Again, I have the opportunity to write a report about one concert.
This time, I got to write about a concert of three Indonesian singers: Tompi, Glenn Fredly, and Sandhy Sondoro.

I was actually looking forward for this concert.
I mean, Tompi is one of my most favorite Indonesian singers of all time.
And I am not a big fan of any particular Indonesian musicians myself. But Tompi is my guy.

While Glenn Fredly, well, he’s Glenn Fredly, I guess.
I remember that I watched him one time, in one of my high school events.
His songs are pretty good, but his act on stage?
Too braggy, too snobbish, too full of himself.
(and it doesn’t change the fact that I’m actually using three adjectives that has the same meaning)

And Sandhy Sondoro, in my opinion, was just a damn lucky guy.
He happened to be in that singing competition in Europe and he happened to have a good marketing team that can boost his career here, in Indonesia.
Aside from that, his handful of songs are not that bad, indeed.

So anyway, I went to the concert, had more-or-less pretty good time, and eventually turned in my review.

When it was finally published here, I was a bit disappointed.
The published article turned out to be very short.

If you read the published article, I can assure you that there was not much editing there.
It’s just a big chunk of it was missing.

A big chuck of why I didn’t have as much fun as I expected I should have had that night.

Here’s what missing on my article:

It was only 11 p.m. when the three singers disappeared backstage. After a few minutes of set changed, some stage properties were exchanged and rearranged, Gading Marten appeared in front of the audience and welcomed the trio back.

It turned out that the concert dissolved into some kind of a live talk show, with Tompi, Glenn Fredly, and Sandhy Sondoro as the guests and Gading Marten as the host.

Within an hour, the talk show tried to blend in social awareness, current political issues, and humor together. There was a video coverage about a toddler who became a victim of sexual abuse, as well as a video of Glenn and Tompi visiting Ariel, Peterpan’s vocalist who was detained in the case of sex tape scandal.

The trio encouraged the audience’s awareness by fund raising for the abused toddler. Regarding Ariel, the trio sang one of his popular pieces, Topeng, with implicit intention that people should value the principal of being honest. Which then led to a talk about Siami, a mother who reported the alleged cheating spree in her son’s elementary school.

Despite the enjoyable comedy and the underlying message within the talk show, the crowd was more in awe when the three was beat boxing, scatting, or singing with silly microphone effects, such as echo and chipmunk effects. The talk show part of the concert was indeed entertaining, but it would have been nicer if its duration was cut short and more music was presented.

I maybe am the only one person that hate the ‘talk show’ part of the show.
But come on, people went in there paying to hear some singers sing, not mocking each other on stage, and especially, not to hear these people preach about how important it is to care about society.

So there.
Justice had been done. For me, anyway.
I had my say.
It’s a good thing that I didn’t pay a single dime to get in there.

A little message for other Indonesian singers/musicians who are planning to take on a concert: please do remember that people want to pay to come to the concert to hear you sing/play music.

A few snap shots: