New Kids On The Block Cancel Australian Tour

NO Kids On The Block
Full Service FAIL
New Kids On The Block have cancelled their Australian tour.
AND I AM ROPABLE.
Donnie Wahlberg has left a nice blog on their website to explain why.
“Like many of our fans down under we too are saddened,” he writes. “Australia has always, ALWAYS, been one of our favorite places to travel to. And quite honestly we tried very hard to make it work. However we are, in fact, in the middle of a worldwide recession and we just cannot make it work. That is the simple truth.”
He then promises: “We can only assure you that when the recession’s stranglehold on the world’s economies eases up a bit we will find a way to make this work.”

Well, that might be fair enough DDub, but let’s break a few things down:

* Ticket prices for the shows were too high (the average price was $125, up to $175). Their fans are now in their late twenties and early thirties and plenty are pumping out kiddies. I had four (count them!) friends who were eager to go but balked at the price.

* The venues were too big (in Sydney they were set to play Acer Arena, rather than the more sensible Entertainment Centre).
* The group refused to do any promotional interviews. Who launches a massive tour in this day and age and refuses to speak to media? I mean, there are five of them. If they set aside an hour or so each they could have knocked over half the outlets in the country. It's not 1990 any more, bitches – you gotta do promo! Would it have saved the shows? I don’t know, but it seems like a pretty simple thing to do, no?

They also refused to do Australian promo when they released their rather good new album The Block. Why? Needless to say, despite duets with Lady GaGa and the Pussycat Dolls, it didn’t exactly bother the charts.

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And while you might think they needed big budgets and staging to put on their all-singing, all-dancing spectacular, The Sun’s review of their Manchester gig would suggest otherwise.
“While the likes of Kylie Minogue, Coldplay and Kanye West blow the budget with dazzling audio-visual spectacles … [NKOTB’s] stage was almost barren, with just a raised walkway and rather limp hydraulic platform that the lads gyrated on from time to time.”
As you may be able to tell, I am a little disappointed. It would have been awesome to see the show and while Donnie says differently, I do doubt they’ll make it here again.
BAH!

PS: I just got slagged by crazy NKOTB fans on Twitter for tweeting “Lazy, selfish @nkotb can bite my ass for cancelling their Australian tour. You heard me ddub! BITE IT!”
Apparently “true fans” are mindless zombies who just write gushy tweets to Jon Knight and aren’t allowed to question their idols. A bit like Nazis, but with scrunch perms. Hey, I have the NKOTB dolls blockheads, back off!
Also, I would have written “arse”, but I was concerned Donnie wouldn’t understand.

Scott Keenan
Them Dirty Dawgs o’clock