Black Eyed Peas!!!

Oh yeah, so yesterday was the Black Eyed Peas concert at the Indoor Stadium. It was GOOD. Well, it took a little adjustment to get to the point of good, but we had loads of fun.

I went with the GIC people to the concert. Had dinner with Kenneth, Desmond and Elaine. We then took a cab to the Indoor Stadium. It was a sold out concert, with a crowd of 6,000. We waited for the others to pass them the tickets. We bought fairly cheap tickets, $59 ones. It gave us balcony seats on the left side of the stage.

It was a "sit-down" concert, meaning that there was no space on the floor to actually stand and dance like you would at a typical rock concert. Then again, Singapore always keeps things down anyway. We all commented on how stupid it would be to be sitting down and waving our hands at a concert like that. The phrase of the night was, "This is Singapore, what do you expect?" Anyway, there was the 1st "beebop" championships held before the concert really started and pitted two youngsters against each other. They were pretty good, I must say, for their age of 15 and 18.

We then had Daniel Ong from 98.7 FM, welcome the Black Eyed Peas on stage. And that's when the problem started. They didn't appear. The audience was going crazy, screaming and shouting but no Black Eyed Peas. The people grew impatient after a while, although they were screaming everytime something looked as if the Peas were coming on stage. During the wait, the people sitting at the most expensive seats, at the ground level of the Indoor Stadium, were moving forward towards the stage, expecting to be able to dance and get close. They were turned away by the ushers and asked to get back to their seats. There were definitely booing at this. People paid good money to be getting close to the performers and they want to dance. This scene repeated itself in various parts of the stadium. On the balconies, we got off our chairs and stood at the railings to dance and party to the music. But after a while, the ushers asked us to get back to our seats too, on the pretext that we would fall off the balcony. One of the ushers was actually my friend from BMT, Abel Li. We exchanged numbers on the spot, while I moved back to my seat.

It took around 25 minutes before the Peas came out. They were no less warmly welcomed by the crowd. The concert then went pretty smoothly. The songs were good, and it was really fun seeing a live concert. We got out of our balcony seats and went downstairs to get some standing space and to really rock it out. The atmosphere would have been really horrible if I had to sit in my seat for the entirety of the concert. This is not a classical concert, where people should definitely sit still to enjoy the music. This is a HIP HOP concert. Man, if the organizers were really smart, there should have the entire floor as a dance floor and sold tickets at a much higher price. There was a lot of comments about that when we left the concert.

The Peas played the usual songs, like Filipino, My Style, Pump it, etc. At Where is The Love, they asked us to take out our cellphones, and dimmed the lights in the Stadium. It was really nice just having the cellphone lights on waving to the music. It was dedicated to the victims of the tsunami, the Hurricane Katrina and other things like world peace. It was a very touching moment. They ended the night with "Let's Get Started." I still really hate the fact that it's "Let's Get Started" instead of the actual "Let's Get Retarded." This place is just too damn PC for me.

Overall, it was an amazing concert. I really liked it and enjoyed the songs. The Peas are good singers and performers. There were also a lot of expatriates there, a much higher than usual number that you'll see. You can see the difference in taste of music between the Singaporeans and expats. I'm waiting for the next great group to come to Singapore. Hopefully, it'll be even better!