An expensive Korean version of ‘ASAP’

By Pocholo Concepcion
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 22:19:00 04/13/2010

MANILA, Philippines—Taxi driver admits he was wondering why so many girls were standing in line at the Araneta Coliseum early Saturday afternoon.

Inside the Big Dome that night, Super Junior (SJ) mania was in high gear. The Korean pop group, apparently a hit with the bagets crowd, didn’t have to do anything to elicit deafening cheers. Gosh, just standing there, or laughing onstage created pandemonium.

It was insane.

How else to explain young Pinoy fans yelling like crazy over SJ’s 10 members (down from 13) who sang to pretaped music, the songs mostly in the Korean language? (All right, a few numbers had some English lyrics, one of which proclaimed, “I love you everyday.”)

It’s not that the guys’ voices rang with astounding quality. Nor did they stupefy us with body moves that could put the contestants in ABS-CBN’s “Showtime” to shame.

What they did mostly was go through the motions of an act that consisted of harmonizing on generic pop melodies, with minus-one music turned way up loud—the ear-splitting volume failed to mask the singers’ generally so-so talents.

Standout number

But, in fairness, one number stood out: Two members played violin and piano, while a third one, sharply dressed in white suit and hot pink shirt, growled on the mic like a closet punk rocker.

Otherwise, everything looked like a Korean version of “ASAP.”

A solo spot featuring another member who sang RnB and danced like Michael Jackson looked like he was lip-synching.

Still another spot, with one member dancing with a female guest to Craig David’s “Insomnia,” only caused confusion: Was that K-Pop or what?

Worse, a production number with Peter, Paul and Mary’s “Puff the Magic Dragon” as background music turned out to be a cheap shot at comedy—several SJ members engaging in kooky antics while wearing children’s show costumes.

All these, while the crowd cheered incessantly.

If this was an expensive concert, the money probably went to the theatrical stage setup, which had catwalks and mechanized parts which allowed the performers to revolve or descend from view.

Only problem was, the performers were no Broadway stars.