NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK with 98 DEGREES and BOYZ II MEN at the Air Canada Centre, Sunday, July 28. Rating: NN
The New Kids On The Block hadn’t even got through one song before Donnie Wahlberg – in a real rock star move – whipped off his white jacket and threw it onto the ACC stage, revealing his hooded muscle T-shirt below. This one act pretty much sums up a New Kids On The Block concert in 2013.
In 25 years, the ACC’s 14,000-odd NKOTB fans have grown into adult women. So why can’t the five New Kids act like grown men? Instead of performing Hangin’ Tough, Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time) and Step By Step in some remotely innovative, mature, self-respecting way, NKOTB relied on recycled dance moves and Chippendales antics.
Jordan, Joey and Donnie do all the heavy lifting performance and banter-wise. Their live singing isn’t bad actually, but boy does it look like hard work (Joey sang with such anguish he could have replaced Eddie Redmayne as Marius in the screen version of Les Mis). Danny and Jonathan contribute very little the Package Tour might as well use their salaries toward some interesting set pieces or to pad out a skimpy, four-man backing band.
Donnie lost any points he gains for being the most naturally charismatic for also being the most uncomfortably and overtly sexual – revealing his ass crack, fondling himself, and, at one point, lying down onstage and kissing a fan on the lips.
Awkward.
Openers Boyz II Men provided the only moments of musical legitimacy, fitting just a few of their record-breaking singles into a sparse 35-minute set: On Bended Knee, Water Runs Dry, End Of The Road. It’s a crime that the bestselling R&B group of all time had to perform before late-90s nobodies 98 degrees, who, at one point, brought three women and one nine-ish-year-old girl onstage to serenade in the most creepy way possible, whilst sporting matching white singlets: the cheap, see-through kind you find in a GT Boutique three-pack.
But, to be fair to Nick Lachey and co., they had no choice: “It’s only by looking deep, deep into their eyes that we can sing this song,” one of the irrelevant Lachey relations or lookalikes said before launching into one of their irrelevant radio hits. I had to excuse myself and do a lap around the ACC.
