On Anybody's Block is Where I'm Going to Be Rocking, G.
I can remember the exact moment when I first heard of the New Kids on the Block. I was 13 years old and it was midsummer and Please Don't Go Girl was on MTV, back when they actually played videos. I was on the phone with my mother, but I hung up without one word of warning just before the second verse. I knew, immediately, that divided attention wasn't good enough.
The late 80s and early 90s had been devoid of teen idols for girls like me--sure I liked Michael Jackson and all, but the thriller video was really scary. And a Madonna poster, circa Desperately Seeking Susan, had indeed taken the place of the crucifix above my bed years before. But she was slightly suspect, rolling around in those wedding gowns and leaking an aggressive kind of sexuality that never seemed to appear in the trashy romance novels that were the sum total of my erotic experience.
So I was adrift. Until them. Until the New Kids on the Block blew into my life, leaving behind them trading cards and sheet sets and beach towels and, unexpectedly, a few listenable albums. For years their posters were the first things I saw in the morning and the last things I saw at night. I wrote dreamy Mary Sue fanfic about them long before I knew what either Mary Sue or fanfic meant, and I was sure that Joe McIntyre was destined to be my one true love. The day my father presented me with tickets to the Magic Summer Tour's stop in Portland, Maine, was probably the happiest one in my young life.
(The concert itself was just what you'd expect: backing tracks galore and Donnie Wahlberg floating above the stage in a special effects harness, all experienced from the very worst seats on the outfield of the Old Orchard Beach ball park. But the build up, the build up was the real magic: all the fodder for the imagination one could ever hope for and so much more.)
I haven't thought about the New Kids, or my ardent adoration of them, for years. When I was a sophomore in high school, the posters came down. And although I bought their final album in 1994, it was nothing more than an exercise in nostalgia. Things got in the way--the hustle and bustle of life, and eventually newer, greater loves, both real and imaginary.
But looking back, those years of NKOTB worship might have set a pattern for the rest of my life: to paraphrase Butterfly Boucher, my heart is a rubber band that keeps getting caught on things.
Even now, almost twenty years later, I still get a pleasant thrill whenever my iPod shuffles to the opening bars of Please Don't Go Girl. I'm prone to abject love, and they were built for it from the ground up, after all. There was a New Kid for every girl--the wild one, the boyish one, the responsible grownup, the health nut, and the genuinely talented one. And if you're part of my generation, I guarantee that you filled in the appropriate names to go with each archetype in that last sentence.
When missaurora inquired after my New Kids music collection the other day, it was like a revelation. I listened to I'll Be Loving You Forever for the next two hours, and when I got home from work that day, I contributed $20 to the New Kids retirement fund by purchasing from iTunes both Step by Step and their first, eponymous album.
It's funny to listen to this stuff fifteen years on, older and wiser, yet somehow still completely defenseless against the power of their sappy attempts at blue-eyed soul. Initially, Maurice Starr was obviously desperate to turn them into the Jackson Five, starring Joe as little Michael. Only Joe grew up too fast and started to kind of suck, so the plan was all shot to hell. And Jonathan Knight could not carry a tune to save his life--his songs clearly required more cleaning up than Britney Spears at her worst. To say nothing about Danny. Did he exist for any reason other than the "sexy" spoken intro to the slow songs? And how does one show one's face in public after having sung Stay with Me Baby, Donnie's misguided, semi-racist foray into reggae?
It's easy to see why I would have loved them back then, though--I grew up on my father's old Motown records and say what you will, but it's not such a big jump from Smoky Robinson to the NKOTB oeuvre. The real question is, Why do I like them now? I can't tell if it's caused by our long history together or some ghostly shadow of my love for the band, but I've got to admit that I've been enjoying the albums tremendously. They're cheesy and formula and wonderful, and listening to them feels like coming home.
I read the wikepedia entry on the band today and was excited to find a song name I didn't recognize: If You Go Away. This, I was sure, would be my chance to find some proof. As a fairly sophisticated thirty-year-old, would I like a brand new NKOTB song? Would I feel it through every inch of me, like I feel Baby I Believe In You and This One's for the Children and The Right Stuff?
It turned out that iTunes, ever the enabler, actually had the song. (And many of the old videos, might I add.) I waited with bated breath for it to download, only to recognize it immediately: It's all velvety Jordan falsetto and Joe harmony and chiming instrumentation. Me likes, but me liked in the early 90s, too.
So I have no proof. Could these New Kids songs actually be good? (Well, the later ones, anyway. Even I can't defend Popsicle--sorry.) Or am I just wildly prejudiced in their favor? I'll never know for sure, but one thing I do know is that I picked wrong back in the day. Joe grew up to be cute and all, but that Jordan! He was a Taylor-esque superstar of a boy, a slap in the face to mediocrity, powerful of voice and beautiful of form. How did I miss a gem like him? And how can it be that he's not a huge success today?
The late 80s and early 90s had been devoid of teen idols for girls like me--sure I liked Michael Jackson and all, but the thriller video was really scary. And a Madonna poster, circa Desperately Seeking Susan, had indeed taken the place of the crucifix above my bed years before. But she was slightly suspect, rolling around in those wedding gowns and leaking an aggressive kind of sexuality that never seemed to appear in the trashy romance novels that were the sum total of my erotic experience.
So I was adrift. Until them. Until the New Kids on the Block blew into my life, leaving behind them trading cards and sheet sets and beach towels and, unexpectedly, a few listenable albums. For years their posters were the first things I saw in the morning and the last things I saw at night. I wrote dreamy Mary Sue fanfic about them long before I knew what either Mary Sue or fanfic meant, and I was sure that Joe McIntyre was destined to be my one true love. The day my father presented me with tickets to the Magic Summer Tour's stop in Portland, Maine, was probably the happiest one in my young life.
(The concert itself was just what you'd expect: backing tracks galore and Donnie Wahlberg floating above the stage in a special effects harness, all experienced from the very worst seats on the outfield of the Old Orchard Beach ball park. But the build up, the build up was the real magic: all the fodder for the imagination one could ever hope for and so much more.)
I haven't thought about the New Kids, or my ardent adoration of them, for years. When I was a sophomore in high school, the posters came down. And although I bought their final album in 1994, it was nothing more than an exercise in nostalgia. Things got in the way--the hustle and bustle of life, and eventually newer, greater loves, both real and imaginary.
But looking back, those years of NKOTB worship might have set a pattern for the rest of my life: to paraphrase Butterfly Boucher, my heart is a rubber band that keeps getting caught on things.
Even now, almost twenty years later, I still get a pleasant thrill whenever my iPod shuffles to the opening bars of Please Don't Go Girl. I'm prone to abject love, and they were built for it from the ground up, after all. There was a New Kid for every girl--the wild one, the boyish one, the responsible grownup, the health nut, and the genuinely talented one. And if you're part of my generation, I guarantee that you filled in the appropriate names to go with each archetype in that last sentence.
When missaurora inquired after my New Kids music collection the other day, it was like a revelation. I listened to I'll Be Loving You Forever for the next two hours, and when I got home from work that day, I contributed $20 to the New Kids retirement fund by purchasing from iTunes both Step by Step and their first, eponymous album.
It's funny to listen to this stuff fifteen years on, older and wiser, yet somehow still completely defenseless against the power of their sappy attempts at blue-eyed soul. Initially, Maurice Starr was obviously desperate to turn them into the Jackson Five, starring Joe as little Michael. Only Joe grew up too fast and started to kind of suck, so the plan was all shot to hell. And Jonathan Knight could not carry a tune to save his life--his songs clearly required more cleaning up than Britney Spears at her worst. To say nothing about Danny. Did he exist for any reason other than the "sexy" spoken intro to the slow songs? And how does one show one's face in public after having sung Stay with Me Baby, Donnie's misguided, semi-racist foray into reggae?
It's easy to see why I would have loved them back then, though--I grew up on my father's old Motown records and say what you will, but it's not such a big jump from Smoky Robinson to the NKOTB oeuvre. The real question is, Why do I like them now? I can't tell if it's caused by our long history together or some ghostly shadow of my love for the band, but I've got to admit that I've been enjoying the albums tremendously. They're cheesy and formula and wonderful, and listening to them feels like coming home.
I read the wikepedia entry on the band today and was excited to find a song name I didn't recognize: If You Go Away. This, I was sure, would be my chance to find some proof. As a fairly sophisticated thirty-year-old, would I like a brand new NKOTB song? Would I feel it through every inch of me, like I feel Baby I Believe In You and This One's for the Children and The Right Stuff?
It turned out that iTunes, ever the enabler, actually had the song. (And many of the old videos, might I add.) I waited with bated breath for it to download, only to recognize it immediately: It's all velvety Jordan falsetto and Joe harmony and chiming instrumentation. Me likes, but me liked in the early 90s, too.
So I have no proof. Could these New Kids songs actually be good? (Well, the later ones, anyway. Even I can't defend Popsicle--sorry.) Or am I just wildly prejudiced in their favor? I'll never know for sure, but one thing I do know is that I picked wrong back in the day. Joe grew up to be cute and all, but that Jordan! He was a Taylor-esque superstar of a boy, a slap in the face to mediocrity, powerful of voice and beautiful of form. How did I miss a gem like him? And how can it be that he's not a huge success today?