special to the blog by Laura Drake, in Edmonton
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I remember vividly the day the Spice Girls announced they were getting back together and going on tour. I was working for a daily newspaper in Vancouver, which, at the time, was having a garbage strike. My job was to write, every day, about the garbage strike. About other things, too, sometimes, but no matter what else came up I would still have to file something about garbage.
The day the Spice Girls announced that they were reuniting and going on tour, I flipped out. I convinced my editor to let me write a news story about the tour on the very flimsy angle that it would include a Vancouver date and, in between garbage interviews, I giddily scoured the Internet for fans who were already pledging to go.
When the Spice Girls were a real thing, I actually did get to see them on tour. My parents made me go that summer because they wanted to do something grown up that night and that was their way of ditching us. I remember being mortified at being made to see the Spice Girls. I never particularly liked them anyway and by then they were breaking up and were mostly a joke, and, even though the concert was provinces away from where I lived, I was petrified someone would find out that I went and mistake me for a fan.
But fast forward a decade and I was loving the fact that the Spice Girls were getting back together. Because you know what else I did that summer I saw them? Nothing. I read and biked around town and had water fights and jumped on my trampoline and went camping. You know what I didn't do? Write about garbage.
So when their reunion was announced, it wasn't my teen mortification that came flooding back, it was all the other awesome stuff from being that age. In my opinion, the Spice Girls reunion tour was the first time our generation was offered up wide-scale nostalgia. Unfortunately, I did not get to go to the Spice Girls tour, because being an adult also comes with crap responsibilities like paying for food and rent. Luckily for me, though, my lovely and talented friend Jen Fong scored free tickets to the Backstreet Boys' This is Us tour, offering me my first chance to actively participate in our newfound nostalgia. And it was amazing.
So amazing, in fact, that I badgered Chris on Twitter to write a guest review, and here we are. Some salient facts about your reviewer:
You've been warned. Now, let us go through some of the highlights and lowlights of the evening.
Lowlights:
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I remember vividly the day the Spice Girls announced they were getting back together and going on tour. I was working for a daily newspaper in Vancouver, which, at the time, was having a garbage strike. My job was to write, every day, about the garbage strike. About other things, too, sometimes, but no matter what else came up I would still have to file something about garbage.
The day the Spice Girls announced that they were reuniting and going on tour, I flipped out. I convinced my editor to let me write a news story about the tour on the very flimsy angle that it would include a Vancouver date and, in between garbage interviews, I giddily scoured the Internet for fans who were already pledging to go.
When the Spice Girls were a real thing, I actually did get to see them on tour. My parents made me go that summer because they wanted to do something grown up that night and that was their way of ditching us. I remember being mortified at being made to see the Spice Girls. I never particularly liked them anyway and by then they were breaking up and were mostly a joke, and, even though the concert was provinces away from where I lived, I was petrified someone would find out that I went and mistake me for a fan.
But fast forward a decade and I was loving the fact that the Spice Girls were getting back together. Because you know what else I did that summer I saw them? Nothing. I read and biked around town and had water fights and jumped on my trampoline and went camping. You know what I didn't do? Write about garbage.
So when their reunion was announced, it wasn't my teen mortification that came flooding back, it was all the other awesome stuff from being that age. In my opinion, the Spice Girls reunion tour was the first time our generation was offered up wide-scale nostalgia. Unfortunately, I did not get to go to the Spice Girls tour, because being an adult also comes with crap responsibilities like paying for food and rent. Luckily for me, though, my lovely and talented friend Jen Fong scored free tickets to the Backstreet Boys' This is Us tour, offering me my first chance to actively participate in our newfound nostalgia. And it was amazing.
So amazing, in fact, that I badgered Chris on Twitter to write a guest review, and here we are. Some salient facts about your reviewer:
- I had never seen the Backstreet Boys before and, in fact, don't go to a lot of concerts period. So my knowledge base for what a concert should be like is pretty thin.
- I am either easily amazed by things (related: Step Up 3 is amazing and you should all see it) or immediately dismiss them as ridiculous.
- There's not a lot of middle ground with this guy (points two thumbs at self)
- In keeping with the evening's theme, I decided to drink pink vodka coolers at the concert, because that was also a thing I last did in the 90s. Accordingly, there may be some slight memory holes in my recollection. Exhibit 1:
- Exhibit 2:
You've been warned. Now, let us go through some of the highlights and lowlights of the evening.
Lowlights:
- Apparently, the Backstreet Boys continued making music after 2001. I don't know if you knew this -- I'm not sure I did -- but it was a mistake. Any mid-to-late 90's hit had 5,000+ screaming fans almost drowning out the band, but whenever they tried to slip into a post Black and Blue song, there were 10,000 crossed arms with associated confused looks.
- I was never a big Kevin fan, but the fact does remain that he was in the Backstreet Boys. Not if you attend the This is Us tour, though. Not one word was spoken of him and Howie D. took over most of his singing parts (usually prefaced by AJ yelling "It's Howie, everyone!" thereby confirming Howie's position as the universally agreed upon least popular Backstreet Boy). It got so ridiculous that during I'll Never Break Your Heart, they played the music video on the screen in the background, but it had been edited to involve constantly revolving geometric shapes that just so happened to revolve themselves right over Kevin. The parts of the video that were just Kevin had either been completely excised or completely covered over with geometric shapes. We all knew what was going on and it was awkward.
- Speaking of Howie, he was clearly the designated location hype man, as I'm pretty sure he was the only person who said the word Edmonton, ever. He also kept calling it Edmonton, CANADA, which I personally found strange. Bonus points, though, for working Edmonton into the lyrics of one of the ballads (I don't remember which one, see above re: pink vodka drinks.)
- AJ has gotten, for lack of nicer terms, fat and bald. I'm not judging; I, too, have gained weight since 2002. It's just kind of jarring when you first see him to be immediately reminded of the fact that everyone in the band is north of 30.
- The production values were a bit subpar. For one thing, they don't have a band, just one DJ in the middle of the stage whose set up appeared to include one (1) turntable and one (1) drum machine. There were four reasonable lady backup dancers, but no more. There was only one screen on the stage right behind the boys, and there was no video set up to show them performing for people who were farther back. While there were some throwback moments when they would show old picture of them, the screen mostly broadcast the following: lyric snippets, generic pictures of things like clouds and skylines, random neon light generations.
Highlights!
- The Backstreet Boys are amazing. They totally know why their audience is there and play to it one hundred per cent. While they did play some post-2001 music, they mostly didn't. There's no false pretenses here that they continue to be a legitimate musical act who are constantly gathering new fans. They know this is a nostalgia tour and they work it. I had also completely forgotten how many hits they had that I know all the words to. I would estimate that I spent 80 per cent of the concert singing, as did everyone else. When I got home, I Wikipedia'd all the singles they had released. The only pre-2001 one I don't think they did was Get Down, which makes 13 songs I love and know the words to. That's worth the price of admission any day.
- Everyone in the band was actually singing. There was no lipsynching whatsoever, as evidenced by when the power went out and you could still hear the tinny backup music playing, sans vocals. It was legit impressive, considering they also had choreographed dancing for every single song. They've all got good voices, though in my opinion AJ's stands out as the strongest, with Brian running a close second.
- The dancing was not great. But it was awesome that it was constant and they were all super into it.
- Brian's son, who appears to be about 8, introduced the band and it was fricking adorable.
- Nick Carter, who was never anywhere near my favourite in the 90s for his floppy hair and simpering plays to the camera, grew up to be one fine looking individual. That's just a fact.
- The point in the evening where they played a snippet of the song If You Want it to Be Good Girl (Get Yourself a Bad Boy) and Jen turned to me and said "I learned the word 'innovative' from that song."
- There were about five costume changes, and while they were backstage changing, they played these weird videos where each boy had been inserted into a movie (for the record, Howie into Fast and Furious; AJ into Fight Club; Brian into Enchanted and Nick into the Matrix). I considered making this a lowlight, but it was actually pretty funny and entertaining. The best, by far, was Nick's, which managed to work in an N'Sync reference.
I think the thing that sold the concert the most, in the end, was how much fun they all seemed to be having. There was the potential here for this to be a pathetic kind of circus freakshow, or a clear bid by waning stars to do nothing more than earn money, but it was nowhere near any of those things. There was no embarrassment on their part for having been, or being, a boy band, there's no Justin Timberlake-style aspirations to be taken "more seriously" or anything like that. They love what they do, they love that we all love it, and it was great. The energy level on the stage was off the charts, the dancing, if not always in sync, was bouncy and constant and the crowd ate it all up and fed it back to them. See, look how happy they all look!
In conclusion, if you have the chance to hit up this tour, especially with a friend who has no ironic intentions whatsoever and just wants to sing along and dance, I completely and unreservedly recommend it.