RED VELVET REDMARE IN TORONTO

Wendy came home.

That was the general sentiment on the 18th when Red Velvet had their first show on Canadian soil.

Quick aside here: I’m not a huge Red Velvet fan. I’ve been listening to Kpop since the 2nd Generation (SNSD, 2NE1, Kara, T-ara, etc) but life took over and I kinda fell out of it when the 3rd generation (Twice, RV, Momoland, BlackPink, etc) came along. It also didn’t help that Canada wasn’t a major stop for Kpop groups, unlike LA or the West Coast in general. Daigong was lucky enough to fly out to LA for an SMTown or something and got to meet Ga-In in person. I’m still hella jelly at him for that.

Anyway, living in Edmonton meant that visiting a Kpop concert was out of the question unless you shelled out the big bucks to fly out south when the girls were in town or even more smackaroos for a cross-Pacific flight. So I just stuck to the MP3s…

Until I moved to Toronto and the f*cking hallyu wave 2.0 (3.0?) hit (coughBTScough). Then suddenly groups were coming over. BlackPink is hitting up Coachella. And Wendy was COMING HOME.

So when tickets came out I tried to get one. And got washed by Ticketmaster to the tune of near 200. But I got a tic.

The theme of the concert was theme park. The videos showed the girls going to theme parks, rides and CGI animals. Stuff like that. I didn’t really pay attention to that, I was here for the girls and the music.

The Coca Coliseum was packed. Crowd was split about 60-40 female-male. Merch consisted of shirts, pins, and lightsticks. I didn’t get any. A fan group was handing out banners and had them draped out over almost every seat.

The concert started late at around 8:17 instead of 8:00. They played some tunes beforehand though. Somethin Kinda Crazy was the only one I really remember.

When Red Velvet finally stepped out, the crowd went wild. It was loud as hell.

Russian Roulette: RV opened up with one of their classics in red skirts and white shirts. It was unbelievably loud at this point.

Power Up: Never did like the dance for this one but it got the crowd pumped up for sure.

My Second Date

Mosquito: BZZ BZZ BZZ

Look: My favorite RV song. Disco 70s style beat with MJ style moves? Sign me up. This one blew me away. Seeing it live was worth the ticket price alone.

VCR: Here they played a video of CGI animals and stuff while RV changed and OMG IS THAT SEULGI AS A BEAR LOOK AT THOSE EARS

Mr. E

Zoo

Happiness

Hit that Drum

Another VCR, another change of clothes. Some Alice in Wonderland thing going on where potions are drunk and sizes are changed. Next song plz.

Lucky Girl

Bad Dracula

All Right: At this point RV start handing out stuff to the audience in the front row. Then another break where they talk about how they couldn’t visit the Falls (although they eventually went according to twitter), Wendy’s house, how glad they were to be in Toronto. You know, that kind of thing.

Blue Lemonade

About Love

Moonlight Melody

Ice Cream Cake: Just the intro? Come on.

Bad Boy: This was the English version. The audience went wild for this one. ‘Nother Bad Boy DOWN.

Peek-a-Boo: It’s another RV classic.

Really Bad Boy: This was in English as well.

Rookie: My 2nd favorite Red Velvet song, and they knocked it out of the park. With this, the concert “ended,” but fans started chanting encore…

Day 1: First song of the encore. At this time everyone held up their banners. The happy mood was broken up though when Joy talked about how happy she was to visit Wendy’s hometown and reminisced about how Wendy couldn’t go home during the new year and had to stay in the dorm. Lots of tears were shed. The crowd was upset at this as well, but then the tone lightened up; they talked about how cold Canada was, Wendy’s house, etc. They told the audience to sing happy birthday to Wendy. Wendy then gave a little speech that I don’t remember except the part where she tells her mother to stop crying. That was a pretty tender moment. Really brought it home.

Red Flavor: Kind of a weird choice to end with this song after all the emotional hullabaloo before, but everyone was into it, so why not I suppose.

In the end this was a great experience. Would I do it again? Probably. But at a cheaper price, even though it means worse seats. What can you do, finances are always a problem.

CAN’T STOP WON’T STOP JPHIP

WRITTEN BY silogore