Title: Aaron Carter's winter games
Source: The San Francisco Chronicle
Date: February 25, 2002
Source: Daily Datebook; Pg. D1
Author: James Sullivan
Topic: Winter 2002 Concert Review
Pop star, 14, pleases young fans with athletic set
SOURCE: Chronicle Pop Music Critic
"The kid is hot tonight!" wailed 14-year-old Aaron Carter's flashy song-and-dance troupe Friday at the Compaq Center at San Jose.
It was a well-chosen cover of an old Loverboy song, one that was cruising the airwaves almost a decade before this kid was born. No one in the company seemed to flinch at the ominous next line: "But where will he be tomorrow?"
Teen pop idols, of course, have to wonder how long they'll hold favor with their peer-group fandom. By most measures, Aaron Carter -- kid brother of Backstreet Boy Nick Carter -- has already managed a lengthy career as a child pop star.
With three albums in his knapsack, he has grown in public from a towheaded, bowl-cut adolescent to the high-fashion teenage superstar who commanded the stage Friday.
"Aaron's Winter Party" -- everything is a party when you're 14 and famous -- featured an elaborate winter-wonderland set, with multilevel scaffolding covered in plastic foam icicles and backed by video footage of Arctic wildlife. The star of the show wore a metallic-silver outfit with a polar-bear overcoat, a thick stripe of eye-black lining his cheekbone, his ever-changing hair done up in blond Johnny Rotten spikes.
"It would look cute if it was shorter," said 14-year-old Nicole Pennes of Martinez, scrunching up her nose. It was a tiny quibble: She spent the night standing on her seat and craning her neck, excitedly plotting with her mom, Tina, how to sneak past security guards for a snapshot of her hero.
Whatever they thought of his new look, Carter's fans made their approval of his music emphatically clear. And what's not to like? A pillar of the Radio Disney playlist, Carter's hyperactive, ultra-contemporary pop songs, from "Bounce" and his version of "I Want Candy" to the basketball fantasy "That's
How I Beat Shaq," are as athletic and coolly wholesome as the kid himself.
Fellow youth-radio upstarts Lindsay Pagano and Dreamstreet opened the show on a bare stage, singing and dancing to canned music. Plenty of the glowstick-waving girls in the audience had a thing for the latter group, a boy band about Carter's age; some of them held signs pleading for the attention of a particular favorite.
"Greg, I'm a Slave 4 You!" read one.
But Carter was the obvious draw. A between-acts video commercial for his pay-per-view special elicited the loudest screams -- until, that is, he took the stage in person.
Given the blank slate of youth, Carter's handlers have been adept at synthesizing several generations of pop phenomena. On Friday, "Crazy Little Party Girl" ("a little blast from the past," said the host -- all the way back to 1998) was just the first of several songs to lift motifs from Prince.
With a live band of versatile guns-for-hire, Carter's songs included the chicken-scratch funk guitar of James Brown and an intro-outro habit of quoting old hits such as "La Bamba" or the disco smash "Got to Be Real." Wrapping up his own current hit, the obligatory love-struck ballad "I'm All About You," Carter gave a figurative Bay Area shout-out, nicking the chorus of Steve Perry's "Oh Sherrie."
His dancers, a photogenic, multiethnic bunch in a fashion jumble of new wave and ratty 1970s nostalgia, left the stage for Carter's version of "Imagine," which he warbled while working the keys of a white baby grand piano.
It wasn't exactly a highlight, but Carter's stage skills are undeniable. Last spring he was recruited to help salvage the faltering Broadway show "Seussical," and it was no fluke.
As a dancer, he exudes an agile confidence that is equal parts hip-hop choreography, skateboarder grace and swaggering end-zone celebration.
For now, his fans are his cheerleaders. "I'm not allowed to sit with her," said Hazel Malek of Santa Clara, whose daughter, Alexis, had moved closer to the stage. No matter -- Mom was enjoying herself just the same.
E-mail James Sullivan at jamessullivan@sfchronicle.com.
GRAPHIC: PHOTO, Aaron Carter sported blond spikes for his concert Friday at San Jose's Compaq Center. / Mike Kepka / The Chronicle
