Honestly, I was so bloody tired from the Seventeen Diamond Edge concert the night before at the Jamsil Auxiliary Stadium on 14 July 2017. I was also pretty damn stressed about getting down to the Astroad To Seoul venue, Olympic Hall, to get the concert merchandise. From my pervious experiences, the merchandise queue can be a killer in itself; you’ll need to stand for 2 hours on average just to be able to buy/collect the stuff. Not fun at all.
I was aiming to reach the venue to join the queue at around 10.30 am KST or so coz I was so worried about the official light stick selling out (Coz it happened at Super Camp Seoul and I have been paranoid since then). However, I was so damn tired such that by the time I reached Olympic Hall, it was almost noon KST an hour after the merchandise queue started. The official pins were sold out by then but fortunately, those items weren’t on my list of must buys.
Also, thank God that by that time that I arrived, the bulk of the queue was gone and I was able to queue and get all the merchandise I wanted within 30 minutes!
So much for all my worries. None of them materialised thankfully! I didn’t want to carry all the boxes into the concert so I planned to buy the merchandise, go back to the guesthouse to drop everything off and then go back to the venue. So good thing the merchandise queue moved fast and everything went according to my plan.
As posted on the Astro Daum Fan Café, there was a special booth for the Official Arohas and upon presenting your concert ticket, Official Aroha membership card and a photo id, we were given a special post card and 2 random photo cards of photos taken by Jinjin!
I went for both days of Astroad To Seoul so I was entitled to 4 photos cards in total; 2 per concert day. 🙂 I actually had 2 identical Sanha photo cards but I managed to get it swapped to a Moonbin photo card at the end. Else I’d probably end up carouselling the extra Sanha card but fortunately, I don’t need to. Hehe.
Setlist for Astroad To Seoul:
- 숨바꼭질 (Hide & Seek)
- Lonely
- 물들어
- 모닝콜 (Morning Call)
- 불꽃놀이 (Fireworks)
- 사랑이
- Cotton Candy
- Every Minute
- Baby
- 풋사랑
- 다 거짓말
- 붙잡았어야 해
- Jinjin + Rocky rap + 내 멋대로 (My Style)
- 너라서
- 별
- You & Me (Thanks AROHA)
- 북극성 (Polaris)
- 장화 신은 고양이 (Cat’s Eyes)
- 고백 (Confession)
- 숨가빠 (Breathless)
- ENCORE: I’ll Be There
- ENCORE: Day 1/Baby, Day 2/물들어
Watching Astro performing on stage at their very first 2 hours and 15 minutes or so solo concert, it was very easy to forget that those boys are still relative rookies who just debut about 18 months ago. I’m so proud to be a fan of them.
They clearly still lacked stage experience as they didn’t manage to distribute their attention evenly enough during the portions of the concert where it was free for all fan service. Also, I could see how they still didn’t know really how to/what to do when they make eye contact with the fans as they work the stage. Still, after all that, the way the Astro boys still managed to own the stage when choreography stopped was pretty solid. As a comparison, when I watched EXO on stage around 18 months after they had debut, I could see how clueless and awkward they were once the choreography stopped. Don’t get me wrong, EXO are pros now but back then, they were pretty meh.
It was how I saw Astro on stage just about 1 year ago which impressed me so much that I signed up to be a stan. This says a lot of about them and their potential as some would know that I’m not easily impressed because I’ve seen so many acts over more than 10 years.
I was so damn lucky during ticket sales. For the first day, I managed to get queue number 16 in the Autumn standing pen!! It meant that I was in the first row and was able to hug the barricade!!
I was so bloody near and I would have loved to take a few more photos while I was there to share my awesome view. However, I also knew that I was definitely going to get caught and thrown out because I was right in front of the stage and the security and staff were patrolling the entire time! No way I was going to risk my awesome spot/view for a photo/fan cam. I only managed to sneak this shot of the stage on day 1 as the concert ended.
I so wished that I could have recorded a short clip of how Yoon Sanha, Moonbin, MJ and Cha Eunwoo walked right in front of me at arm’s length during the encore song “I’ll Be There”. I was screaming and fangirling so hard when that happened. LOL. I remembered how Moonbin looked a little terrified by all the screaming fangirls who have their arms stretching out hoping to catch a touch of his hand. The other 3 of them were just smiling and waving cutely as they walked past with their action cams. And then there was that moment when Cha Eunwoo did his eye smile thing and did a tiny heart with his fingers. Everyone just went berserk. How can anyone handle all that beauty exuding from Cha Eunwoo right?
The downside of standing so near the stage was the pyrotechnics. Every time it goes “BOOM!”, all of us would scream in shock. LOL. Someone (Rocky/Sanha) saw us jerk/jump and scream in shock from the pyrotechnics and looked super amused.
When Astro returned on stage for “Every Minute”, they changed out of their white costume into a dark one. On day 1, coz it was the first day, no one knew what to expect so when the boys returned to the stage, everyone saw that Moonbin wasn’t wearing a shirt under the blazer like the other members and people started freaking out. LOL.
Moonbin must have realised that people were freaking out over how he wasn’t wearing a shirt underneath like the rest so he started being very cheeky! That naughty boy! At every available opportunity, he started pulling open his blazer to show more of his chest and everyone just kept screaming in response. Hahaha. I remembered how the girls beside me kept going “어머! 어머! 어떻게!!” the entire time. However, he was only cheeky on Day 1. He didn’t do none of that on Day 2. Boo. LOL!!
At the ending pose of “내 멋대로 (My Style)”, everyone has their back facing the audience and they removed their blazer to halfway down their back. So you can pretty much imagine how much screaming there was because of Moonbin’s smooth and lovely toned bare back.
However, the real fun was during Day 2. LOL. My queue number was 165 so no way in hell I was going to be able to get a good view so I decided to step out and just chill at the back. I was still recovering from 2 days of standing at a concert and day 2 of the Astro concert would be my 3rd day of standing. I was pretty exhausted to be honest.
I must say that I really couldn’t see shit on Day 2. It was in part because the stage wasn’t high enough so I barely saw anything and I had to rely a lot on the screens to see what was happening on stage during the concert.
However, as it was my second round for Astroad To Seoul and since I had a fantastic view on day 1, I wasn’t overly upset about not being able to get a clear view for day 2. From the back, I saw so many people get caught and thrown out of the concert for taking photos with their hugeass DSLRs.
I still didn’t really dare to take photos or videos during the concerts but during encore, I saw almost everyone whipping their phone out to take photos and videos so I followed suit. Strength in numbers right? So I only took out my phone in time to capture Cha Eunwoo walking down from the back of the concert hall during “I’ll Be There”. I was unfortunately not prepared when Jinjin walked past front of me.
Then I’m not quite sure what happened but Jinjin, Moonbin and Cha Eunwoo decided to lose their shirts during the encore repeat of “물들어”. On day 1, only Jinjin lost this shirt but on day 2, Moonbin and Cha Eunwoo decided to join him so yeah, imagine all the screaming.
LOL. The whole day 2 encore thing was extremely funny because
Sorting out my photos and check this out hahahahahhahaha pic.twitter.com/DtLgZNIRzA
— Joyce Sim (@jovenatheart) July 16, 2017
I only got photos of half of Astro being half naked from 2 days of Astroad To Seoul. LOL. It looks “wrong” but almost everyone’s photo album on their mobile phone probably looks like this coz they were so strict with their no photos policy that barely anyone got any photos/fancams. It was only at the end when Astro started losing their shirts and all hell broke lose and everyone just started filming and taking photos with their mobile phones openly. It was just impossible for the security and staff to stop everyone and it certainly wasn’t possible for security to throw every single person out of the concert. LOL.
And that wasn’t all; I found it very funny how the dancers were trying to put a shirt over the 3 of them who were running amok on stage half naked.
Most idol groups only do the shirtless stunt when their are in their 3rd or 4th solo concert but Astro just quite literally spoilt the market by going shirtless at their very first concert. LMAO. Now that they have showed hand, what next? Taking off their pants? Hahahahaha!!!
Speaking of taking off their pants, MJ’s first set of costume (the white one) had zips on the length of his legs and he unzipped them all the way just above his mid-thighs to show off his legs. So hhmm… this is quite close to taking off his pants right? So what else can the Astro boys show off next? Hahahaha!!!
So yes, you can tell how much joy Astro boys bring me and I can’t wait to do this all over again! Hopefully, it’ll be soon! Big up to Fantagio and the production crew for the great lighting and sound work. The cameras didn’t get the member focus right a couple of times which suck but overall, it was still good.
한번 더! 한번 더!