One was the concert my generation had been dreaming of—the other, the “it” show for the children of people my age.
And they both occurred within 48 hours.
As evidenced by the eadrum-piercing squeals that surfaced as readily as the slot machine chimes outside, Big Time Rush was in the house at Foxwoods MGM Grand March 1. And they brought some friends with them, too.
The first, 15-year-old Jackson Guthy, has none other than Ellen DeGeneres to thank for the honor. The syndicated gab queen helped break him by inviting him to play on her show after hearing some of his music on the Internet. And while it wasn’t exactly heavy lifting for any male with a mic that evening to garner the aforementioned squeals at will, Guthy’s brand of pop rock proved sufficiently palatable.
Judging by both the rousing ovation they received upon entrance and the number of pre-teen girls wearing shirts in their honor, the next act, One Direction, arrived as a known entity that evening.
Britain’s answer to the boy band phenomenon, the mop-topped quintet had the look, the voices and even some bona fide industry cred in the form of a recently received Brit Award for Best Single of the Year.
Could these lads from across the pond possibly upstage the American headliners?
Rising up from below floor level amidst billows of smoke and pulsating lights, Big Time Rush emerged with the answer. As their anthemic hit single declares, “The City Is Ours;” that was the case in Mashantucket as the stars of the Nickelodeon show of same name made their way through crowd favorites like “Big Night,” “Halfway There” and the band’s theme song.
Whereas the fledgling One Direction looked tentative at some moments—downright lost or, at best, starstruck at others—Big Time Rush is a lean, mean, shriek-inducing machine adept at equal parts precision movement, acrobatics and assorted tomfoolery.
Sure, detractors like myself may say that the Big Time Rush experience is more an ode to execution than a music concert… not unlike a slick Broadway production.
“Even if you’re right, Dad, do you know what the script would look like?” shot back my 9-year-old, Emily, after that observation. “Slide down this pole, backflip across the stage and hand this woman a rose without ever dropping a note of your four-part harmony. Not a whole lot of people in this world who could walk in and do that.”
Touché, Em.
And—in what is perhaps a testament to just how far her idols have risen—Big Time Rush has already signed on for another New England play. This time, they’ll be upsizing to the 30,000 seat Comcast Theater in Hartford on Sept. 2.
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Two nights later, the Crawler was set to relive days of his own youth as he stopped in to catch a set of the much-ballyhooed Van Halen reunion tour as the little party band from Pasadena invaded the Mohegan Sun Arena.
And as someone who has now seen the revived Roth-era shows three times, I’d say the tale of the tape is, “As goes Dave goes the show.”
So how has the now 56-year-old “Diamond” one fared for lo, these many years? Well, the high kicks ain’t quite as high as they used to be. The splits not nearly as low. His trademark howl, all but a memory.
But as they said in his infamous “Just A Gigolo” video in 1985, Roth’s got “charasma.” And, just as a wily, veteran pitcher who can no longer blow batters away with speed now paints the corners—and sneaks in a spitter or two—to get you through the inning, Roth now leans on his showmanship to coast through the verses, then gets propped up by piped-in or band-generated backgrounds in the choruses.
It works, and whether it’s Van Halen chestnuts like “Unchained” or “Girl Gone Bad” or new tracks “Tattoo” and “She’s The Woman,” Roth doesn’t play favorites—he’s just as apt to misplace the lyrics to either.
If anything, the current trek galvanizes the legacy of the band’s namesake brother-battery of Eddie and Alex Van Halen, both of whom haven’t lost a lick.
Send correspondence to Nightcrawler, P.O. Box 427, Somers, CT 06071; fax to (860) 394-4262 or email garycarra@aol.com.
