TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/112089/11208900.022

Text File | 1990-09-19 | 4KB | 65 lines

MUSIC, Page 89

Fresh Faces from Beantown

Boston's New Kids on the Block lock up the charts

By Jay Cocks


    Born to be hated: fresh-faced white boys, copping black street
attitudes, co-opting black dance sounds, style and slang. They
produce Reddi Wip pop music that comes out of nowhere but sells a
cumulative 7 million on two albums, scoring with five hit singles
(Cover Girl is currently No. 2), while the R. and B. brothers still
struggle for the mainstream breakthrough.

    The New Kids on the Block are commercial product all right,
right down to the heels of their felony flyers. Fast-food Princes,
Jack-in-the-Box Jacksons, rappers with no nutritional value. Right.
They're also pretty good and, of course, just plain pretty. Their
just released Merry, Merry Christmas is a Yuletide celebration that
sounds snappy while simultaneously evoking the innocent pleasures
of mistletoe and holly. All the things that hard rap never is, but
those 7 million record buyers apparently yearn for it to be: safe,
snug and (if you listen close), just a little smug. This is one key
to the Kids' success. Parents are perpetually sweating about
rap-smitten, rock-blitzed offspring going to concerts and mixing
it up with gold-chain snatchers and drug vendors. Little chance of
that on any block where the New Kids reign.

    They are as scrubbed up as the Bay City Rollers and as menacing
as lap cats. So what could be their main "dislikes," as listed,
fan-mag style, on their 1986 debut album? Jonathan Knight, 20, and
Danny Wood, 20, say "prejudice"; Donnie Wahlberg, 20, mentions
"war," and Joseph McIntyre, 17, nominates "poverty." Jordan Knight,
19, Jonathan's younger brother, plumps for "all basketball teams
except the Celtics." There, then. You wouldn't mind if your
daughter married a New Kid, unless, of course, you're a Lakers fan.

    "We never got together and said we were going to be good role
models," says Donnie. "When we say no to drugs, it's from seeing
people around us using them." The Kids all hail from Dorchester,
a blue-collar section of Boston where the street action can run
pretty heavy. Maurice Starr, 35, the drummer and producing whiz who
put the Kids together in 1985, comes from neighboring Roxbury,
where the streets are definitively mean. He has produced all the
Kids' records, writes much of their material and commands the
instrument work ("All instruments played or programmed by Maurice
Starr" reads a large credit on the Hangin' Tough album). His gifts
give the Kids a smooth buzz, but his ego increasingly gives them
a pain.

    Starr, who assembled the soul group New Edition (from which
the superlative Bobby Brown emerged), has the musical credentials
that the Kids still lack. "Our first album was a Svengali-type
situation," Jordan Knight concedes. "But on the second," Jon Knight
adds, "we told him stuff we wanted. We're from the streets. We like
music that is funky, with heavy bass."

    This week the Kids leave home (everyone still lives with his
family) for a five-month tour. Starr will show up only
occasionally, so the fans, Donnie thinks, will finally learn that
"Danny is a great songwriter, Jordan is a great keyboardist, that
I am a drummer and singer and dancer." Four years ago, Jordan
auditioned for Starr and got told, "Get ready to be great. You are
going to be the biggest thing in the world." Replied Jordan: "All
I want is a scooter." He got his wish, and then some. Just now, the
New Kids on the Block are hell on wheels.


-- Elizabeth L. Bland/Boston