So yesterday your lovable Tweenage bloggers went to see Big Time Rush at Six Flags:
(Can you see us? We're on the left.)
Now, we've ragged on their musical abilities in the past. And the last time Becky saw them in concert was...not good. So we weren't expecting much from the band last night. We were just going because we love them, and hey, Six Flags!
You guys. They were actually...really kind of good? I know, we were surprised too!
I mean, the choreography and the execution thereof was subpar, as usual, but they were actually singing (even Nsync didn't always do that!) and they all sounded good! Even Logan! Even James, who was clearly too exhausted from running and jumping and "dancing" to oversing the way he usually does. It turns out we were right - when he doesn't oversing, he's got a lovely voice!
They even sat down and performed acoustic versions of three songs ("Stuck," "I Want to Hold Your Hand," which baffled the small children, and "Worldwide"). "Worldwide" is so much better when it's acoustic, you guys! They've learned how to harmonize! And Becky only wanted to stab James a little during "I Want to Hold Your Hand!" (She has Feelings about Beatles covers.) Also, they invited a little girl up onstage for "Worldwide" because it was her seventh birthday and sang it to her and you could hear little popping noises throughout the crowd as everyone's ovaries exploded. EVEN THE DUDES'.
It was also a pretty extensive set - they played everything on the album except for the two duets and "Oh Yeah" (thanks for that, boys), plus "Famous," "Any Kind of Guy" (really, though?), the aforementioned Beatles cover, and "If I Ruled the World." I consider 13 songs good concert-going value.
Other things to note:
Logan is still refusing to attempt to learn to dance. STOP THAT, LOGAN.
Kendall was wearing a boater and suspenders. Jess is torn between horrified laughter and kind of being super attracted to him. She's very conflicted.
Becky has not been giving James Maslow's hips enough credit. They don't lie!
CARLOS. Oh my goodness, y'all, Carlos Pena is a perfect human being. He had the best stage presence, he was completely adorable with the little girl, his voice is gorgeous and for once was free of all the post-production nonsense they slap onto it in the studio, he's the sharpest dancer, and he is THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN PULL OFF WEARING A HAT. We are both nearly 30 and we were chinhandsing in his general direction all night. CARLOS, YOU'RE THE BEST ONE.
There is nothing more adorable than flocks of children (of both genders!) running around a theme park in homemade BTR shirts.
In conclusion, Big Time Rush is actually kind of awesome live, and we are totally going to see them again next time they tour. But they should leave the hats at home.
(If you get the reference in this post's title, congratulations! You're old like me.)
As the ever more desultory posts here can attest, Becky and I really really like Big Time Rush. And though the extremely hilarious Erin Sanders (Camille) is our favorite BTR gal (so funny! so cute! so inappropriately hot!), we're also very fond of Katelyn Tarver (Jo), so when I heard she was releasing a single, I had me a listen:
And, you know, it's good. (Zing!) Neither the song or her performance are anything to write home about, but they're also perfectly respectable. I like it, and I'll probably get her EP when it comes out.
But it was hard for me to tell how good a singer she actually is, since the song isn't super challenging, and it's a bit autotuned. (Not hugely. But a bit.) So I went looking on YouTube, since most of the Nick/Disney actress/singer crowd has tons of videos of themselves singing Katy Perry songs in their bathrooms or whatever. Instead, I found this:
That's 14-year-old Katelyn singing on American Juniors, and being so cute I can hardly stand it. (Also, how did I not know this show existed? This show was made for me!) She's precious! But hm, who does she remind me of?
If you’re a regular reader of our extremely intermittent posts, you’ve probably deduced that we reallyloveBig Time Rush. So we were delighted to receive copies of Big Time Rush Season One, Volume One, which drops this coming Tuesday. And then watch them. Again. And again. And again.
Becky: My ever so patient older sister has now seen the eleven included episodes often enough that she has them memorized. (Don’t believe any complaints. She loves them. It’s not Stockholm-y at all.) Anyway. The DVD itself looks nice enough. The front cover is surprisingly serious for such a funny show, but there are grins on display on the back. (Inside is this, which is a lovely photo, but confidential to James Maslow: you can generally either have a sexily unbuttoned shirt or a sexily loosened tie, but both at once just looks kind of silly.) Copy-wise, everything printed on the DVD has a somewhat tenuous relationship to punctuation, and skews towards overuse the Dropped G of Not At All Awkward Coolness. The boys are “hangin’,” and “learnin’,” and both the cover and the episode summaries inside are painfully obviously written by an adult trying to sound like a tween. (Though maybe that beats the reverse, earnestly but incoherently written by an actual tween.)
Jess: As for the episodes themselves, well...they’re great. This is a review of the DVD and not the show itself, so I won’t gush too much about the content, except to say that Big Time Rush is smarter and funnier than pretty much any kid-oriented sitcom I’ve ever seen. As you might imagine, the video and audio quality are high - it’s not like much remastering was required. My only complaint about the way the episodes are presented is that each one is an entire chapter on the DVD, meaning you can’t skip halfway through an episode or over the theme song.
Becky: Aside from episodes, the main reason to buy a DVD is the special features. Unfortunately, the Big Time Rush DVD is pretty lacking in that area. There are exactly two: pop-up trivia for a single episode (“Break”), and a photo gallery. Now, our brains are the information-gathering equivalent of hoarders, meaning the trivia episode is basically amazing, but the gallery is exactly one picture of each band member, so that’s... not a huge draw. I assume the target audience for the DVD is probably not as interested in features as adults tend to be, so this isn’t actually a huge loss or anything; but, given how charming and goofy the actors are (and how there’s clearly already lots of existing backstage footage, since there’s plenty available at Nick.com), it seems like a lost opportunity. Alas.
Jess: One final thing that’s mildly annoying to your two too-old-for-this-show bloggers is that this is Season One, Volume One, and contains only the first 12 episodes of the first season. I’d rather have the whole season in one box. Also, this set retails for $19.99, which means that the whole first season will eventually set fans back about $40. If it came in one set, it would probably be priced closer to $30...but would be out of the target audience’s budget, where $20 is more likely to be either in their pockets or wheedled out of Mom and Dad. So while I find the two volume season strategy to be annoying, I recognize that breaking it up into two makes it more accessible to kids, and also admire the shrewdness of Nickelodeon’s pricing strategy. Well played, Big Orange Couch. Well played indeed.
Becky: At our other blog, Jess and I rate books on a scale of one to five cupcakes. Adopting that here, we give Big Time Rush Season One, Volume One a very solid and delicious four cupcakes. The few complaints we have are small quibbles, and probably wouldn’t bother the actual target audience at all. This is a DVD that’s 100% about the episodes it contains and, well, Jess and I and basically can’t say enough good things about this show. The inevitable Volume Two is already on my to-buy list.
Let's just start off with the big disclaimer: we love the TV show Big Time Rush. It is completely delightful, and well crafted -- and it's hard to separate Big Time Rush the TV show from Big Time Rush the boy band. But since they now have two real videos and their debut album (the creatively-named effort "BTR") debuted at #3 on the Billboard Top 200, they're also the biggest thing going in boy band-dom at the moment. So it's time to resurrect the OTWOBBW and do our best to objectively tackle the actual band in question.
Image: It's really, really hard to do this objectively, but flipping through the various promotional materials out there about the band, the image they're going for appears to be "fun-loving guys who are the best of friends and also cute." Since your humble bloggers originally fell in love with the Backstreet Boys and ‘Nsync because they projected fun-loving-ness, friendship, and cuteness, this is clearly a good angle to work. (And is the central theme of the TV show. Synergy!) They're always smiling and looking playful without looking dumb, and it certainly doesn't hurt that every single member of the band is easy on the eyes. Not even ‘Nsync had that going for them. 5 out of 5.
Archetypes: As in the show, when it comes to the actual band, James Maslow is very much The Heartthrob. He's non-threateningly attractive, and the camera just looooooves to linger on shots of his long eyelashes and rouged-up cheeks. I'd estimate he gets the most camera time in the videos. Coming in second, screen-time wise, is Kendall Schmidt, who presents a bit of a problem: the show gives the Kendall character to us as The Leader, but while that's fine for a Scooby gang, it's not actually a boy band archetype. Kendall's too old to be a Little Blond One and too boring to be the Bad Boy. After much thought and perusal of J14 images, though, we solved it. Kendall is The One Who Wears Hats, an occasional variant on The Other One archetype.
Like James, Logan Henderson gets to keep basically the same archetype in the real world and the fictional world; while he's The Smart One on the show, he's The Responsible One in real life. It's really just a matter of semantics. And Carlos Pena, Jr. is...well, his archetype isn't really clear on the show or in real life, but let's say he's some sort of hybrid of The Funny One and The Baby Brother and call it a day. (He's also our favorite, but more on that later.) 4 out of 5.
Music Video: Their two videos at this point are "The City Is Ours" and "Til I Forget About You." And they are actually both pretty good! In "City," you've got the boys driving around, then throwing a flash party on the roof of some random building, with lots of energetic teens dancing around them while they sing. In "Forget," you've got the boys performing at a stodgy country club, until they use a magic camera to create anarchic hijinks, and the video is complete with an intro scene of Kendall being dumped before the show. Both videos do good jobs of showcasing them as fun and attractive while fairly gracefully masking the fact that they aren't very good dancers. 3 out of 5.
Personality: In interviews, the boys make a big deal out of saying how much their characters and relationships on the show are pretty much based on the guys' actual personalities and the friendships they've developed since getting cast. Since we find all four boys delightful on the show, we assume they are delightful in real life, and all the behind-the-scenes footage we've seen has reflected that. 5 out of 5.
Oh Yeah, The Music: While the album is actually quite democratic when it comes to doling out solos (and also, we can't stop listening to it), the show itself is set on promoting James and Kendall first and foremost. And this is a problem for a bunch of reasons, but let's start with James.
We are certain somewhere in our heart of hearts that James Maslow has a lovely singing voice. It's just unfortunate that he doesn't actually use it. It's very clear that Maslow is trying his hardest to Sing Like A Popstar, which, unfortunately, he seems to think means Singing Like a Jonas Brother. If he would unclench at least some of the muscles in his body, stop singing through his nose, stop exaggerating all of his vowel sounds, and just sing, he would be a delight. But since he apparently won't do those things, he renders himself unlistenable.
Kendall, meanwhile, sings exactly like that guy in your high school who is super charming and a good actor, so he gets the lead in the school musical because he can carry a tune and won't actively hurt himself while dancing. Which is to say, he sings okay. This doesn't mean that he should necessarily have a career in singing, but he's not embarrassing himself, and with proper training he could reach Zac Efron levels of mediocrity (and hey, a non-singer acquitting himself well as a romantic lead in three musicals is a worthy goal to shoot for).* And Logan, with his pleasant but weak voice and tendency to go flat, sings like that guy in your high school who gets the secondary lead: the Kenickie to Kendall's Danny Zuko, the Riff to his Tony. (He's also often autotuned into oblivion. They all get the autotune treatment, but sometimes we think they just send Logan home and bring out his robot clone, Logandroid.)
But then there's Carlos. Oh, Carlos. (Please insert a million hearts here.) You guys, Carlos can actually sing! Like, really, really well! More than that, he can put across a song. When Carlos sings lead, our hearts go pitter-pat. Why oh why won't they change the band to "Carlos and the Rush?"
2.5 out of 5 (one for Carlos, one for whoever writes the mediocre but insanely catchy songs, and a half for Kendall, who really isn't that bad)
Bonus Hilarious Lyrics: "If you tell me where I'm waiting here/ Every day like Slumdog Millionaire/ Bigger than the Twilight love affair/ I'll be here/ Girl I swear"
Total: 19.5 out of 25. The highest score yet! Way to go, BTR.
* "Three musicals" meaning Hairspray and High School Musical 2 and 3, since Becky's dream man Drew Seeley does Troy's singing in the first HSM. Images from BigTimeRushTV.com.
So here's the thing: in the months since I first posted about Big Time Rush, I've come to really, really love the TV show. It's pretty much the only tween/teen show I point to and say, "No, it's actually good," as opposed to, "It's completely ludicrous but I can't stop watching it." (Though that's true, too.) I've got basically every episode of the show saved on my TiVo and have no compunctions about making people who visit my apartment watch them.
And then I found out there would be a BTR concert today. I was kind of curious, because boy bands aren't really The Big Thing right now, and I wanted to see how kids from their actual demographic respond to them. Curious enough to go, though? ... Well, yes, once I found out the concert was free. Jess couldn't make it, alas, so my poor sister agreed to go with me (though she insisted on pretending to be my mom to explain why she was there).
BTR, of course, was headlining this show, in as much as one can headline a free show hosted by the Macy's Back To School Sale. The complete rundown:
1) Victoria Justice, who didn't actually perform. She was the host, along with some guy from Macy's. Judging by her MC skills, I'm really, really glad she didn't sing. She was almost extraordinarily not good; she sounded like she was reading off a cue card, badly, and kept mumbling barely audibly, and failed to be charming or entertaining or even energetic. On the other hand, the guy from Macy's was worse -- he introduced her as Victoria Jones -- but not worse enough to make her look decent by comparison. Look, Victoria, I'm trying not to hate you just because I hate your show, but you're making it hard.
2) The first act was Internet Sensation Josh Golden. I had heard of him from a couple of tween blogs, which were pushing him as "OMG the next Justin Bieber!!!1!" because he was also discovered through YouTube. Now, I don't personally love the Bieb, but I can assure you, Josh Golden is no Justin Bieber. The best thing about his performance was that he only played three songs. The worst thing was that he played at all.
3) Next up was Cherice As Seen on Oprah and Ellen. From our vantage point half a block away and behind a bush, she appeared to be 10 years old, and so I was incredibly impressed by her performance. As it turns out, she's 18, not 10, so it was slightly less impressive, but I have to give it to her: the girl has a voice. I didn't particularly love her music, but I'm always excited when I discover a singer who can actually sing.
4) Which leads us to Big Time Rush. Now, I'm just old enough to remember the 90s creed that if anyone had ever heard of you, you weren't cool anymore; and the idea of being pre-packaged by The Man in any way was the kiss of death. And as I said, boybands haven't really hit this generation yet, so I wanted to see how people were actually responding to BTR as a band.
The answer is "adorably." There were maybe 500 people there, mostly tween girls and their parents. There were dozens of home made t-shirts and a couple of full on costumes from the show. Lots of overheard, "But MOM, I KNOW the show is free but we have to buy stuff at Macy's to get the pass to meet them! I NEED to meet them, Mom! YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND ANYTHING, YOU'RE RUINING MY LIFE!!! IF I DON'T GET TO MEET JAMES I'LL DIE!!!" Unwilling to fight 12 year olds for a good view of the band (what with being grown ups and all) we weren't nearly close enough to see the crying and swooning girls, but since we'd gotten there an hour early and the front section was already full of devotees, I'm pretty sure they were there.
In short, the crowd loved the band, and the band, to their credit, wasn't dreadful. They were lipsynching -- so far, nothing from their show has convinced me they can hit 4-part harmony live -- but they had more presence than I expected. They only did three songs, which Rachel rather cynically suggests was because that's all they've got choreographed. Since the choreography was directly from the TV show I suspect she's right. Their choreography wasn't terribly complex, but it was athletic and high-energy, and...
Look. There were four cute, non-threatening, clean-cut teenage boys*. They were (sorta) singing and dancing in unison. There were screaming girls and harried-but-patient parents. Their songs are up-beat and earwormy as hell, and that's all I could have asked. I don't think I'd have paid to see them (especially not because it was only three songs), but as it stood? Totally worth the hour spent standing outside Macy's.
Though it would have been a better hour without Victoria Justice and Internet Sensation Josh Goldsen. They were really bad, you guys.
So I've decided I should attempt to watch more Nick shows. With the exception of the odd episode of iCarly, I really haven't paid much attention to Nick in awhile; I tend to be entranced by the cracktastic stylings of Disney, and the way they promote their stars does its job in that I get sucked in and become fond. But there's plenty going on at Nick, so I figured what the heck and decided to watch the next Nick show I stumbled across. It happened to be Big Time Rush.
YOU GUYS, why didn't anyone TELL me that Nick was running a barely-disguised updated version of The Monkees? I love boy bands, and I love wacky hijinks, so it took about four seconds for me to decide I needed a season pass on my Tivo. I mean, come on! It's boys running around with cartoon side effects, and then doing choreographed dances and wearing wacky costumes! Their theme song seems to be primarily sung by robots, but that hardly matters, because YOU GUYS, THEY HAD TO SPY ON SOMEONE SO THEY HID BEHIND A SHRUBBERY WEARING TREE HATS. THIS IS MY NEW FAVORITE SHOW.
Also check out the theme song/music video, which I was going to embed, but it auto-started AND the embed code broke Blogger. Nickelodeon, that is very bad planning, boo.
The show also has most of the peripheral cast going for it; they range from unremarkable (the sweet but dumb mother) to actualfax adorable (the smarter-than-everyone-else little sister) to over-the-top but watchable (everyone else -- manager and his assistant, record exec, hotel guy, etc). There are some recurring girls in the background somewhere; I'd like to see them get larger parts to even things out gender-wise, but at least they've managed to make the boys' girl-craziness as non-skeevy as possible.
Sadly, the show is not without LOL Wacky Sexism. The subplot of the second episode I saw -- look, Nick has aired about six episodes in the last 24 hours, what do you want from me? -- featured The Gay One desperately wanting to see a sexy mathematician (totally not Danica McKellar, really) give a lecture, but it turned out to be at an all girls school. Naturally, he had to wear a dress and sneak in. I'm with them so far! But once he got inside, Not Danica explained how she was excited to be at a girls-only school because boys are so dumb and no boy has ever understood her book because they're all so bad at math! LOL. So The Gay One proclaims that yes, he is a guy who is good at math! So all the girls tackle him angrily, with cat meow sound effects. The cat sound effects would have bugged me on their own, but were actually the least irritating part here. What bothered me is that, in real life, we know how it works and it ain't like that. In real life, people still suggest there's an innate difference between men and women that makes women bad at math. Maybe the show thought reversing that would provide hilarity; idk, but actually, I found it belittling to a very real, very existent problem.
That said, if I can still watch Hannah Montana, an actually terrible show, despite its issues with racism and sexism -- wait, why do I watch that again? -- I can tolerate the problems with Big Time Rush for now, and hope that the show, still early in its run, improves in that regard. Because it was 90% charming to only 10% irritating (…okay, it was 60% charming, 30% old-school Hanna Barbera sound effects, 10% irritating), and for tween TV, that's actually a pretty good ratio.
(Can you see us? We're on the left.)
If you’re a regular reader of our extremely intermittent posts, you’ve probably deduced that we 
