The House of Blues was a sold out event. A sea of Asians lined up outside the venue for what was expected to be one rocking good time on Saturday night. And surely it was. It was my first time doing the whole press access sha-bang, so I didn’t know what to expect, what I’ll do is I’ll give you a concert experience from a fresh, new, perspective. On the get go, I didn’t have to wait in any lines and I was free to roam around anywhere before the show started. Checking in with my ID was really the only gripe , and required further authentication from the Admin here, but I suppose due to the name of the venue its fair.

The people here at Ningin represent an open, friendly atmosphere who’s interest on are with meeting as many new media sites and magazines as possible, as we see them more as friends, partners etc. And so it was fun for me to meet the cool chicks from Allkpop, Popseoul, Khype, and Koream magazine. (You all were so cool!)

We’re on Asian time so it’s not a surprise that the red carpet event (err Momma’s old 6-foot rug) started like an hour late. During this time our media buddies were asking questions to the groups. For myself, I congratulated Far East Movement for their breaking mainstream on the radio and this prompted Kev Nish to put out his hand to me to shake. Coolness.

So the party gets started with some warm up rapping, then off to Far East Movement. Taking a page out of Daft Punk, they came out from the year 3008 donning impressive space outfits. Impressive that they could perform pretty good without dehydrating and giving us an exhilarating performance with their set. The crowd was most wild during Girls On the Dance Floor.

I was pretty new to the other artists in between, like Kero One and MYK but they put on a decent show.

On a side note, I found Mina, one of BoA’s regular Los Angeles managers.You see, BoA fandom simply follows me. She was like “Oh hey its you again, Hi !” We made some idle chit chat, and she told me she was just here for fun and wasn’t even a VIP. Wow. I brought my new media buddies along and made sure we left with some business cards.

So it was time for Epik Highs grand entrance, in which Epik High collected the mass sum of potential energy from fans, releasing it on to the stage as one powerful kinetic explosion. Their set was mainly from Map The Soul of course, but they let in a few random ones from various albums. I was close, a bit too close enough to shake the hand of Tablo during his sets and get mainly underneath shots. They had a “first 3 songs only” rule, but since Epik High was energetic the whole way they didn’t enforce it for this group.The crowd was going wild when they ended, since it couldn’t be over without their famous song Fan. Oh my I had to take some time to get jumping too, being so careful with my camera. And the photographers had a quick instinct to put their camera down every time they saw even a glimpse of a water bottle, because every time someone drunk water, a band member decided to drench the hot fans.

There was some odd turn of events that happened so I didn’t make it out to the fan meet on Sunday, but I’m really glad some of my new and old friends made it there.

The weekend was really doubling up on the fun for any Epik High fan. As a friend has put it, she got her Epik High, High!

I’ve put out different sets of pictures for Ningin and Soompi. So please check out some more of my pictures here:
Far East Movement
and
Epik High