This article is my chronicle of my experience leading up to and at TWICE’s recent concerts at the Banc of California Stadium. Much of what you are about to read is a stream of thoughts, so it might not be entirely cohesive. But I’ll do my best to have it all make sense.
Three months ago, TWICE toured the United States as part of their fourth world tour. Sadly I could not go because, at the time, COVID-19 restrictions were still in place, and I could not travel without going through a whole lot of expense and unnecessary bullshit to get back into my home country from the U.S. afterwards.
I was distraught at missing the opportunity to see TWICE since they are in their contract year and most likely would end up like many other idol groups at the end of their lifespan and head off into the sunset peacefully, never to be heard from again.
While my friends in the U.S. enjoyed taking in all of the TWICE goodness, I sat at home in Canada, very jealous of their ability to see them in person. So imagine my delight when it was announced TWICE would return for two encore performance shows in an outdoor stadium in Los Angeles.
I believed the K-Pop gods were answering my prayers. So, of course, I jumped on the chance to secure tickets for both nights. That didn’t come without some challenges. First, I was fighting the bots even to get the opportunity to buy a ticket. Once it was my turn to get into a battle for tickets, there was barely anything left and what I could attempt to score led me to my final impasse. How do I pay for these things?
Ticketmaster only allowed credit cards with American addresses to pay for this concert. Seeing that I’m a Canadian, that doesn’t work out well. Trying alternate payment methods such as Apple Pay and PayPal did not work either. So I let the timer expire for the tickets in my cart and was shut out from the initial sale.
So my only option for a ticket purchase from Canada was verified resale from Ticketmaster. It wasn’t ideal due to the outrageous markup, but I was in YOLO mode and was willing to pay a little more to get in the building. Thankfully, I scored some great seats for relatively “reasonable” prices.
So Ticketmaster will take my money for inflated resale but not for the first-come, first-serve opening wave of tickets for sale. That is good to know for any future events outside of Canada using Ticketmaster as their service provider.
I ended up with section A3 Row 14 for the May 14th show and section A3 Row 7 for the May 15th show. (I will not mention the actual seat numbers) Both were excellent seats, although I feel I got a better bargain price-wise for the May 14th seats. I will not mention exactly how much I paid for my seats as it pains my wallet and my heart to look at those receipts.
With my tickets secured, it was the long waiting game to get my ass to Los Angeles. I won’t go over the travel process in an evolving post-pandemic world. That stuff is too long and boring to describe here. Let’s say that it wasn’t too different from the last time I travelled.
The vital part of this article is right here, my experiences at my first ever TWICE concerts. I had watched videos of the previous U.S. concerts and the Tokyo Dome concert in April, and the shows looked like a blast. However, now that I’ve seen it for myself, the bootleg videos on the internet only show a fraction of the fun that a TWICE concert is.
My initial impression of seeing the members of TWICE in person was that they are very tiny women. Seeing them in front of me was a shock to the system, to say the least.
As for the concert itself? It was a feast for the eyes and ears. Since this concert was technically a promotion for Formula of Love: O+T = <3, most of the songs in their setlist were from that album. I didn’t mind since that album is solid from top to bottom.
Many classic TWICE songs were scattered throughout to keep the hype at maximum levels. But to be honest, even without those particular pieces, the crowd would have been hot regardless.
Having front row seats to witness all of this goodness was a bonus. Although when the members of TWICE moved from the main stage to the front stage, it was hard to see them through the sea of fans. That was okay, as the giant video screens made it easy to see the action from that area.
The benefit of their back and forth movement is that if you were lucky enough to have some room and not be blocked by other crays, you could wave your candy bong like a spaz at the members as they made their way between the two stages. And you could also get a real good view of them up close.
My favourite moments of the concerts were any of the MCs with Dahyun. She knows how to work the crowd and is excellent at ad-libbing with off-script things.
I heard there was something planned to sing happy birthday to her on the first night, but that didn’t work out so well since she didn’t leave an opening. Or the execution of the plan was poorly done. However, on the second night, it seemed to have worked out. After being serenaded by the crowd, she was thrown off her game a little but recovered enough to get her schtick in.
Both of the shows on May 14 and 15 were around 4 hours long. That is something worth mentioning. You do get your money’s worth when you see a TWICE concert. It’s all killer and no filler. The pacing of their show is so good that you don’t even notice that you’re near the end until they are waving their final goodbyes.
This short but sweet trip to Los Angeles was a great way to restart my travel journeys after being confined to Canada since 2019. It was great to hang out with friends I have not seen in person in a long time and meet some new folks I have socialized with online but never seen face-to-face.
I deliberately kept this recap somewhat short as I’m saving a lot of stuff for our podcast recording, where I will go into more detail about the whole weekend with the others who attended the concerts. So keep an eye out for that, it’s coming soon.
