Guys! You guys! Holy shit, guys: NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK and the BACKSTREET BOYS are teaming up for a headlining tour in 2011. This may be the biggest music news we'll hear this decade — it's as significant as a Smiths and Stone Roses tour, but with good-looking men instead of skinny nerds, and real music instead of goofy guitar shit. The joint jaunt will be known as NKOTBSB, which I guess means either New Kids on the Block Street Boys or New Kids on the Backstreet Boys. I like the second one, because it has just enough homo-erotic friction to do the line-up justice. The tour hits Boston's TD Garden June 4, and tickets are on sale now.
Yeah, but check this out: what if they added the Jonas Brothers to the bill to make it NKOTBSBJB? Oh, lordy, but just imagine! It's all a perfect fit. If a young lass got pregnant in 1986 to the thrilling sounds of the New Kids' "Didn't I (Blow Your Mind)," the resulting daughter would have been 13 or 14 in 2000, the perfect age to get knocked up while listening to the Backstreet Boys' "Shape of My Heart." That grandchild would now be 10, which is prime Jonas territory. You could get three generations of hysterical boy-band fans together under one roof!
Oh, and if the Jonas Brothers are too busy, you could swap them out for Justin Bieber without even changing the acronym. This is more than just a good idea — I am the world's greatest living thinker. Pay up, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation!
Oh, and speaking of JUSTIN BIEBER and underage unions: WYCLEF JEAN has a major problem with the supple-lipped boy Adonis. "I have massive beef with Justin Bieber," Wyclef told billboard.com. "My daughter is five, my niece is four, and the argument which goes on when they're in their playroom is about who's going to marry Justin." Wyclef is a reasonable man, and he certainly wouldn't harbor such hard feelings unless there were some kernel of reality there — I'm forced to assume that Justin Bieber has been hanging around Wyclef's house and trying to marry both of his child relatives. Stop it, Justin Bieber, stop trying to marry four-year-olds.
The music nerd in me (which takes up 82 percent of my body, the rest being reserved for long-term beef retention) is irrationally excited by the upcoming 20th-anniversary reissue of PRIMAL SCREAM's Screamadelica. Not only is this a chance to buy a great album, again (which I'm dumb enough to do), but the reissue was remastered by ace guitarist, My Bloody Valentine leader, and erstwhile Primal Scream collaborator KEVIN SHIELDS. He's a genius of sound! And he remastered the whole thing! Which means, uh . . . you know, when you remaster the thing. With the tapes. It makes the drums louder?
Anyway, in an interview with NME, Scream singer Bobby G. noted that the studio guys were similarly impressed: "Kevin's the one person in the world that all remastering engineers would hate to see walking into the studio. When we walked in, the guy nearly had a fucking heart attack!" Yeah! Freak those bitches out, Kev! That's awesome, even though I have no idea why they should be scared of you. Maybe they're worried you'll take 20 years to remaster the record, bankrupt the label, and never release it. Legendary!
