Source: San Diego Union-Tribune
Date: March 21, 2001

According to the calendar, March 17 was St. Patrick's Day. But a Saturday night's BACKSTREET BOYS concert, it was beginning to look a lot like Christmas morning.

Inside the San Diego Sports Arena, you have the excitable kids, bouncing on their chairs and jumping out of their skin. You had the slightly bug-eyed grown-ups, happy for their children but exhausted from the weeks of anticipatory hysteria that led up to this magical moment.

And then you had the presents themselves. Musicwise, there isn't much inside the BACKSTREET BOYS' teen-pop girl bag that is new or particularly thrilling. The ballads are mostly sweet and bland, and the upbeat dance numbers are a soul-free mix of digitized vocals and synthesized clatter.

As with all gifts, however, it's the thought that counts. And the five BACKSTREET BOYS wrapped their assembly-line tunes in such glitzy, extravagant packages and presented them with such care and enthusiasm, the content was mostly beside the point. A lot of their music is pretty forgettable, but during the first of two Sports Arena shows, the BOYS gave their fans a concert they'll remember long after the ringing in their ears has faded away.

After a brief set from KRYSTAL, a BACKSTREET BOYS protegee whose rocker-chick energy and furious piano playing gave her cookie-cutter tunes an intriguing edge, the Orlando-based quintet hit the stage with enough light and heat to battle a thousand rolling blackouts. There was video footage of asteroids hitting the earth. There were fireballs hitting the stage. There were flash pots spouting sulfurous smoke, and doodads shooting up fountains of sparks.

And in the middle of it all, rising from the depths of the stage in a cloud of dry ice, were the BOYS: NICK CARTER, BRIAN LITTRELL, A.J. MCLEAN, HOWIE DOROUGH and KEVIN RICHARDSON, looking like leather-clad extras from "The Matrix" and singing the six little words the 10,000-plus crowd wanted to hear.

"This one goes out to you", they chanted in "EVERYONE." Then they proceeded to repay the fans for either years of devotion and three blockbuster albums with a show guaranteed to leave them temporarily deaf and totally fulfilled.

Drawing mostly from last year's 8 million-selling "BLACK AND BLUE" album and 1999's 12 million-selling "MILLENNIUM," the teen-pop veterans blasted through a nearly two-hour show that featured 10 dancers, seven musicians, five costume changes, two stages, and a collection of hits sung with enough sweat and sincerity to give the outsized show something resembling a heartbeat.

"EVERYONE" slammed directly into "LARGER THAN LIFE," a revved-up dance tune co-written by LITTRELL and Max Martin and Kristian Lundin, the Swedish team behind many of *NSYNC and BRITNEY SPEARS' hits. Like "EVERYBODY" (from the group's 1997 self-titled debut), these tunes are pelvic-thrusting crowd-pleasers, but the BACKSTREET BOYS are at their best when they are crooning their hearts out. The fireworks were fun and the goofy backstage video was amusing enough, but the group's starry-eyed renditions of "SHOW ME THE MEANING OF BEING LONELY," "SHAPE OF MY HEART," and the terrific "I WANT IT THAT WAY" were the kind of calculated show stoppers that actually get under your skin.

Like last year's *NSYNC extravaganza at the Sports Arena, too much of Saturday's concert was overamplified and musically undernourished. The BACKSTREET BOYS need more songs they can sink their teeth into, and the fans deserve more than teen-pop's empty-calorie feast -- even when it's served with a smile and all the trimmings.

Karla Peterson can be reached by phone, (619) 293-1275; fax (619) 293-2436; mail, PO Box 120191, San Diego, CA 92112-0191; and e-mail, karla.peterson@uniontrib.com

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