Date Night Tempo

A few weeks ago, someone on one of the Discord servers I'm on posted that Night Tempo was coming to America to do a concert. I had never heard any of his music, but sashagee is a huge city pop fan (one of the playlists I remember her listening to a lot on Spotify when we first met is called "City Bops") and it came recommended by 4PlayerPod, so I bought two tickets and got ready for some future funk.

On Tuesday I went to work as normal, and then when I was, I went down to Grand and waited for sashagee to get off the L. We had two hours before doors opened and no real plans about where to eat, so we wandered around River North looking at the restaurants. Most of the places I used to go--Slurping Turtle, Imperial Lamian, that burger restaurant on Hubbard whose name I don't remember--are closed now and I haven't spent enough time to find new places to really recommend one, and we had just decided on going to a burger place when we were walking by Ema and I mentioned how good it was and how long it had been since I had eaten there. sashagee said, well, why don't we go here then, and so we did! When we got in there was basically no one in there, just a couple people sitting around the bar and maybe one or two tables full, so we got a table in the bar section. And it's a good thing that we got in when we did, because in the middle of our meal the place started filling up and by the time our main courses came it was nearly full and people were having to wait.

Hummus and pita, crispy potatoes (absolutely amazing), feta cheese and olives as my main course. Not visible here was the salad that sashagee ordered and shared with me, and in return I shared the potatoes with her. Not visible here is the gin cocktail I got or the chocolate mousse cake we split. Since we had plenty of time and were about three blocks from the concert location, we stayed at dinner around two hours, right up until the doors opened, and then walked over to House of Blues.

I have literally never arrived at a concert when the doors opened so it was eerie to go in and see the place almost entirely empty. That turned out to be not just that we arrived early--we had heard from 4PlayerPod that Night Tempo had mentioned online that some cities on his US tour had sold extremely well and some of them had sold...less well, and it turned out that Chicago was one of the less well-selling cities. Even when everyone finally arrived the room was only about half-full, and while I'm sure this was disappointing for Night Tempo, it turned out that this was the most fun way to experience a concert I've ever had. Much like the problem with tourist locations being all the other damn tourists polluting it with their presence, the problem with concerts is that there are too many people there and it's impossible to get a good view, dance without people getting in your way, or really have the best time until you get there early and stand in the middle the whole time. Not here. 4PlayerPod, his girlfriend, sashagee, and I all had a great spot near the middle when for the opening act--a local named DJ Mochi who was actually really good--and then Night Tempo came out, introduced himself as "Random Asian man," and got to playing.

One disadvantage of a smaller crowd size could have been lowered enthusiasm, but that wasn't the case here. Everyone who was here really wanted to be there, so when he got up to the front and started jumping around on stage, the entire crowd followed. We listened to some of his original pieces and a lot of funky remixes of classic city pop hits like "黄昏のBay City" and of course "Plastic Love." 4PlayerPod and his girlfriend had to leave about twenty minutes before the end of the show so they missed Plastic Love, but we stayed up until the end. And with a medium-sized audience, there was no crowd all leaving at the same time! An amazing show, and I'm glad we caught it because the ticket sales make think it won't happen again.

If you want to check out Night Tempo's music, his entire discography is available for $16.