Yes, Infinite graced London with their presence this week with the first stop of the European leg of their ‘One Great Step’ tour. This was actually not only my first ever K-Pop concert but the first concert I’ve seen ever. It was truly an amazing experience, even standing in line was fun. As K-Pop fans in the UK are mostly spread around the country it was fun to converse with all the people we met in line. It was crazy though this was a UK concert fans from all over Europe had come to see Infinite. As soon as Infinite got on stage all bets were off, the screaming was intense, women were crying (like literally bawling) and from what I could see some people in the standing section had to be taken out. All in all it was three hours of awesome music, crazy dancing and terribly rehearsed English 😛 My favourite moment probably had to be SungJong’s aegyo, I loves me a bit of SungJong. I’ll probably remember this moment forever.
Waqcky
I, on the other hand, am a gig-veteran and would say that One Great Step was one of the best shows I’ve seen.
Considering we were making the effort to travel to London, we met up during the morning (after I had done my art-based worky bits) and decided we should give a visit to Seoul Bakery. You’ve probably heard of it from previous K-pop idols visits to London (SHINee have been there). Yet, we got there to find it was tiny and very very full, presumably other Inspirits had had the same idea as us. However, rather than be disheartened, we headed into the other Korean restaurant next door (PoCha) and it was lovely – highly recommended.
After our unexpectedly delicious lunch, we headed to queue for the show. We arrived a few hours early to find that people had been queuing since 6 o’clock in the morning (serious kudos to the dedication of those fans). There were blankets everywhere and girls so excited they were screaming when the Infinite sign was put up.
After spending a delightful few hours with the other lovely Inspirits that we met in the queue, alongside losing the feeling in our toes from cold, we finally got to head into the venue (cue a lot more screaming).
We got in to find our seats and see that Woollim artists’ videos were being projected onto a large screen on stage to nicely build the atmosphere. By the time Infinite hit the stage, people were crying – like babies. I, myself, was ridiculously excited but just went with screaming as tears would probably inhibit the view somewhat.
The boys opened up the set with Destiny, bursting onto the stage with energy and beautifully executed choreography. Interspersed with videos of Infinite leading a rebellion against music-banning-totalitarian-regime, they went on to sing and perform their best songs, from Paradise and Nothing’s Over, to stunning solo stages (my favourite being SungGyu’s re-made version of 60 seconds) and performances from Infinite H. I just need another sentence here to reiterate how beautiful SungGyu’s rendition of 60 seconds was, his voice is even better live than on the recordings.
They finished their main show with ‘The Chaser’ causing much uproar from the crowd, and came back after a short video of them ‘succeeding in the rebellion against the music ban’ for their encore stage.
The encore consisted of a rock-remix of Comeback Again (fantastic by the way), Hysterie and With… and ended with somewhat teary and exceedingly adorable speeches, half broken English and half Korean, from the boys.
A few people headed to the back-stage entrance after the show in the hope of glimpsing the boys up-close, but they came straight out of the exit in their car, waving from the open roof, and headed back to wherever they were staying.
I know that some people with standing tickets didn’t enjoy it so much because of crowds and pushing which is a huge shame – Infinite have never been to the UK before and they actually stopped part way through the show to ask people to stop pushing, to no avail.
However, for those sitting (and most of those standing) the show was wonderful – it looked like the guys were happy performing and us Inspirits were ecstatic to cheer them on.
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Toodle-oo all xx
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Mega 귀엽다 (gwiyeobda) 