Jacky!

On Sunday I had the pleasure of attending a Jacky Cheung concert.  For those of you who don't know him, Jacky is one of the 'Heavenly Kings' of Cantopop...  I've been a fan of his music since my college days. 星期天晚上我有一個機會看到張學友的演唱會,非常幸福!四大天王之一! 私は日曜日晩ジャッキー・チュンのコンサット行くの機会がありました！すごい！長間ファンだよう！

On Friday we got a call from a friend who had a bunch of tickets he couldn't use,  so we gladly took them off his hands.  I didn't have much time to get a group together, but it wasn't too hard to find people who wanted to go!

Sounds perfect right? well except for one thing...  the concert was being held outdoors... at night.... on one of the coldest winter weekends of the year!

其實我們從朋友受到免費的票! 他不能參加,所以送給我們! 太好了!可是問題也有... 唱會場是在外面... 還這個週末是香港的冬天的最冷之一...Wild Day Out 的一樣的地方...

実は切符無料でした！金曜日晩友達から電話をもらった、8枚切符ありました、使えませんから、僕達にくれました！でも問題ありました。。。この週末一番寒かった、とコンサットがお外でした！服一杯着ました。。。

I tried to dress warm and headed over to meet the guys.  It was actually being held at the same place as Wild Day Out, the PopTV Arena... which boasts great views:

by the way, Jacky starts EXACTLY on time...  don't be late!

On my way in i stopped to get a picture, only to be admonished by the guards with a 'no photos' sign.  actually it was relatively tame, at the hamasaki show last april, they took away your camera and made you erase the photos you took before they give it back! :-P

(obviously didn't happen here)

Don't get the wrong idea, our seats weren't this close, this was from the 'gold section', we were in the red section, well behind it.  but since the tickets were free, no one was going to complain!

我們的位子不那麼近,可是還可以看看:

The view from our seats weren't too bad...  the big tv screens helped a lot. The lighting and stage design were pretty impressive.  Now I know why they wanted to do it in a big venue...

This show had a bit less acrobatics and fancy stage stuff than what a younger pop star might have, i think the most 'death defying' it got was this platform... no hanging from wires or anything like that

Cold, but rocking out!

I would have been ok if it was a bit more energetic... Jacky does a lot of slow songs and here he did a whole section of some kind of musical drama in the middle... got really cold sitting still listening to love ballads (while sitting next to Boon). :-P

After a while he finished and came back for the encore... I think this was the two hour point or so... quite impressive, he didn't do any intermissions either,  but he does talk A LOT between numbers to catch his breath... since i don't really understand much cantonese this was not really enjoyable for me, but the super fans in front seemed to be eating it up.

using the powers of digital zoom, I got a few relatively clear ones of Jacky when he came over to our side of the stage.

他叫什麼名字?友哥?學仔?

At the end of the 2nd encore he introed the band, including everyone's favorite drummer, Jun Kung.  He did a great job (lots of solos while Jacky was backstage changing, etc).

In the encore he really pulled out a lot of his golden oldies, inciting the crowd to get into a frenzy of light stick waving (they had a free one on each seat, except they were super crappy,  only working only a few minutes before the batteries died).

二回アンコールをした！すごい長い、Jacky君とても元気よ！

We decided to make our way towards the exit as he was wrapping up the 2nd encore,  I had one chance to try and sneak a good picture while I filing out towards the front exits...  出た時、もと近写真撮ってみた：

Doh! Fricking glow stick...　ばか！残念！

The show was actually 3 hours long! Quite impressive!  His voice was quite amazing too...  no lip-syncing here!

If was only a bit warmer. :-P

Thanks again to Sam!