Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
Hi! I’m Yas! I shoot photography and go to concerts way too often.
Since that would be the case anyway, I figured that I should make myself useful and let you experience the shows with me.
And so what better way to introduce myself on Asian Junkie than with a Brown Eyed Girls show?
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BEG performed an impromptu show in Koreatown, Los Angeles on March 18, and I say impromptu because when I saw the Eventbrite link floating around Facebook the week before, I actually thought it was fake. I hadn’t seen a single advertisement for the show, and I even reached out to some of my peoples to find out what the deal was, but nobody had any definitive information for me. Finally, a few days before the performance I got a notification saying that the show was indeed real, but that it had switched venues, and Asian Junkie (and I) was invited! So I packed up my camera (whose name is Empanada, by the way), and headed off to Feria.
Feria is the classic Korean night club, basically like the one you see in every Korean drama you’ve ever watched. So I was very curious as to how they were going to have BEG perform where there is no stage. But when I got there I was pleasantly surprised at the stage setup in front of the DJ booth, with the whole thing taking up about half the dance floor.
The opening DJ was Kero One, who stepped outside of his normal round of ambient EDM and spun mixes of Korean hip-hop, K-pop, and his special newfound love for everything Zion.T.
We were then treated to a live performance from the beatboxing champion Terry Im, or better known as KRNFX, who’s quite famous for freestyling and remixing pop and hip-hop songs with nothing but the air in his lungs and his magical lips.
Suddenly the fancy new stage lighting was dimmed to the point of pitch black, and the crowd fell so silent I could hear the fanboy behind me panting. Then Ga-In, Miryo, JeA, and Narsha took the stage, and with dancers! The stage was still small despite Feria’s best efforts, so I was quite surprised they didn’t run each other over during the choreography. But these veterans knocked it out of the park with an array of songs, including “Sign“, “Kill Bill“, “Brave New World“, and “Abracadabra“.
The dance floor was full of VIP fans who participated in the fansign prior to the show, while the rest of the club housed the general audience. The Super VIP booth in the back had a few familiar hip-hop faces (which was a rather odd sighting for a K-pop show), such as Dynamic Duo, Superbee, and DJ Yup, who were all in town for ‘Show Me The Money 5‘.
Between songs the environment was more of a fanmeet than anything else, as the girls stopped to talk to the crowd and even surprised everyone with signed CD giveaways via raffle tickets handed out at the door to every person who showed up. The newest CD was covered in the girls’ signatures, and there were seven given out to very excited and very appreciative fans in the audience. The lax and casual environment was for the best, as the girls got to interact with the crowd as if we were all just hanging out.
All in all, it was a fantastic show, especially considering that it was a last-minute setup. And I just gotta say that BEG are hot as hell live. The show definitely wasn’t bubblegum K-pop, as these women cranked up the heat and made sure the audience was fully aware that they’re stars through their command of the stage. While I walked in Ga-In bias, I surprisingly walked out with about a million more shots of Narsha. Empanada apparently has her own bias. Damned camera.
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Thank you Soul Krush Entertainment for letting me run wild at your show!
