In The Future, Concerts Will Be Digital

I’m going to pause the 7Adepts for a moment – don’t worry, they’ll be back – and talk about live music, pre- and post-Covid.

First and foremost, live music is my religion and my therapy, and I have been known to do things like jump on a plane to attend a concert, by myself. Or spend four hours heading back and forth to San Jose to check out a show full of people less than half my age.

SuperM is part of my recently developed obsession with K-Pop. It’s a supergroup that includes pretty much all my favorite K-Pop singers, rappers and dancers. In January I got one of those Facebook notifications that they were playing at the SAP Center, and I impulsively went online and bought a resale ticket near the stage. Which cost me a chunk of change. 

Then I endured two hours of CalTrain, each way, and icy winter winds, heading to a show where I was among the oldest, and the whitest. But I was wearing pink, the official color of SuperM, so they accepted me.

And the show itself changed my life. I’ve still got a screenshot from it as my Facebook background, with Taemin and Kai dancing joyfully amidst a sea of glittering lightsticks. 

It moved my musical taste even farther away from cultural-capital and deeper into a more global vision. Outside my demographic and my comfort zone, with songs mostly in languages I don’t understand. Sung to prerecorded tracks, with the singers often just singing on top of their singles while they go through intense dance moves.

And they do it really, really well. Don’t ask me to articulate why I can listen to Taemin’s music over and over while Taylor Swift’s music makes me want to staple my ears shut, figuratively. Musical taste is intensely personal.

So when SuperM announced they were going to try a newfangled style of live music that was technological and futuristic, I was all about it. They were basically charging for a livestream, from Seoul, where fans in other countries could tune in at weird hours. It was less than TicketBastard used to charge me, including the approximately $700 of nonrefundables I am holding at the moment (grrr). I bought a stream for myself, and also one for my friend that I was going to see Monsta X with (see nonrefundables, above). Thirty bucks each. No service fees. A bargain. 

At eleven at night, I settled myself on the couch and tuned in. and remained there, glued to my screen, for the entire concert, plus the impromptu Q&A following it.

Lots of it worked even better than live. The camera was up close and personal, letting you examine the precision of that choreography. The sound was beautiful, giving you a clear unimpeded listen. No screaming girls, no greasy food odors, no parking lots and traffic.

The boys gave us tantalizing bits from their new project, including a song with holographic 3D tigers wandering through their choreography. They deviated sharply from their live setlist, keeping core favorites while swapping others in. Taemin did Move and Want, rather than Danger and Goodbye. It was like having them throw a show in my living room.

Other bits … it didn’t come through in HD for me, and I would have paid more to make that happen.

There was a wall of fancams, like a gigantic Zoom meeting with hundreds of participants. They tried to do a Q&A but it seemed like everyone picked had a microphone failure. There was also an awful lot of chatting, which I found endearing but others may not. I think the wall-of-fancams fans had to spend the whole show on alert, shaking their lightsticks and cheering in order to give our boys that live-concert-energy sensation. I thought about auditioning for this, but I also have a stupid tendency to freeze up in front of some celebrities. Not all of them, just the ones I really like, and Taemin could probably reduce me to a babbling idiot in a second or two, so I'm not giving him that chance.

There was a gimmicky digital lightstick effect we could access via apps on our phones; I used mine for about two minutes before deciding it was boring. But cute.

There was lots and lots of talking. I'm not sure if this is a K-Pop thing or a Super M thing, because they did it when I saw them in San Jose, and I liked seeing them talk about their work. 

Occasionally I found myself wishing they'd just pick up some instruments and jam. I know Taemin plays piano beautifully, and there are some guitar players among them. Dancing requires rest breaks and clothes changes, but music is a little more forgiving. Their rivals Monsta X just did a couple of lovely singer-and-acoustic-guitarist videos which are causing internet consternation because the guitarists are getting a lot of their own attention. Sit those boys down two or three at a time with an acoustic guitar or a piano and let them belt out covers. 

Everyone involved in putting on the show was super responsible regarding Covid-19, with temperature checks and heavy monitoring. Occasionally the dancers got a little close to each other for social distancing comfort. The boys have been quarantined together, leading to lots of fan fantasies about being in lockdown with them. I’d love to be in lockdown with them, although I’d probably spend more time playing bass for them and reading aloud from science fiction novels than flirting.

Now it’s the morning after, and I have a lovely post-live-music buzz. I went to a concert while quarantined alone in my apartment. No traffic, no service fees, nobody screaming in my ears.

On the last song, Jopping, there was a special effect that simulated a sea of lightstick-wielding audience members, and it actually brought a tear to my eye. Yes, I saw that happen once. I wonder if it will ever happen again in my lifetime.

I used to love live concerts for entirely different reasons than loving music. The chance to physically connect with the band and the other fans, and that happy interplay that goes back and forth. The spectacle of all those humans being harmonious and coordinated together in a confined space. That’s not going to happen again until there’s a vaccine.

But the idea of giving musicians positive feedback while they reinterpret their songs for you, perform them a little bit differently, engage in a dialogue … I think we can do that just fine over the interwebs. Maybe even better.

My science fiction often mentions concerts. In One Sunny Night I had a band located on different continents, giving multinational concerts by the equivalent of Zoom. In the current work, Rhonda Wray: Raptor Wrangler, the entire premise has to do with Rhonda trying to hear an exclusive (but expensive) livestream concert set on a dinosaur planet. In my short story Zagbert Welmax Didn't Kill Himself, pop bands steer the zeitgeist and chill with aliens. Last night I got a chance to see the real world catching up with my futuristic visions, and it gave me chills.

EDIT: Here's part two about the next livestream, from WayV, in which I discover (a) I was being a technoderp and the failure to see SuperM in HD was all mine; and (b) Ten is really, really good and I think he's going to be a worldwide sensation.