My concert-going dropped way off over the last 8 years or so, but this year I am beginning to swing back to more live shows.
So to kick things off, the first live show I’d been to in 3 years was Swans in NYC last night, at The Racket in Chelsea.
For the unfamiliar (I assume almost everyone here), Swans is a massively influential experimental/art rock/noise band originally formed in the 80’s in NYC. The broke up the 90’s, and the reformed in 2012ish or so with a somewhat different sound and approach. The band is now basically entirely the vision of the front man (Mike Gira), and he works with a rotating cast of musicians, many of whom have been with him consistently since the band reformed.
They make incredibly subversive music and have been cited as a major influence by the likes of Tool, The Melvins, Nirvana, and a host of extreme metal bands. They are, to say the least, weird as fuck.
It’s pretty much impossible to really describe their music effectively, so instead, here’s a Youtube video of them performing the entire setlist of this tour at a venue about a month ago:
This video is good, but doesn’t do justice to sheer intensity of this music live. It’s easily the most sonically intense live performance I have seen, owing in part to the volume of live music (it was LOUD) and in part to the intense layering of the elements of each song creating an absolutely unassailable wall of sound.
It was a physical experience. The music surrounds you, drowns you, traps you, and pummels you. I couldn’t think and at some points couldn’t even breathe. You have no choice but to just take it, and experience it in its fullness.
This was easily a unique concert-going experience, and I’m glad I went. I have never experienced this level of intensity in a performance ever, and I doubt I will again. Damn.
I said this many times in the KPop thread. IU is the biggest deal within the country of South Korea. BTS has the international audience, but she ties them, and maybe even beats them, domestically. It helps that she didn’t have to take a break in her career for military service.
Last night, for the first time ever, IU had a concert in the US and in “New York” (New Jersey). She filled the Prudential Center, where the NJ Devils play hockey.
Tickets were a shitshow. I tried to buy them immediately, but more people were in the queue than there were seats in the arena. Of course, the next day, it turns out most of the people buying tickets were resellers. There was plenty of availability for months and months, right up until the day of the show. I managed to get some reasonable tickets day-of, because someone with a luxury box was selling them off. If I hadn’t seen those tickets, I probably wouldn’t have gone. Looks like the scalpers won that game of chicken. I never saw the prices go down, and the tickets did eventually get sold.
I had previously seen an IU concert in the movie theater. That was the previous concert series, The Golden Hour. I may have posted about it before. The main thing is that she filled the entire Olympic Stadium, and had insane production values. Riding around in a hot air balloon, drone formation displaying her logo over Seoul, etc.
This tour is the HEREH tour. They started out calling it the H.E.R. tour, but change the name? I don’t know what the meaning is? Maybe It’s HER and then HER backwards like a mirror? But also HERE mirrored as well? Maybe H.E.R.E.H. stands for something?
It was really a great show. Well worth the price that I paid, but maybe not worth the price that some other people paid. A lot of things were the same as other KPop concerts, but a lot of significant differences as well.
Like is the trend among other pop singers, IU sometimes has a backing vocal track to fill in. She doesn’t sing every line of every song. But she does sing a much greater percentage of the songs than I’ve seen others do. She also has her live vocals much more forward in the mix, so you can tell. And on a lot of the songs, especially ones without dancing, she’s just all live without a track.
Another difference, which I knew already, is that she brings a live band with real instruments. There are still some songs, and parts of songs, that are played from a track, but not that much. Those musicians were really going wild back there at times.
She brought her entire army of backup dancers from Korea. I recognized a lot of them. Especially that one guy who has been there for a long time. Usually when it comes to KPop backup dancers it’s usually the women who catch my eye, but with IU’s dancers I’m always watching the dudes. They are just leaving it all on the stage.
For one of her songs, Holssi, she has a part where children come to dance. I saw this video of it at the Seoul performance of this tour.
I was curious if she would really bring a bunch of Korean children on a US tour to dance one part on a song. She didn’t. But she did somehow get a team of New York kids to do it. I’m going to guess she got kids in all the other tour stops as well. Dang, that’s really putting in the work. Also, IU didn’t come in from the sky in New Jersey. She just came out from under the stage.
At other KPop shows they play lots of videos, which they call VCR for likely archaic reasons. These are to fill the time and keep fans occupied while they change costumes. IU did not play nearly as many videos as others. And when she changed, she changed FAST. She was off the stage and back in no time. At times she spent a bit too much time talking to the audience, but it didn’t cut into performance time since she was off-stage rarely and briefly.
Also of note, the first time she was off stage, she had a child come out and do a little bit of theater. That was a lot better than video. She said the child actress was also from the local area.
There were two times in the show where IU had props as part of her performance. She gave these props away to fans she saw. There was also some kind of giveaway at the door as a gift to the fans. I don’t know what was in it, because we didn’t get one. They were only for the standard tickets, and we had luxury box tickets. That’s fine. Probably something that would just sit in a drawer. I’m just curious.
One final huge thing IU did is she put subtitles on the screen. All her lyrics were up there, like a karaoke machine. Not only that, but the fanchants were included in those live subtitles with pink outlines. It seems so obvious in retrospect, but yeah, why haven’t they all been doing this?
If you get the chance to see IU, it’s worth it if the price isn’t out of control. I’m always reminded of this video from much earlier in her career. Her philosophy is that if you are her fan, she’s going to make it worth your while. Pretty much the exact opposite of me where I tell people not to listen to my podcast. Well, all these years later that’s still her philosophy. She tries to sing more songs, give gifts, provide high production value, actually sing, never phone it in. It’s absolutely a winning formula to becoming a legendary entertainer.
I forgot to mention this but a couple weeks ago I went to See Taemin’s solo concert at Kings Theater in Brooklyn.
I had never been to Kings Theater before. It’s in a slightly annoying place to get to if you live in Queens. If only it was warmer outside I could have biked there easily, but the subway plus walking takes over an hour.
That said, pretty great venue. The staff at the venue were maybe the best I’ve ever encountered. Not only were they great at managing the security checks and such, but they even had people out in the street managing the full length of the lines in both directions. A lot of venues keep their staff near the entrance and leave attendees to fend for themselves figuring out what line to get into, and where the end is.
The inside of the venue was what you would expect from a beautiful old theater. The only thing is that the ceiling had a lot of netting on it, presumably to keep it from crumbling and falling on people. I don’t know the circumstances, but I hope they get it fully restored and safe so they can take that netting down.
The only downside is that the theater did not have capacity to meet the demand for this show. We paid quite a bit and were almost in the highest possible seat of the mezzanine. We could still see just fine from there, which was nice. The problem is that there wasn’t a venue the right size to meet his level of popularity. This show sold out, but in other cities he played in arenas and didn’t even come close to selling out. A friend saw his show in LA for a small fraction of what we paid.
The show itself was terrific, as expected. Other than a short break for military service, Taemin has been doing this one job since he was fourteen. He’s 31 now. I’ve seen him dance on YouTube, and yes, he is that good. You could tell he was putting forth a strong effort to make sure nobody regretted buying a ticket to come see him.
One thing I really appreciated was that he put a whole section in the show to hype up his background dancers. They came out for a solo dance one at a time. The big video screen told us their names. Most other artists will simply be like “give it up for my dance crew!” at the end of the show. He really showed them a lot of respect by giving them some time to shine.
The only complaint I have about the show is the same thing I complain about many KPop shows. Did he sing live? Partially. When he did, he sang very well. It’s not like he isn’t a great singer. A whole section of his show was just ballad songs. But even then, the background audio track included vocals. Of course its unreasonable and impossible to expect someone to dance that hard and sing well at the same time. That’s the KPop illusion.
Nowadays if you want to hear real live singing you have to go to the opera or the theater.
