But! For today, I will tell you of my fangirling adventure to 쇼! 음악중심 (otherwise known as Music Core), one of Korea's four main music programs. It's the easiest of the four weekly programs to get in to because the venue is so huge. Why is it so huge? It's out in the middle of nowhere. All four of these weekly shows are absolutely free, you just have to show up and line up with a certain group's fans. You have to have at least the CD that the group is currently promoting, and then you are further up in line (= more likely to get in) if you're a part of the official fan club, have bought the music from the official music shops online, and things like that.
The group whose fans I lined up with is called B1A4, and they're promoting a song called Beautiful Target.
To have a better chance (or chance at all) of getting in for a prerecording, which not all of the groups have every week, or the live show you have to go really early. I went a bit on the later side, since B1A4 is a newer group with a smaller fanbase. They actually ended up having the second biggest group today after Super Junior, though, which is really saying something.
I left my gosiwon at 6:30am. That's right, 6:30am, and got on the train. Because the MBC Dream Center, where Music Core is filmed, is out in the middle of nowhere it took me around an hour and a quarter to get there. At that point I had to find the B1A4 fan group and sign up on a list of the group for that day. They told me to come back at 9:30am for when they checked names the first time and I ran off to some random foreigners I spotted so I had somebody to hang out with for a while.
What comes next is a ton of waiting. At 9:30 they called us in order by name to line up. And then they went through the line again checking fan club cards, CDs, and everything like that. Because I only had the CD and nothing else, I was given the number -5... The way things worked, is if you were a part of the official fanclub, you were given B#. If you were a part of the Daum Cafe (a sort of official fansite) you got A#. If you had bought the CD and music online you got a +#, and just the CD a -#. And that is the order you get put in when you go in, so I was right near the back of the line nearly numbering 200.
B1A4's prerecording was from 1pm, so we had quite a while to sit around in our line. Because there were several large groups behind us, the fan leaders didn't know for sure if we would be brought in early so nobody really left to go get lunch or anything. Considering nearly everyone would have had to skip breakfast to come to the show, it's a pretty amazing feat. We ended up heading in right around 1 and being lead to the standing area right in front of the stage. Packed in like sardines, we waited for B1A4 to come out to start their prerecording.
... And waited. And waited. Usually the group is already in doing sound checks before the fans are lead in, but we waited a good ten to fifteen minutes before the boys finally came out on stage. Everyone screamed as they were getting instructions from the director before starting to record. They went through the song around four times, I believe, with cameras in different places each time, correcting mistakes, things like that.
Each time they went through the song, us fans did the fan chant along with the song. Fan chants are an amazing thing where the fan clubs plan out things to yell out at certain times, and everybody yells them together and yells them loud. In what they actually play on TV they do something to fade out the screams so that the people can actually be heard singing, so (as you will see in the later video of the performance that was put on TV) they don't sound nearly as loud as they were. We were all screaming our heads off.
Between takes they went off stage to fix things or did small things for the fans. And eventually they were done. All of us B1A4 fans were also used as the crowd for Davichi, a female duet that sings really beautiful ballad songs. They sang Don't Say Goodbye, and it really was amazing (for all the other songs I describe I'm just linking to the music videos with English subs. If you really are curious about any of the live performances, feel free to look up the date like I have in the title of this post and the group name and song name.) After that we were lead back outside to... line up again!
The Super Junior fans went in for their prerecording after that, and though some people went home most people stayed around for the live show. The live show includes the performances that didn't have prerecordings, and then the groups/people who have had prerecordings come out and perform about half of their song as the prerecording is broadcasting before leaving so the stage can be set up for the next people. They tend to mess around a lot more and do cuter things when they're doing that.
All of the B1A4 fans ended up getting in for standing room for the live show, which really is amazing, though that also meant we had to stand for two hours straight. In the end we got to see Super Junior, KARA, SISTAR, Brown Eyed Girls, G.NA, Sung Si Kyung, Jaurim, Davichi, HaHa, B1A4, Nine Muses, Crispy Crunch, Maybee, SpinEL, and Shin Go Eun. It was Brown Eyed Girls's comeback with Sixth Sense, and even though I only got to see their 'live' performance (they had done a prerecording), they really owned the stage. Nine Muses were amazing with Figaro on their goodbye stage, it's a really fun song. Super Junior also made a comeback for their repackaged album with the song A-Cha, and though they had a prerecording they were the last performance so they go to preform the whole song on stage. Shindong looked exhausted and sick, but the rest of them were amazing. After the stage they walked off stage, though Eeteuk ran around between the standing and sitting seats to wave at everybody. I was at the very back of standing so he was super close! The performances of Crispy Crunch, HaHa, Maybee and SpinEL were also extremely good.
There was a group of young, late middle school/early high school aged Korean girls that hooked on to me and two high school exchange students from Europe (Estonia and Germany) that were also with the B1A4 fans that I happened to meet. They kept trying their English at us, and asked to touch my nose to make sure it was really naturally that high haha. It was funny.
Here is what came of the several takes at the prerecording for B1A4! Can you hear all the screaming certain words in the background? I was one of those voices. :3
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