New Kids on the Block? Pffft.
Okay, so maybe for all of my junior high years, I completely worshipped the New Kids. But so what? I was going to start high school and I had moved on to bigger and better things. Off with the Boston boys and in with, well, any boyishly-looking rocker with long hair, if one were to analyze my drool trails.
Blas Elias of Slaughter. Steve West of Danger Danger. Sebastian Bach, Nuno Bettencourt, all of these guys and more absolutely plastered my bedroom walls. Well, something had to cover them after I got rid of Danny, Donnie, Joe, Jon, and Jordan, right? But of all the wallpapering, there was one complete and utter god of lusciousness who took the prominent space overlooking my bed and everywhere in immediate eyeshot: Gunnar Nelson.
Ahhh, Nelson; who can forget the twin sons of Ricky Nelson whose waist-length bleach-blonde locks were a mainstay of MTV during the fall of 1990, reaching number one with “(Can’t Live Without Your) Love and Affection”? If you didn’t remember them for their hair, maybe you remember them for their clothing. Sequins and bright colors, sparkly dusters and bombast outdone possibly only by Elvis, it was certainly an eyesore and would cause most straight males’ balls to shrink sharply into their abdomens. But the girls! Oh the girls, and oh how they swooned. Overproduced and overstyled, they fell right into the teen dream trap.
What about the music? Really, they only had one album. Everything after 1990’s After the Rain was years after their success and completely ignored by the mainstream. However, their debut was highly successful with the single already mentioned as well as the title track and “More Than Ever.” MTV was spinning them so hard that they were nearly NTV; the disc sold a respectable 3 million copies.
Hindsight, of course, is 20/20; Nelson was utterly horrible. As a bright-eyed, newly-pubescent young girl, I stared longingly at their images while cramming my brain repeatedly with their awful, awful music. I can say this comfortably now as I’m sure I listened to After the Rain no less than twice a day for a year, yet I can’t remember more than half of the songs (and what I do remember does take a bit of strain and concentration). In contrast, there are commercial jingles from the same period that still randomly pop into my head, never mind better songs from worse bands.
Clearly though, one needs to be more than just pretty to gain popularity. Yes, “Love and Affection” was a decent enough song with a catchy opening guitar lick and memorable chorus. As for the other songs, well, they were lucky enough to follow the big hit and bask in the glory of the aftermath. I mean, wow, “More Than Ever” has a chorus of “Do I/Do I love you baby/Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah/More than ever.” The twins certainly weren’t Lennon and McCartney to say the least. Hell, they weren’t even Julian Lennon or Linda McCartney.
Still, they flew high, high enough to tour and make buckets of cashola from all the screaming girls. And where else should the boys have landed their tour in the summer of 1991 but in a small town in eastern Iowa? You bet your ass I was on the phone with the radio station almost instantly after they announced they were giving away tickets. Sure, I didn’t win passes to the pre-show party, but two free admissions to the show itself made my babysitting pocket squeal with delight knowing all of my cash could go towards merchandise.
I chose my best friend at the time, Terri, to go to the show with me. She liked Matthew Nelson, and I liked Gunnar. And let’s not discuss the 200 page fanfic I had written starring the two of us. The plan was that I would sneak in my little purple Vivitar 110 camera and covertly snap lots of personal souvenirs. I accomplished my smuggling by carrying it inside my jean shorts (which were hand-painted with the purple “N” logo wrapped in ivy), between my legs. A quick run to the restroom freed my prize, and we quickly dashed to crowd as closely as possible to the front of the stage. We did a pretty damned good job, stage left, smack in front of an enormous stack.
The openers were Enuff Z’Nuff, a band I had liked significantly enough to not just buy their first eponymous album with the hits “New Thing” and “Fly High Michelle,” but also picked up their second album, Strength, and fell in love with that as well. Imagine my desire to never bathe again when singer Donnie Vie reached down and touched my hand! OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG!
The crowd became a little more fierce before Nelson took the stage, as all girls wanted to be right up front and nobody else in hell was going to get further ahead than they were. It was quite the land of squish, but perfect for blending in for illicit photo-snapping. There was also one other little shenanigan I had planned: a few days before the show, I had written the band a letter about a radio DJ on a nationally syndicated program who interviewed them two weeks prior; he had been cordial and complimentary, but on the show that just ran, he sat and mocked Nelson with another guest, that ass. I named names and expressed my undying love while I was at it, then folded the letter into a triangle (football, anyone?) and was planning to throw it headlong onto the stage at the most convenient moment.
As far as the show goes once it started, the playlist was rather predictable; headlining with one album means you pretty much play your album with perhaps a cover or two, maybe a b-side if you have any. I’m fairly sure that every single non-interlude-type track was performed and maybe one cover. The b-side “Keep One Heart” was “debuted” at our show, as they “debuted” it at their previous ninety or so shows as well. I remember distinctly locking eye contact with Gunnar at least once, although considering the crowd, this was certainly my 14-year-old imagination running haywire. Everything was fairly non-memorable at this point aside from some bitch trying to snitch me out to security for my camera (I managed to wrestle it away from her and handed it off to Terri) and yes, the triangle note of doom made its way safely to mid-stage.
Post show, don’t you know it, I bought my commemorative tour t-shirt. Ahhh, white and blue and purple and swirly gaudiness, Nelson sure did fancy up my wardrobe.
The love for Nelson began to wane as more and more people mocked them, and their album was delayed longer and longer. Of course, this didn’t stop me from snickering like crazy when Gunnar’s engagement to his longtime girlfriend died when she discovered what a road whore he was. Anyway, in the meantime I was damn near bathing in Extreme and, later, Dream Theater; the pretty boys were completely left behind as they scrambled to not completely suck while their gimmicky look grew completely out of fashion.
And yes, the hair was a weave. It’s been long since admitted without shame, sort of like the once-taboo that was lip synching. Completely obvious, yet nobody would ever own up to it. Like we’re all a bunch of morons out here in the audience who have never conceived such acting and trickery. The boys have been known to be quite candid about their days in the spotlight as well.
As for me? The t-shirt is long gone, surely worn to death and secretly disposed of by my mother. I did pick up After the Rain when I purchased my first CD player that winter, but that was mostly out of some strange sense of obligation. It sold on eBay last year for a buck.
I would say RIP, but yeah, they’re still performing.
You know the time has come for you to face the truth,
–gloomchen
