Mohegan, Conn. —
Whoever came up with the concept for the NKOTBSB tour must have loved the musical Chicago.
“One jazz killer is nothing these days, but two …”
That was the idea behind the cleverly monikered NKOTBSB tour, and boy, was it a good one. Each band — New Kids on the Block and the Backstreet Boys, for those keeping track — has been making few waves within the last few years, but put them together and you have a girls' night waiting to happen.
The headliners started very late — 44 minutes after the second opener finished. But once they came out, all was forgotten. They appeared, appropriately, high atop a riser, looking down at an expanse of cheering fans.
It was an expertly calibrated show: a nonstop, 2 hour-15 minute killer, with very little downtime between songs and almost no banter. Even the ‘encore’ began less than two minutes after the last song ended, and there was recorded noise going on in the background.
The show was rife with boy band clichés: I counted 8.25 crooners (Jonathan Knight was mostly absent due to a knee injury- he hobbled out for a cameo), 1 shirt ripped off, 4 girls pulled on stage, 8 sparkly sports jerseys, 6 costume changes and 2 slow songs sung while sitting on stools. And the crowd absolutely ate it up.
The New Kids brought the house down with a falsetto-ed out version of “Please Don’t Go Girl” and “I’ll Be Lovin’ You Forever” as well as “The Right Stuff,” “Step by Step” and “Cover Girl,” with the classic dance moves to match. Their closer, “Hangin’ Tough,” had almost every person in the nearly full arena waving their arms in the air so hard that you could feel the bleachers swaying.
The Backstreet Boys ripped through “The Call,” Larger than Life,” and “Everybody.” They broke down the “old-school Backstreet Boy way” into 4-part harmony at the end of “I’ll Never Break Your Heart” and closed pre-encore with “I Want It That Way.”
Both groups held up vocally. The Backstreet Boys were mostly clean, while the New Kids suffered through a few slushy spots. But New Kids Jordan Knight and Joey McIntyre got the night’s two vocal glory moments and killed them.
The dancing was the biggest difference between the two. The New Kids were professional and knew how to play to the crowd, but their dance moves lacked any fire. The Backstreet Boys brought far more attack. Nick Carter bounced around the stage life an over-sugared 7-year-old, while A.J. McLean And Howie Dorough showed off crisp moves.
It was interesting to see that there wasn’t much overlap between the groups’ fanbases. The few years separating the New Kids’ and the Backstreet Boys’ reigns seemed to put quite a distance between the two groups of fans. But the whole crowd reacted for the bigger hits no matter whose they were.
True to the title of the tour, the show wasn’t separate sets from New Kids and the Backstreet Boys. The groups alternated back and forth on faster songs and did a slow-song mini-set in the middle of the show. It could seem a bit schizophrenic at times, but it was a smart move: each group’s fans didn’t have time to get bored while the ‘other one’ was on. Swapping back and forth also kept the energy up, as one group would start the second the other finished.
And crowd was an interesting mix itself. For every stage-rushing superfan, there were plenty of groups of friends singing along for nostalgia’s sake. And that’s what made the show work as well as it did: it was fun for both people who live for the New Kids or the Backstreet Boys and those who just wanted to relive a time when they did.
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