By: Ben Clark

Ok, so I’m really looking forward to Lollapalooza this year—not only because the lineup is amazing and it’s just a really fun festival to go to. The main reason (for this blog anyway) is that as of right now in my life, my first and last concerts have been the Backstreet Boys. I can explain! …

Don’t get me wrong, Backstreet Boys were my favorite band when I first started actually liking my own music. [I was raised in the early 90s and boy bands were the bee’s knees, back off.] I would totally be lying if I still didn’t listen to them every so often if they come up in a shuffle on my iPod. I want it that way.

Any who, so let me explain why I saw them recently. A friend of mine, Matthew Fox, and I were handing out promotions for Howie D from BSB… (Yea, I know it rhymes. Awesome.) …You may be asking, “How did you get in that situation and what kind of promotions are you talking about, Ben?” Well! Your answer=delivered. Fox “works” (I wouldn’t call it work… it’s an on the whim, “hey I’ll pay you a little bit of money if you hand stuff out sometimes” gig) for a promotion company and he asked if I would like to help him hand stuff out for this show. Turned out I had nothing better to do, so I joined him. We get there and were told to approach Howie’s bus and some guy comes out and gives us 3 huge boxes of chap stick to hand out! Yes, chap stick! It also had a free download from Howie on the label, but I have to admit I didn’t listen to it. So we’re like, “Ok, whatever, looks like we’re going home with way too much chap stick than any human would ever need.” There was a 50-50 on people who thought that Chap Stick was the greatest thing in the world and they were pumped to have free Chap Stick! The other half said things like: “EW GROSS!” “That’s scary *disgusted look*” “Has it been used?” [sidebar, those people are dumb and I wanted to smack them…moving on] and the classic “No thanks”, then walking away talking to their friends how weird or gross it is that we’re handing out free Chap Stick and taking pictures of them.

That was all good and fun, but towards the time that the how was going to start, 102.5 The Party came up to us and offered us free tickets, so we thought, “What the heck…” We had slightly nosebleed seating, but it sounds good pretty much anywhere you sit at Bridgestone arena.

We get inside and ended up getting to see Jordin Sparks and some other chick I didn’t know that opened for them. Also, you may already know, but I haven’t mentioned that this wasn’t only a Backstreet Boys concert. They are touring with New Kids on the Block. So BOOM! Extra embarrassing! Truthfully though, there’s nothing like seeing a bunch of grown men doing silly dances while singing what they sing and also trying to look like tough guys. At times it was hard to watch, but that’s all the fun, really. I often recognized many what seemed to be Dance Central moves on easy (Dance Central is a dancing game for Xbox 360 with Kinect).

If I were to compare the two artists, (unbiased opinion), Backstreet Boys had way better dance moves and vocal abilities. Then when you look at New Kids, they’re getting pretty “Old Kids” if you ask me—time to retire, boys. There was also no comparison to the first time I saw Backstreet Boys. When I saw them on their Millennium tour, they flew in on hover boards, so enough said!

One more thing to wrap this thing up… Who’s idea was it to name the tour “NKOTBSB”?? Clever? I think not. Think about it for a second. “New Kids on the Backstreet Boys”—that’s the last thing they need to keep that masculinity they so obviously crave. Haha! Although, on the ticket it said “NKOTB BSB”, so whatever…

Here is a video that I was able to take of NKOTB, enjoy!

P.S. If you need Chap Stick, hit me up. I have plenty.

Ben Clark is from Nashville, TN. He's no writer, but graphic design and illustration is totally his jam. He absolutely loves Christmas - a lot (primarily Santa Claus), believes that waffles are far better than pancakes, and enjoys good music (also to share it). So, lucky you.