Ottawa Sun Review: 11/13/99 Ottawa, ON

Back - Index - Submissions - - What is RSS? Date: Nov 13, 2099 Source: The Ottawa Sun Submitted By: Honeyhazel15@aol.com Boys' big night Backstreet Boys Larger Than Life at Corel Centre By JOSHUA OSTROFF Ottawa Sun Friday, November 12, 1999 OTTAWA -- The Kids are dead! Long live the Boys! Uh, I mean relatively long live. After all, as Chris Rock so eloquently pointed out at the MTV Awards, we all know how this story ends. Sure, the Backstreet Boys are riding high on the charts, moving mind-boggling numbers of their new CD Millennium, raking in numerous sales-based awards and basically refusing to remove their sticky fingers from the pocketbooks of little girls everywhere. But as utterly dominant as they might feel now -- even securing a reverse-backlash after the media jumped down their throats for "dissing" a sick fan a few weeks back and winning their silly spat with doppelgangers 'N Sync -- you just know that the no longer New Kids On The Block are rubbing their hands anxiously waiting for A.J., Kevin, Nick, Brian and Howie to join them in the land of musical footnotes, desperately analyzing ex-Menudo member Ricky Martin's every move. But before all those sticker books and lunch boxes become kitsch collectibles, the Backstreet Boys are admittedly a cultural force to be reckoned with. Alanis (the artist formerly known as generational spokeswoman) couldn't fill half the Corel Centre, and BSB sold over 18,000 tickets in less than a day. And besides, there is something surreal and beautiful about an arena filled with primal screams. Which is what predictably happened as soon as the lights dimmed and the Backstreet Boys made their pop culture-appropriating appearance. After the dancers filed in to the strains of the Darth Vader theme, the main attraction emerged from a giant boyband-in-the-box on flying skateboards right out of the Back To The Future sequel. The show kicked off with their strongest track, Larger Than Life, an unabashedly self-promoting pop anthem that, with a bit more guitar and just the same amount of pyrotechnics, could have come straight out of KISS. And I mean that in a good way. After a few songs, they stopped singing in order to take turns sharing philosophical platitudes with the easy-to-please audience (I didn't hear a single sarcastic "you say that to all the crowds" after they were informed "YOU DEFINITELY ARE THE BEST FANS IN THE WORLD!") As they ran through numerous costume changes -- including pink zoot suits (huh?) for All I Have To Give and sporting trench coats for As Long As You Love Me, seemingly oblivious to the garment's current infamy -- the boys split their time unevenly between slow, sappy ballads like the cringe-inducing Spanish Eyes and the sickeningly sweet The Perfect Fan and the much preferable (though rarer) uptempo dance tunes like Get Down (You're The One For Me) and their career-making single Everybody (Backstreet's Back). Despite the neat-o simulated thunderstorm (complete with strobe-lightning) and straight-from-the-video horror show dance moves, Everybody failed to provide the momentum boost the concert really needed. While the incessant screaming masked most of the garbled lyrics, the song still couldn't clicked as smoothly as did their opening number. And things went downhill from there as the band played what seemed like ballad after ballad after ballad, eventually closing with the slow but slightly less generic hit I Want It That Way. In the end, with all the fireworks, flying and fashion taken into account, it was all about putting on a reeeally big show. Something that emulated their big-budget videos enough so their attention-deficient fans wouldn't have time to wonder why exactly they were screaming so loud for what amounts to five cute boys with decent voices, cheesy songs and often lame choreographed dance moves. Then again, as the New Kids and Menudo before them have proved, maybe that's all their fans really really want. Like the recent TLC show, the Backstreet Boys' openers were curiously generic. But at least 15-year-old Mandy Moore -- another clone from the Orlando pop music genome project -- has a song people might be familiar with. Highlighting her 15-minute set was Candy, a harmless piece of bubblegum pop, the kind left on the bedpost post overnight and then re-chewed in the morning. As for EYC (their name is an acronym for Express Yourself Clearly, so I will do just that) I can't say enough ... about how incredibly awful they were. For what seemed like an hour (which through the magic of relativity turned out to be merely 20 excruciating minutes) the three boys shouted "yeah," lifted up their shirts and ran madly about the stage without delivering anything that came even remotely close to a song. Call me cynical but they are going to be huge. Comment on this item. Recent Comments Submitted by: see pron 7ayocv We all talk just a little about what you should talk about when is shows correspondence to because Perhaps this has much more than one meaning. Submitted by: high quality backlinks nl4uby Major thankies for the blog. Really Great. Comment on this item. 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