Jakarta (the Jakarta Post/ANN) - "Come together, everyone gathers here. We're gonna party like lilililala".
The two first lines of South Korean group Big Bang's hit song Fantastic Baby came true during its Alive Galaxy Tour 2012, at Mata Elang International Stadium on Friday night, as the group successfully turned the concert into a big party.
Although the audience only filled half of the venue, which has a maximum capacity of 10,000 people, the fans and the band had fun regardless and enjoyed the two-and-a-half concert. The five members of the band - G-Dragon, Taeyang, T.O.P, Daesung and Seungri, are scheduled to hold their second concert at the same venue on Saturday evening.
During the concert, some of the audience formed small groups and danced. Unlike many other Korean groups, which mostly use backing tracks, Big Bang brought its full live band to Jakarta for the concert.
The concert stage was also marvelous. In keeping with the Galaxy tour theme, the group lived up to the title of their world concert, which is sponsored by Korea's electronic giant Samsung electronics, by appearing as if they were flown in from another galaxy down to earth. The concert started with a big bang when the giant backing screen literally fell away and uncovered five tubes containing the band members, each wearing oxygen masks on their faces.
As the tubes opened, Tonight, the opening song of the concert, blared from the speakers. The group's front man G-dragon greeted fans with "what's up Indonesia?" The venue burst into life and the crowd illuminated with bright colors as the fans turned on their yellow crown light sticks (the group's official merchandise). The nonstop screams of fans, who are referred to as VIPs, was prevalent throughout the concert. The group followed Tonight with Hands Up, the energetic song Fantastic Baby, How Gee and then Stupid Liar.
After the first five songs, the band took a break and greeted their Indonesian fans with "Apa kabar?" (How are you?). Taeyang entertained the fans by beatboxing the sentence "aku cinta padamu", or "I love you" in English, which provoked even louder screams from the VIPs.
Continuing the momentum of upbeat songs, G-dragon, whose real name is Kwon Ji-yong and T.O.P, whose real name is Choi Seung-hyun, performed the duets Knock Out and High High. The youngest member of the group, Seungri, then took over the stage and sang two of his solo numbers Strong Baby and What Can I Do, before the other members came back on stage and sang Gara Gara Go, Number 1 and the smooth and sexy Cafe.
The group then tried some casual chit chat with fans using English but soon slipped back into Korean.
The audience enjoyed the change in pace when the band performed the slower songs Bad Boy, Blue, Love Song and Monster. The band all sang Feeling together before Taeyang, whose real name is Dong Young-bae, took over the stage and sang his solo songs Look Only at Me and Wedding Dress, the latter was closed with Taeyang ripping off his white sleeveless shirt.
According to one of the VIPs Icha, 24, who had seen the Alive Galaxy Tour in Singapore in September, she felt the Friday night show was less energetic due to the large venue and the lesser enthusiastic VIPs.
"Maybe that's the reason why they only performed three encores in here, while in Singapore they performed six," she said, adding that the sound system in Indonesia was better.
