#54 Attend a Pink Concert



Truth be told, when Kristy's "Attend a Pink Concert" appeared on my bucket list, I didn't really know much about Pink. I knew of a couple of her songs, but I thought this was going to be a hard one, "What's the likelihood of Pink doing a concert in Australia?" I thought, "Has she retired or something?".

How wrong I was.

When Kelly send me an email mentioning that Pink was coming to Australia I thought I was in with a bit of luck - she's actually doing a concert here! I contacted Kristy and started talking to Kristy, Kelly and my housemate Bec about going to a show.

Well... Turns out that Pink is extremely popular here in Australia. The show sold out by the time that the group got back to me about tickets. Ugh. I didn't want to miss out on what I still naively thought would probably be my last chance to go to a Pink concert and tick it off the list, so I hit the ebay and bought some really expensive tickets off a scalper. Too expensive for Bec... She pulled out.

And so it was that one fine Saturday night Kelly, Kristy and I headed to the Sydney Entertainment Centre to see Pink's "Truth About Love" tour.

The first thing that was immediately obvious was the demographic of the crowd. There was a reason why my Mum had been telling me she was really jealous I was going to Pink - Pink's fan base are middle aged women. To a ridiculous degree. There must have been at least 10 women to every one man, and, rather pleasantly, I felt YOUNG at a music concert for once (certainly since turning 30 I've definitely felt like one of the oldies at most of the concerts I go to, so to feel like a young one is a nice change).

It was definitely going to be a first for me - not only was it the first time I'd been to a concert for middle-aged women, but it was also the first time I'd really been to a pop concert as such. To be frank, the pop concert part concerned me a lot more than the age/sex of my fellow attendees - I'm not the biggest fan of pop music and some little "individualist" part of my brain was telling me that there's no way I can like this - I'm way too unique for pop music dammit!



Bungie Jumping from topless men.
As you do.

So all this said, the usual next line is, "I was amazed from the very first song and Pink captivated me to the very end. So glad I went!"

Unfortunately, that's not really the case. I was immediately weirded out by just how showy the whole thing was. Here I am used to a band coming on stage and making music together... but in the very first song Pink came out doing bungie jumping from a trio of semi naked men, all while singing her heart out!

I stood flabbergasted. The music was entertaining and it all sounded good, but I had no desire to dance. I just wanted to watch the show and see what happened next. What sort of a music concert encourages you to watch rather than dance? A pop concert I guess (going off my extensive research of one pop concert).


More differences I observed from this concert to the average rock concert I might attend:

• No moshing. Everyone kind of pleasantly swayed to the music and sang along a bit but, like me, mostly just watching the show. Maybe things were a bit more excitable up the front, but it didn't really look like it. Certainly less energy that I'm used to. I didn't even need a shower afterwards!
• So many costume changes! Every second song Pink and her backup dancers would pop backstage for a moment to change into something else.
• Special effects! An astounding amount of effort had been put into the audio visual aspect of the show. Giant screens hung above the stage showing unique graphics for each song, fancy apparatus was used by Pink and the dancers to do acrobatics and entrances and exits were made from every corner, trapdoor or on stage elevator that could possibly exist on one stage.

Can you believe this is one of my best photos of the concert?
My camera doesn't like the dark...

The weirdest thing to me though was that lots of people had brought GIFTS to give to Pink. Every now and then she'd go over to somebody in the front row and they'd pass her a stuffed animal, or scarf, or Tim Tams, or hat, or whatever. Then she usually said thankyou, tried to say something about the gift and then add it to a massive pile at the side of the stage. So strange! Shouldn't it be the other way around? After all, we'd paid a couple of hundred dollars to be there, and it's not like the merchandise was marked down or anything! Shouldn't she be thanking her fans, not the other way around? This concept was so bizarre to me. I wonder if it's something that happens at other pop concerts, or has Pink found some way of making this a part of HER show? That when people go to see Pink they're expected to bring her gifts... And after a run of more than 40 shows in Australia, how many freakin' gifts will she have accumulated? Surely she's not taking all that stuff home. What's she doing with it?

I was still scratching my head over exactly these thoughts when Jimmy Slolina, the "host" for the concert came out to introduce the encore, one of the more hilariously revealing parts of the show. Why? Well, he came out and started organising a chant - getting the women to scream for an encore, followed by getting the men to scream for an encore. Problem was, when it was the women's turn a great shout came from the audience... but when it was the men's turn well, the only cheering you could hear was the quiet pre-recorded one coming from the speakers!

Anyway, Pink came out and did a very spectacular rendition of "So What" while swinging around suspended above the audience. It was indicative of a lot of the show - Pink belting out songs (without lip synching) all while doing energetic dancing/acrobatics. Even though I may not be a fan of her music, I couldn't help but be impressed by her as a performer - there's not too many people out there with a show quite like it.

According to Wikipedia, Pink's Truth About Love tour was the third highest grossing tour in 2013. In the nine weeks she spent in Australia, the tour made more than $100 million. Very impressive. She was the first artist to sell more than 250,000 tickets to Rod Laver arena in Melbourne, which she did during a record-setting 18 sold out shows. And I thought nobody really cared about Pink anymore!

As for our evening, there was just one *very* important thing left to do after the concert... planking!

 

Thanks for the enjoyable evening Kristy. I'm glad I went. Despite not becoming a Pink fan... and despite the damage it has done to whatever reputation I had as a young alternative male!