. What thoughtful boys.
As a sort of intermission they had this thing where the camera would pick out people in the audience and they had to dance; the image was projected on the massive concert screen. While the camera didn’t pick me, it picked a dude right behind me so my big head got on the screen anyway. If they have a DVD release and that’s on it, I’ll have definitely proof that I was there, lmao.
Eventually it was announced that Himchan had a letter he had written for the fans, and he came out by himself. He walked a little way out onto the walkway so he was super close to where I was standing and I really wasn’t prepared for all the feels that this brought me. Taheera was super great and basically translated what he was saying into my ear, about how he was grateful for all our support, for accepting him for who he was and how it meant so much to him. I made the mistake of looking up at the screens, at his closeup, just as he shed some tears, and I felt my own tears come up oh god ;A; a crying Himchan was not on the list of things I had expected, and there was absolutely no way I was mentally prepared. The entire audience wailed for him and it was just… I just… ahhhhHHHHH.
Vocal line Dae and Youngjae came out and brightened up the atmosphere a little by gently teasing him and making him laugh, and things slowly got back to their usual energetic pace. All in all they performed all their hits, the entire new album, a rock remix of both Never Give Up (which I had NOT expected) and Power and a few other songs.
Naturally their last song was Goodbye, and it felt like we’d only been there in half an hour so no one was ready for the show to be over, we all hollered in disappointment when they announced it. Naturally though, when we called for an encore… they obliged ;D with the gigantic mirrored Matoki from the One Shot video up on stage, and we got to hear Crash and Coma as the encore songs. Crash is such an energetic song and it was so perfect. They mucked around a LOT during the encore and picked up the things people threw on stage; Daehyun put on a headband with tiger ears on it and Yongguk carried around a Tigger plushie almost the whole time.
At one point he pretended to make out with it. After making sure that everyone was watching. What a dork. We knew he loved Tigger, but not THAT much, hahaaa. They hung around the middle of the stage walkway a lot so they were near us a LOT of the time, it was really great.
It was sad when they finally had to go. There was streamers, there was confetti. There were smiles and waved and kisses blown out into the audience. Zelo skated around on his skateboard which I’m surprised they allowed and am equally surprised he didn’t slip on the confetti and fall on his ass.
It was such a good concert though wow?? They were so energetic and it was so infectious. My throat still hurts from all the hollering I did, including singing along loudly to all the songs. I say singing along but, you know, I don’t know half the Korean lyrics so I either pretended I did or I did fan chants.
I want to write more but I’ve been drinking with the guys here at the hostel and everything is blurring together a bit so I’m gonna leave it at that. I’m really glad that I went, it was a really fun concert. I’m also really glad I took Taheera, because it gave me a chance to show her the boys that had been giving me energy the last couple of months, to share them with her.
After the concert we taxi’d back to her place so I could pick up all my stuff and then I just taxi’d it back to my hostel--which actually had changed to the new Yellow Submarine from the Hongdae Guesthouse, so I couldn’t even go straight to bed, I had to haul all my stuff down to Yellow Submarine. I’d never been to the new YS before, I quite like it, although the interior has the heating turned up a bit too high for my liking.
Ahh I’m so content~ another post tomorrow~
The only stadium I knew at Olympic Park was the one we saw Big Show in, and it wasn’t the one B.A.P were in so we had no idea where we were going; we eventually found some B.A.P fans with merchandise and were able to ask them where to go and we probably would not have been able to find it ourselves for some time, haha.
We were in line for merchandise at 11:30am and it looked like this:
The concert wasn’t until 6pm. Apparently the hoodies I wanted had actually completely sold out on Saturday already--if I hadn’t had Music Core I would have totally gone on that day, augh. As the line slowly shuffled along slowly other things began to sell out too; the official whistles, the Matoki accessories, the photo sets… I was certain by the time we actually got up the front of the line there wouldn’t be anything left, which was upsetting.
We DID manage to score some stuff though. A lot was sold out but I got the official lightsticks for myself, June and Nate, some sticker sets, some clearfile sets, a face mask with B.A.P LIVE ON EARTH across it… and then when we wanted shirts we were told we had to go wait in another line. What?
Turned out they’d run out but were waiting on a new load. We had numbers written on our hands to keep our place in line, and it took about another hour before the shirts arrived--then we were told we could only buy one per person so my plans to get one for June in place of the hoodie I hadn’t been able to get her failed as well, ahh. Oh wellll.
By the time we’d gone through all of that it was about 1:45 and we wanted to dash back to Taheera’s place to dump all the merchandise and our bags and everything, but with how long travel time was everything was going to be a bit of a squeeze in order to get back early enough to line up to get in. We went to Tee’s place, changed into our shirts, freshened up and got ready to go.
Dinner was a quick bite at Lotteria on the way back (European grilled cheese burgers) and then BACK TO OLYMPIC PARK where we checked in our coats/bags and then stood in line until they filed us into the stadium itself!
This gigantic banner was stretched along the side of the stadium. It was pretty impressive, ahh~ I stared at it a lot while we were waiting in line, haha.
Inside we were filed into our standing area. We were in an amazing place! The stage had a T-shaped platform coming off it so the boys could walk up between the two standing areas and then out across the other platform, and we were alongside the centre walkway. So basically we could move towards the stage, or towards the end platform depending on where the boys were. We were going to be close no matter what!
We made friends with some other English-speakers in the audience, Roberto from Brazil and Astrid from Texas (same as Taheera!) and got to hang out
And then the concert began.
Oh my god.
You’ll have to bear with me because I’m writing whatever I remember but my memory’s pretty shitty and I don’t remember what order everything was in, ahhh… but you’ll get the gist of it!! Obviously we weren't allowed to take photos (we saw one girl get manhandled out after she was caught taking pics with a DSLR she was trying to hide) but I'll just write a lot.
Of course, B.A.P’s whole theme is that they’re aliens from another world, and the concert was presented as such; the boys had come to earth to ease the sadness of humans by bringing energy through their music. It might seem silly, but the way it was presented was fantastic, with several screens projecting space imagery and emulating taking off into space using image and sound. That’s when the spaceship descended.
The spaceship was a UFO made of lights that flashed everywhere, and it spouted smoke downwards onto the stage as it ‘landed’. From out of that smoke walked the boys, and the stadium absolutely erupted.
They started with Warrior, in really great white outfits decorated with gold, followed it up with What the Hell, which was a nice surprise. I was trying to swallow down my disappointment that Himchan wasn’t there… I had hoped that even if he hadn’t been doing choreo he might have been in the back singing anyway, but no, he was completely missing.
So when he came out for Secret Love, I almost burst into tears. He’s been missing for all of the One Shot promotions and all the events they attended, so it felt like I hadn’t seen him in like a year. Taheera can attest to the fact that I had a mini breakdown the moment he appeared on stage, oh god. I legitimately thought I was going to cry. He got the loudest screams too; it was like the Babies were trying to make up for all the lost time by screaming extra loud for him now.
He looked SO GOOD too; he wore the same sharp suit as the others, but with the jacket slung loosely over his shoulder so he could still have his cast against his chest. He looked so gorgeous mmm.
They had a little segment where they introduced each of the members. The member being introduced had to stand on a little podium that spun slowly, and they’d have to strike a pose while the other members talked about them and a bio for them popped up on the back screen. The poses some of them pulled, oh god.
A few notes:
- Youngjae is SUCH an attention whore and I love it. He was constantly looking into the crowd, smiling and pointing, making eye contact, seeking out his fans. At one point he made eye contact with me when I waved like a lunatic at him and he pointed at me too, rofl.
- Yongguk’s smile is so precious, he’s like a child; he loved whenever the audience sang along, he loved seeing everyone having a good time, he was just so energetic and happy
- Daehyun’s voice is amazing, oh lord. I mean it’s something we knew already but it’s just as amazing, if not moreso, when it’s live. He hit some seriously insane notes, there’s a reason he’s known as a power vocal, gosh!!
Zelo and Jongup, maknae line, were the most adorable pair. They had a duet together and they worked so well together, DANG. They covered Teach Me How to Dougie and Jump Around and it was just so much fun to watch. Vocal line Youngjae and Daehyun covered Price Tag, which was a stellar effort because they sang English lyrics and it sounded GOOD.
Yongguk had a solo because with Himchan gone they couldn’t complete the pairs :c he rapped one of the songs he had written, I think? And then two backup dancers crawled up beside him on stage and ripped his tank top off of him. It was pretty great. Apparently they had promised the fans abs at the concert and I guess they delivered, because Jongup had yanked his shirt up during his duet with Zelo as well. What thoughtful boys.
As a sort of intermission they had this thing where the camera would pick out people in the audience and they had to dance; the image was projected on the massive concert screen. While the camera didn’t pick me, it picked a dude right behind me so my big head got on the screen anyway. If they have a DVD release and that’s on it, I’ll have definitely proof that I was there, lmao.
Eventually it was announced that Himchan had a letter he had written for the fans, and he came out by himself. He walked a little way out onto the walkway so he was super close to where I was standing and I really wasn’t prepared for all the feels that this brought me. Taheera was super great and basically translated what he was saying into my ear, about how he was grateful for all our support, for accepting him for who he was and how it meant so much to him. I made the mistake of looking up at the screens, at his closeup, just as he shed some tears, and I felt my own tears come up oh god ;A; a crying Himchan was not on the list of things I had expected, and there was absolutely no way I was mentally prepared. The entire audience wailed for him and it was just… I just… ahhhhHHHHH.
Vocal line Dae and Youngjae came out and brightened up the atmosphere a little by gently teasing him and making him laugh, and things slowly got back to their usual energetic pace. All in all they performed all their hits, the entire new album, a rock remix of both Never Give Up (which I had NOT expected) and Power and a few other songs.
Naturally their last song was Goodbye, and it felt like we’d only been there in half an hour so no one was ready for the show to be over, we all hollered in disappointment when they announced it. Naturally though, when we called for an encore… they obliged ;D with the gigantic mirrored Matoki from the One Shot video up on stage, and we got to hear Crash and Coma as the encore songs. Crash is such an energetic song and it was so perfect. They mucked around a LOT during the encore and picked up the things people threw on stage; Daehyun put on a headband with tiger ears on it and Yongguk carried around a Tigger plushie almost the whole time.
At one point he pretended to make out with it. After making sure that everyone was watching. What a dork. We knew he loved Tigger, but not THAT much, hahaaa. They hung around the middle of the stage walkway a lot so they were near us a LOT of the time, it was really great.
It was sad when they finally had to go. There was streamers, there was confetti. There were smiles and waved and kisses blown out into the audience. Zelo skated around on his skateboard which I’m surprised they allowed and am equally surprised he didn’t slip on the confetti and fall on his ass.
It was such a good concert though wow?? They were so energetic and it was so infectious. My throat still hurts from all the hollering I did, including singing along loudly to all the songs. I say singing along but, you know, I don’t know half the Korean lyrics so I either pretended I did or I did fan chants.
I want to write more but I’ve been drinking with the guys here at the hostel and everything is blurring together a bit so I’m gonna leave it at that. I’m really glad that I went, it was a really fun concert. I’m also really glad I took Taheera, because it gave me a chance to show her the boys that had been giving me energy the last couple of months, to share them with her.
After the concert we taxi’d back to her place so I could pick up all my stuff and then I just taxi’d it back to my hostel--which actually had changed to the new Yellow Submarine from the Hongdae Guesthouse, so I couldn’t even go straight to bed, I had to haul all my stuff down to Yellow Submarine. I’d never been to the new YS before, I quite like it, although the interior has the heating turned up a bit too high for my liking.
Ahh I’m so content~ another post tomorrow~