New Kids on the Block

The New Kids on the Block were among my first exposure to music at all, a neighbor turned bully and tormenter I had was a NKOTB fan and that is and was the only good thing about her. Just to sidetrack for a minute nowadays anytime I see Perez Hilton I see this perra but that’s neither here nor there. Back to NKOTB I did like them not because useless liked them but because I actually did like them. They did have and still do have good songs such as Please Don’t go girl, Hangin Tough, The Right Stuff, Step by Step these are just a few of their biggest hits that come to mind as well as after their hayday they did put out an album in the mid 90’s with a single called “Dirty Dawg” which is a jam in it’s self. To me New Kids on the Block along with other boy bands like New Edition, Menudo, Boyz II Men were pioneers of the Boy Bands and I guess that you can count The Beatles as the earliest Boy Bands but with them all of the members played their own instruments and sang too.

In a way I guess it is safe to say that I did have some New Kids on the Block music in the form of a video tape they had put out called “Hangin’ Tough”, I would love watching that video over and over again and I would go and pretend like I was on a stage on the back porch and the deck and that was cool. I would even take three stools and put together a make shift stage along with the Peavey Mic and amp that my father and grandmother had bought for me. I would go over to you know who’s house and she had wall to wall cover in her room with New Kids on the Block cuts out from Teenage magazines of the time like Bop and Teen Beat among others. Jordan Knight was my favorite NKOTB member I mean because it’s an unwritten law that if you like a boyband you almost automatically have to have a favorite member of the band.

They had their own comic book which was a cross promotion with Ritchie Rich and a saturday morning cartoon too. Among the merchandise that I had among your standard merchandise were a blanket, a lunchbox, two or three books, a wristwatch, trading cards, dolls, a stage, action figures, and all of the dolls. Till this day I still like them because they were the total package and they had great and memorable songs as well as their style and fashion sense was on the money. I remember when the group was going to do a concert called “Magic Summer” directly from Orlando Disney World and some of the promotion was McDonald’s was handing out New Kids on the Block posters with your order. So I wound up missing the concert because the minute or two into the show the power and the electric in the house went out and didn’t come back on until the next morning. I also had a bookbag just to sidetrack I just remembered to mention that.

Another reason that I always liked New Kids on the Block is because they were tough, original, organic, and nothing manufactured about them at all and also they had their own sound. They represented where they came from the tough streets of Boston. A gym teacher had a couple of NKOTB posters and me and this other kid had to do athletic challenges so that we could get a poster she had in her office and we did and at the end we walked away in separate directions with cool posters and that was the first time I felt a sense of accomplishment.