Review: Kiss Me Day 2011

Out of every concert I’ve been to in Korea (and that’s a lot) and every show I’ve been to, this was the day I was looking forward to, more than any other show.

It was Kiss Me Day.

On this site, I try and keep things sounding somewhat professional. But I think anyone here can see that U-Kiss are my favourite group in Korea, without a doubt. They have a lot of show reviews on here. If you happen to follow my personal twitter, or heaven forbid, tumblr account, you then have a better idea of how much I love this group.

For the past three months, U-Kiss have been working and living in Japan, studying and reaching a level of Japanese that I could only dream of having after only 3 intensive months of classes. Colour me intensely jealous. Last week, they returned back to Korea, and started on what will end up being a very long couple of weeks for them, as they go through promotions for their second full album, Neverland. The CD and single was released on the 1st, and in case you’re wondering, it’s amazing.

But I digress. This isn’t supposed to be a post telling people to go buy the CD or adore the video and help it get to a million views (…or maybe it is? ã…‹ã…‹ã…‹)

Essentially, Kiss Me Day is a big fan club event where U-Kiss perform a few songs, answer questions, and play games with the guests. In Japan we’d call it a talk event. This year, I was very lucky. You see, registration for the fan club is once a year, normally the first week of October. And I didn’t become a fan of U-Kiss until late November last year. So I’m not a card carrying Kiss Me. Technically, I shouldn’t have been able to go. However, because of the fact that the fan base was really shook up this past February, when we lost Xander and Kibum, and AJ and Hoon joined U-Kiss, we’ve lost lots of fan club members, and gained just as many. Which means there are a LOT of U-Kiss fans who don’t have fan club access. This year, the staff decided to open the event to everyone, so long as you booked within a certain time.

I was the 3rd non-fan club member to get my ticket in, in case you were wondering. Yeah, I had my application in and paid for within hours of them opening applications.

I really love going to U-Kiss events, because the fans are so amazing. As I was heading over to the hall, it was really nice seeing all the familiar faces that I’d missed over the summer. Even though my Korean is bad, and their English is just as bad, we try our best to talk to one another, and get along well.

To try and make it feel more interactive, the Kiss Me staff decided to have 10 helpers from the fan club. This meant that instead of people who know how to work with a crowd, there were 10 teenagers trying to control a crowd of 400 people. It didn’t work very well, and the show started really late. That’s alright though, I’d have waited for two hours as long as we got to eventually see the show.

The event started with U-Kiss performing their title track, “Neverland”. It was amazing to see the song performed live. The dance is insane, and really impressive to watch. After some short introductions, the group performed the teaser track for the CD, “Some Day”.

Despite knowing they were going to perform it, I was really hoping they wouldn’t, since it’s a sad song and makes me teary. The song is essentially the story of U-Kiss. They’ve been around for three years, started as 6 members, gained a 7th, lost 2, gained 2 more. They’ve had a pile of singles, and travel around Asia promoting. But they’ve never been able to get #1 or win at a weekly music show, something that really defines how successful you are as a group. They have a huge number of fans, but most of them don’t live in Korea, because of the international nature of U-Kiss. So it’s a sad song because they pretty much come right out and sing about the path so far and how they’re going to keep fighting. It’s also a goodbye song for Xander and Kibum, who were kicked out of the group by their management back in February. The song was really beautiful, and you can really hear the harmony when they sing live.

After the song, they showed a video of the making of the Neverland album while the guys changed out of their Neverland costumes. They all came back out, and there were chairs set up for the talk event. At first, the MC was covering the basics with the guys. There were introductions, and he asked them things like about Eli’s knee (he injured himself this weekend and won’t be performing for another 10 days) and they talked a bit about Japan. Then they asked where the fans were from, and checked to see if there were any Japanese fans (There were quite a few!) and then asked if there were any foreigners (and then we screamed like banshees and Kevin thanked us for coming in English.)

They were talking about the guys ideal types for a bit, and were asked if their ideal type was in the audience. The crowd was going INSANE. A lot of that went over my head because the crowd was so loud, and they were talking SO fast. I might get someone to help me translate it later. Since they were in Japan during the 3rd anniversary, they brought out a cake for the boys, which was the same cake as the one from the Bran New Kiss CD. They blew out the candle and then cut the cake together. It was cute.

Next, they had these boards with questions they the boys had already answered. I was on the second floor, so I couldn’t read a thing, and was having trouble following along. There was one fun part where the guys were giving a Japanese lesson, which was awesome and surreal, since only months ago, they couldn’t say much more than “Hello, my name is~”

The guys were then asked what their favourite song on the Neverland album is.

Soohyun: April Story (and then he sung a bit and it was AMAZING.)
Kiseop: Someday
Eli: On the Floor
AJ: Take Me Away (And then Kevin sung a bit of it and the entire crowd MELTED.)
Kevin: A Friend’s Love
Dongho: Neverland (I think)

I honestly cannot remember what Hoon said his favourite was. I think it was “Baby Don’t Cry” because I remember going “Ugh, that’s my least favourite song on the CD.”

And honestly, I don’t even know HOW it happened, but we went from talking about Neverland to Soohyun and Kiseop flashing their abs. I have no complaints. Only that I wish we saw them for longer than two seconds.

I wish there was a way I could describe it to you, but I want you to keep an eye out for any fancams than might have Dongho’s version of the Neverland dance. He kinda looked like a piano player having a seizure. It was the greatest thing I’ve ever seen. Ever.

Next, they brought out this big board covered with pink and blue post-it notes. They were covered with questions that had come from Twitter. This is where the fun questions came in, because the fan questions are filled with inside jokes for the fandom, or ask Important Questions that Need Answering.

For example, they were asked, if they could take Kiss Mes to any place for the day, where would they go. I only caught a few answers. Soohyun said he’d take everyone to the beach. Eli said he’s take everyone for dinner. Kevin said he wanted to go to a waterpark. Thing about Kevin’s was that he said the English word “waterpark” not the Korean word, whatever it is. The MC seemed to stumble over the word, and was like “Waaaterrrpaaark???” So I yelled “I WOULD TOTALLY GO TO A WATER PARK WITH YOU KEVIN” and he looked out to the audience and was like “Yeah, waterpark!”

Another Very Very Important Question that was asked was “What colour is your underwear today?” This is a very common question with U-Kiss now for a few reasons. One is because they always seem to forget what colour it is, so they have to check their own (or others). Another reason is because AJ is convinced all Kiss Mes are perverts now, since people keep asking about their underwear colour. But the main, and best reason people ask is because it was revealed that Kevin often doesn’t wear underwear, and really only seems to wear them when he’s told to. So while all the others were checking down their pants to see what colour they were wearing today, Kevin sat back with his arms crossed and a smug grin on his face. Nobody believed him when he said he was wearing underwear. On the other hand, Eli checked AJ’s underwear for him, and said he was wearing “burgundy” underwear, in English. It confused three of the U-Kiss members, who don’t speak much English, made the three English speakers laugh, and made Dongho go “Just call it red!”

We were asked who is the bigger twitterphile, and the audience was split between if it was Kevin or Dongho. I think everyone decided that it was Dongho, which is ironic considering how he had his emo spell and had a private account and didn’t want to tweet for the longest time. One girl asked if they would ever marry a Kiss Me. They all answered yes, because I think saying no might be the easiest way to piss off 400 girls in one word! Smart for answering yes.

One of the last questions asked was to Eli, asking for an animal impersonation. He did his horse, which wasn’t much, so he did the elephant. Despite much asking from the crowd (Including us in the peanut gallery screaming “DO THE DIRTY BIRD!!!”) he did NOT do the pigeon. And then Soohyun looked like he did the Marcan pose and I cheered.

Eli. Come on. Next time, it’s dirty bird time. Okay? ಠ_ಠ

The audience were able to ask a few questions, like “what are some of your favourite songs?” (Eli said “Sorry Sorry”) and someone asked Kiseop how he always took such good selca photos (Self photos) so he showed us how he did it. After that, there was a short break, and we were shown a short video while people went to the bathroom and stuff.

After the break, they had a bunch of games. To be quite honest, I didn’t pay a lot of attention during this part, simply because my number wasn’t called. They played “Di-bi-di-bi-dee” with 10 girls, which is a game a bit like rock, paper, scissors. Soohyun was REALLY good and beat most the girls, but two girls made it through three rounds and so got a signed CD.

They also had a lottery with ticket numbers for signed items like CDs, neck pillows, and one girl got a the guitar used during one of the songs, signed by all the guys. (Wow, I went on for 2000 words about an hour and then summarized another half hour in less than 50 words. Go me.)

Before the end, they broke out another song, 0330. It was really nice to be screaming the fan chant along with all the girls, since there wasn’t as much fan chanting at the concert in Japan (it was in Japanese, so the chant didn’t work.) They were having mic problems, AJ’s mic didn’t work at first, and then he and Eli kept switching around, but some how Eli ended up with the busted mic through his whole part so the crowd yelled it for him.

After 0330, they sung “Every Day”, and they seemed to be having an amazing time performing the song. There was lots of energy, and the guys seemed to be really pumped, despite Eli’s injury. They even ran into the audience! But not up to the second level. I think they’re ready come back, for sure.

Now, while I don’t like taking fancams, since they’re no fun, I do have a trick for how I keep such in depth reports, and I thought I’d share some tidbits of it:

Opening + Neverland

Some Day

(Sorry, my light stick was tangled in my bag, so that’s why there was so much noise)

0330

Every Day

And then it was over! It was a really great day, and a fantastic way to kick start what, hopefully, will be U-Kiss’ most successful comeback ever. Us KissMes are really hoping to help them get a #1 in one of the music shows, so if you’ve liked the music I’ve played here, or merely want to make me happy, buy the music, search for their name on naver.com, and vote on M.Net Countdown if you can set up an account. We’re going to need all the votes we can to get them winning.