Review: Men in MBLAQ concert

The highlight, and it was a huge huge highlight, was when LeeJoon came out on stage, sang his solo, ripped off his shirt, and did a pole dance.

A+’s (MBLAQ fans), maybe you should stop reading there.

You may wonder why I’m saying that up front, right away. The simple reason is, due to various reasons, the Men in MBLAQ show is going to go down as one of the worst concerts I’ve been to in Korea. The depressing part is, the boys themselves had very little to do with why the show was bad.

First, I’ll be quite honest, and will personally take some of the blame. Since there are concerts coming up every single weekend for the next five weeks, I cannot possibly afford to get good tickets for every show I go to. I figured MBLAQ would be a show that it would be okay to see at the 300 level. And while my view was fine, and the sound was great, I was surrounded by a bunch of high schoolers who probably saved their allowance for months to afford this one ticket, and sitting with them was hell. They screamed like banshees, but wouldn’t stand or do anything other than wave their little light sticks. I watched as the second floor and ground floor were able to dance along with songs, while I had to sit, miserable, being hit in the head by the zealous fan behind me who was waving her fan around to the music.

I was also sitting by a rude girl who refused to move when I needed to get to my seat, causing me to tear my best jeans on the railing and giving me a two inch gash down my leg and ruining my favourite jeans until I can get them to a tailor. Considering the condition of my other leg, I obviously was not in a good mood after this, and the lights hadn’t even gone down yet.

Secondly, I had the wonderful pleasure of having a security guard who seemed to have a serious hate-on for foreigners, in a section that seemed to also have a hate-on for foreigners. When my friend and I took our seats, we could hear the teens around us talking about us, thinking we couldn’t understand them. Surprise of surprises, when you live in Korea for a year, you pick up the language, so of course we knew we were being spoken about. So, being a smart ass, I loudly started doing the same, gawking at all the Korean people and how strange it was that there was so many of them. In Korean.

I wasn’t really at the show to make friends, obviously.

The lyrics on screen match my opinions well

Luckily, the lights went down and MBLAQ came out. Now, sometimes I like a band because they have amazing music, or it makes me want to dance, or because I think the performers themselves have amazing personalities.

And then there are groups like MBLAQ, who I like because they are merely eye candy and pieces of man meat, and they’ve accepted this fact. Yes, the sing, and yes, they dance. But they also show off their abs to keep our short, fangirl-driven attentions at concerts. I’ve got tickets to another show that should have the same theme in a few weeks time, but I’ll go into more detail about their appeal then.

Their first song was really cool, with them wearing white suits that had LED lighting corded through the seams. MBLAQ are known for being really good dancers, and the effect of the black lights on the white suits and the different coloured LED lights drawing the audience’s attention was really cool. They had a bunch of male and female back up dancers as well. I always like when idols have female backup dancers, for two reasons.

1.  It means the company isn’t so worried about offending their fans by having females on stage (no, really, with some groups, having females on stage just never happens, because the girls get hyper-jealous.
2. It also means we may get really hot dances with the guys and the girls.

Both came true.

The boys disappeared down into some holes in the stage while the backup dancers continued to distract people and dance, and then a few minutes later, MBLAQ returned on stage, wearing something a bit more comfortable and a little less electrical for the rest of the concert.

I honestly couldn’t begin to list all of the songs that they went through. Most other concerts I go to have MC breaks scattered throughout the show so the performers can get a drink and catch their breath, but it seemed like the boys just went one after another. Eventually, some of the guys scattered off the stage, and they introduced each others solo performance.

I can’t remember all of them, or the order, but each of the guys had a really great solo performance. G.O. performed the ballad “Even In My Dreams.” One of the coolest ones was MIR, who started to DJ. I thought it was cool. They wheeled out a big piano and Seungho played a really beautiful piece on the piano which I think might have had some of their other songs mixed into it.

My favourite solo performance was Lee Joon though, because he provided exactly what I came to the MBLAQ concert for. He sang a slutty song, surrounded by girls who ended up trying to undress him. Then, when he was done with his song, he walked down the stage to the middle stage, where poles had been set up, and began to pole dance and left my jaw hanging. Then to finish it off, he ripped off his shirt, played with his belt buckle a little, and dropped down though the stage and he was done.

I could have happily left the arena after that performance, even though they hadn’t performed my two favourite songs.

In case anyone is interested in seeing this performance, some wonderful person on Youtube has taken the videos recorded from different angles and put them together. God bless them.

I was really surprised because they didn’t even have a guest performance. Almost every show has one, because it allows for the performers to take a break and do a costume change, but it was two solid hours of MBLAQ instead. Because of this, the show started at 5, and let out at 7, which felt really early for a concert.

As we got to the end of the concert, MBLAQ finally performed my two favourite songs of theirs: “Oh Yeah” and “Mona Lisa”. This is where I need to mention the part that really broke any good mood I had coming out of the concert. As I had said, the security guard in our area really didn’t seem fond of foreigners. When BLAQ began to motion for everyone to stand up, the people in the second floor and on the ground did. The people in the first few rows of my section also stood. Despite the fact that everyone else was standing, I was harassed by the girl, throughout the entire show. I didn’t feel like I could enjoy myself because she was tapping me on the shoulder, telling me to stop, even when the entire row of people on the other side were doing exactly what I was doing. This meant that when Mona Lisa and Oh Yeah came on, I had to sit down and couldn’t dance along. This fact alone made me miserable. I am doing what I can though to let the organizers know what happened, because I don’t think what she did was right or fair.

Other than the security guard, the annoying teens around me, and the woman who wouldn’t move and ruined my jeans, the show was good. I would have liked more songs to be performed from the new album, and I also would have liked to have seen more interaction with the audience. As well, from a technical stand point, the lighting could have been improved upon a lot. There was a lot of back lighting, which made it very difficult to see anything more than a silhouette at some points. The guys seemed washed out, even in the cameras and screens. It felt very clear that this was their first concert. In saying that, I feel that MBLAQ have amazing potential as live performers, and that improvements in the technical aspects of the show (lighting, security) would make things seem a lot better. It was the first time I’d seen a concert in the Jamsil Indoor Gymnasium, and don’t often see it listed for k-pop concerts. Perhaps next time, they could book Olympic Park Stadium, which seems better equipped for concerts.

And perhaps more pole dancing. MBLAQ concerts could ALWAYS use more pole dancing.