Toronto Star Review: 11/11/99, Toronto, ON

Back - Index - Submissions - - What is RSS? Date: Nov 12, 2099 Source: The Toronto Star Submitted By: Y November 12, 1999 Boys make the girls cry Florida pin-up quintet bathes in the tears of 35,000 fans at SkyDome By Ben Rayner Toronto Star Pop Music Critic Time and the inevitable, duplicative machinations of the recording industry have granted us a new appreciation for the Backstreet Boys. However painful the Florida pin-up quintet's plastic, teen-melting ear candy might have seemed when it first resurrected the New Kids On The Block's dubious legacy a few years back, the global Backstreet-clone industry it has since spawned - 'N Sync, 5ive, 3 Deep, LFO, BSB, V.I.P. et al. - now bathes the days of single boy-band dominance in a rosy glow indeed. Like copies of copies fed through a Xerox machine, the reproductions have degraded exponentially from the original. As the prototype, then, when it comes time to tour, the Boys and their myriad handlers can pony up for production values that must have 98 Degrees weeping with envy. And thus, the 35,000 or so young girls and their maternal escorts who took in last night's lavish Backstreet performance at SkyDome received ample bang for the family breadwinner's buck. Even if you weren't female, bursting with 12-year-old hormones and carrying a serious crush on sensitive Howie Dorough, the gargantuan sci-fi stage setup, flaring pyro, generous, acrobatic use of suspension cables and a foxy saxophone player supplied distraction enough from the music to keep the experience entertaining. For a time, anyway. The shrieking, flashbulb-popping anthropological spectacle of it all - somewhere between Starlight Express and, say, the Village People's interpretation of a KISS show - lost some of its allure by the time the lads were halfway through their extensive wardrobe (by the way, what's with the Power Rangers body armour and the hot-pink Sammy Davis Jr. suits?) and the fifth or sixth interchangeable ballad with ``love'' or ``heart'' in the title. But then, my walls bear not a single poster of Howie, A.J. McLean, Nick Carter, Kevin Richardson or Brian Littrell. And those knee-knocking salutations to ``all the beautiful ladies'' in the house aren't intended for me. If that was the case, I suspect, the clear sightlines provided by the luminescent pentagonal stage, the steady bombardment of hits (from oldies ``Get Down'' and ``We Got It Goin' On'' to the more contemporary ``Larger Than Life'' and ``I Want It That Way'') and all that gyrating by the Boys and their accompanying troupe of 10 dancers might well have had me in tears, too. That stuff would've been icing on the cake, actually. The mere sight of a videotaped, Backstreet-starring commercial for Sears - the retailer is sponsoring the Boys' Into The Millenium tour (mercifully, we were spared a shout-out to Electrohome dishwashers or a reminder to cash in our ticket stubs for a 20-per cent discount on linens) - was enough to send a deafening cyclone of screams ricocheting off the domed roof. You could, I suppose, look upon the Backstreet Boys as tame titillation for future Chippendale's customers. Or as the living, breathing musical embodiment of the empty, glittering capitalism so rampant here at the turn of the century. Why rain on someone else's good time, though? Let the Boys, and the girls who adore 'em, have their moment. Comment on this item. Next Item: Toronto Sun Review: 11/11/99, Toronto, ON Prev Item: Ottawa Sun Review: 11/13/99 Ottawa, ON