Backstreet's back, good as ever

Backstreet Boys still got it goin' on.
The band of boy all grown up but still baby faced sweated and crooned their way straight into fans' hearts at a packed Rogers Arena. The quartet (fifth member Kevin Richardson left the group in 2006 to start a family), proved that they've still got the sex appeal that revved up every female teenager's hormones back in 1996 when they released their self titled debut.
It's quite amazing, actually: 14 years later, and all of those preteen and teenaged girls that pinned up Tiger Beat posters of Nick Carter, Brian Littrell, A.J. McLean and Howie Dorough (can't forget Richardson) on their walls have stayed true to the Boys.
The 20 something year old female fans were there in full support. Dressed to the nines, in sparkly shirts and stilettos, they brought their lungs and their tears.
OK, well the tears weren't of the waterfall variety that we look from Justin Bieber fans today. But they were there, waving from the corners of black lined and mascara coated eyes.
The group dazzled the audience for nearly two hours, playing all the hits to the audience's delight, as well as new material from their 2009 release This Is Us.
They opened with (Everybody) Backstreet's Back from 1997's Backstreet's Back album after jumping through a giant screen onto the stage. The boys pulled out some slick moves to welcome the arena. The screams were deafening.
The audience sang along to every single word. The lyrics to We've Got It Goin' On re-emerged from their collective unconscious. It was like riding a bike.
"Who's been to a Backstreet Boys show before?" Littrell asked the audience. He was answered by a million decibels of noise.
"Is it OK if we go back in time so you can help us sing some songs?" he continued, jumping into Quit Playing Games (With My Heart) and then As Long As You Love Me.
Even though they're one man down and a little rougher around the edges, the Backstreet Boys' voices haven't changed one bit.
They have grown with their audience, though. The concert matched the maturity of the audience, giving fans a trip down memory lane without being too cheesy.
The production values and visual candy have been stripped down since the Backstreet Boys concerts of yore. They threw out the excessive pyrotechnics and intricate choreography for toned down dance numbers and a more mature, music centric approach.
They performed each song harmony for harmony, lyric for lyric. It was like listening to their album. Nothing different. But that's what the fans wanted.
Although the members will likely never be able to shake their '90s boy band persona a la Justin Timberlake and rise to the same heights of success as they did ten years ago, the Backstreet Boys showed that they've got a love for their music and their fans, and they'll keep on singing Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely as long as the music world will let them.
I remember my dad once chuckling at my teenaged obsession over the Backstreet Boys in 1997. "They'll never last that long," he told me.
Um, Dad? I think they have.

Still fromt and center Backstreet Boys

Even as they make their way across the country playing a string of sold out concert dates, including two shows at the Warfield tonight and Monday, Backstreet Boys members seem more baffled by their enduring popularity than anyone else.
Or as Nick Carter, 30, checking in from rehearsals just a few days before the launch of the tour, puts it: "We can't believe that we still got it."
The band (which also headlines the San Francisco Pride event at the Civic Center today) may have sold more than 76 million albums and lodged eight albums into the Top 10 over its 17 year career, but these haven't exactly been boom times for the group that, alongside rivals 'N SYNC, dominated the tail end of the '90s music scene with weepy pop hits such as "Quit Playing Games With My Heart" and "I Want It That Way."
In 2005 since getting back together after stints in rehab and the bottom rungs of the charts with their respective solo albums, Carter and his Backstreet Boys bandmates - A.J. McLean, Brian Littrell and Howie Dorough (Kevin Richardson left for good in 2006) - have been leading a relatively quiet, sepia-toned comeback effort reflective of a group of men inching into their 30s.
Their songs no longer provide the soundtrack for school dances. Valuable wall space in adolescent bedrooms has been given over to the Jonas Brothers and Justin Bieber. And their longtime label Jive currently cut them loose.
On the upside, walking through the mall has become a much easier endeavor. "It is a lot easier," Carter admits. "People love us. They just don't know where we went. We get that all the time: 'Hey, what are you guys doing now?' Well, we're doing what we've always done."
At least the fans who used to camp outside the hotels where the Backstreet Boys stayed and obsessively vote for the band's videos on MTV's "Total Request Live" remain just as passionate about the band, even with the distraction of their own careers and children. "They're actually worse now." Carter says. "If they want a kiss, they're going to get it."

And there are a lot of them.
Tickets for the tour in support of the Backstreet Boys' most current album, "This Is Us," were snatched up almost as soon as they went on sale. "I think we ended up in a position where we should have been in bigger venues," he says.
The greatest hits collection, "Playlist: The Very Best of Backstreet Boys," released earlier this year, has been selling steadily. There's even a Backstreet Boys cruise, which puts the band members out to sea with its followers on a journey from Miami to Cozumel, Mexico, from Dec. 9 to 13 that's totally sold out. "The hard-core fans find us," Carter says.
The Backstreet Boys are only too glad to reciprocate the love. Even though they're playing to smaller rooms, their concerts are still stuffed with lasers, costume changes, video montages and, yes, even full scale dance routines for all the hits.
"We're not just entertainers anymore," Carter says. "We're part athlete now. We have to be to dance for 2 1/2 hours every night, especially at our age."
While no one expects any more platinum albums to arrive in the mail anytime soon, the band members haven't exactly scaled back their ambitions either. When they perform the hit "Backstreet's Back" every night, they're not merely offering up nostalgia but also hope.
"We look at every day as if it's the beginning of our career," Carter says. "We think that's what it's all about.