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Jason Janik/Special Contributor
Big Time Rush performs at Gexa Energy Pavillion in Dallas, TX, on July 14, 2012.
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Boy band concerts usually consist entirely of thousands of squealing girls and their suffering parents. But when Big Time Rush took the stage Saturday at Gexa Energy Pavilion, there was a new ingredient in the crowd: preteen XY chromosomes.
Sprinkled in with all the screaming girls were more than a few young boys dancing, jumping and singing along with the cute dudes onstage. To paraphrase an old commercial: “Girly, yes, but I like it too.”
The boy fans were in the minority, and by the time they hit puberty, they’ll probably swear on a stack of Xbox 360s they never, ever liked Big Time Rush. But for one evening, the two genders happily coexisted.
For those of you whose TV isn’t epoxied to the Nickelodeon channel, BTR isn’t just a boy band, but the name of a show following the fictional exploits of four hockey-playing hotties who go to Hollywood to form a pop group. Like the Monkees nearly 50 years before them, BTR is hip enough to appeal to grade school boys who haven’t yet learned the meaning of cynicism.
Still, BTR aimed its message directly at the little ladies. “Someone needs to take your temperature, because you’re getting hotter,” they sang in “Love Me, Love Me.” Lest anyone mistake them for shallow horndogs, they praised “What’s underneath your skin/The beauty that shines within” in “Cover Girl.”
As vocalists, James Maslow, Carlos Pena Jr., Kendall Schmidt and Dallas-raised Logan Henderson proved to be decent enough to sing large parts of the show live, sans tape. And their fizzy tunes were catchier than they needed to be, though not exactly original. The best song of the night, “Windows Down,” was memorable only for the guitar riff and “woo-hoo” borrowed (with permission) from Blur’s “Song 2.” Their versions of the Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “Help” were passable at best.
But like any boy band concert, this one was less about music than showmanship. The guys in BTR danced up a frenzy, smiled like they meant it and risked bodily harm by dashing through fans and singing “Halfway There” halfway up the amphitheater.
Better yet, they spent much of the show bouncing acrobatically from a trampoline anchored at center stage — a perfect metaphor for a band that’s risen like a meteor and now awaits its inevitable descent down the pop charts.
Source: www.dallasnews.com
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