Those of you that follow me on Twitter will know that I have a rather unhealthy, um, enthusiasm for former 80's/90's boybander Jordan Knight. For the uninitiated, let me jog your memory...
Meet Jordan.
That's him in 1999, busting out some moves at the local fun-fair trying to impress a girl that has fashioned a bumble bee into hat. So cruel! Others of you may know him as one of the 5 members of 80's uber boy-band New Kids on the Block.
OK, enough with the history lesson. So, last week I took my obsession international and headed across the Atlantic once again to see the Canada leg of Jordan's solo show, Live and Unfinished.
Arrival at Pierre Trudeau airport in Montreal was traumatic to say the least. After a steeper than usual descent in the plane, which had me grasping the arms of my chair and reciting the Lords prayer, Captain Kangaroo bounced us down the runway as a passenger behind me proceeded to throw up. I immediately regretted paying the extra £50 for the fire exit seat as the probability of me actually having to save peoples lives by activating the door flashed before my eyes. I couldn't wait to get out of this flying and now vomit ridden tin can of doom. Next up was Immigration. That's always a fun time when have a passport that looks like mine. Bangkok - Amsterdam - Colombia - Bangkok. Hmmmmmm. After a million questions about the purpose of my visit, who my friends were, where they lived, what my job was, how many times I empty my bowels per week, I was let through. On to the baggage belt. Is there anything more rage inducing than waiting for your bags? 30 minutes later, when my fellow captives on the tin can of doom had happily collected their bags and waltzed off to start their vacations, I was still waiting for mine. There were like 10 of us left, all looking at each other with panic in our eyes. I was convinced my bag had gone to South America. I kept visualising my Jimmy Choos being traded for crack somewhere in a favela in Sao Paulo.
I won't bore you with the details of my vacation which mainly consisted of shopping, listening to Jen grind her teeth, eating smoked meat sandwiches, watching General Hospital and getting bitten on the nose by a dog. lol! Yes, whilst at MC's mom's house I was introduced to Dave, the cute chiuaua. As I sat there pondering why you would call a dog Dave and stroking its little floppy ears everyone was saying 'Oh, he loves you! He doesn't normally like strangers'. Just call me Dr Doolittle. Loved by all animals. As I got comfortable with Dave, I asked if I could give him a hug. Big mistake! As Dave was forced against his will to leave his owner and sit betwixt my thighs he went from cute to Luficer in approximately 3 seconds. Trashing around, trying to escape and this culminated with him biting my fucking nose. LMAO! Thank God the little shit has no teeth. This was not the first time I would encounter a crazy bitch that week, although the ones that followed didn't try and bite my face off. ;-)
Finally Wednesday arrives! That night was the show in Ottawa. After making up a series of elaborate lies to get the day off work, the three of us piled into Jen's car and set off on the 2 hour trip from French Canada to English Canada. Once we got out of Montreal, we were into the wilderness where Starbucks are about as rare as an STD free prostitute. Gasping for a coffee we eventually stumbled across a Tim Hortons where I decided that one donut would be enough to soak up the impending alcohol binge. I was wrong. As we got closer to Ottawa we realised that we would have no time to stop anywhere to change so we had to get changed in the car. If you were one of the people driving down the freeway that afternoon, apologies for gratuitous display of tits and ass.
We go to The Centrepoint Theatre in Ottawa about 30 minutes before sound check. Everybody was gathered in the foyer waiting to go in. We see lots of familiar faces...
First up was soundcheck! It started late and so was kind of rushed so we didn't get to experience any Rockstar training or indulge in much witty banter with Mr Knight. It basically consisted of Jordan shouting 'turn the vocals up' and doing a few high notes as the crowd got slowly intoxicated on poor quality, over priced wine and beer. I'm not sure why the soundcheck was delayed but as this was the first show back from break, I am guessing Jordan wanted to perfect his moves.
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| BAM BAM PREGNANT! |
The actual show was amazing! I'm going to write about it when I get to the Montreal part, as the Montreal show was a better show than Ottawa in my opinion.
After the show is was time for the VIP Meet and Greet. This was my first ever MnG so I was curious as to how these things play out. The MnG took place in what can best be described as an underground bunker. We were pretty tardy in getting down there so most were already gathered round the little tables waiting for Jesus to arrive. In he walks, flanked by Victor and a camera wielding Charlie. Jordan made his way round the room, talking to all the different groups like a true pro, smiling, accepting yet another perfume sealed love letter and giving just enough attention to the girls that go to so many shows they are essentially paying for Dante to go to Harvard, you have to admire the man. He's good at what he does both on stage and off. This was the first I had ever met the infamous Memphis Twins. They are like an urban legend so to experience them close up was wondrous! Say what you like about them, yeah they are a bit off the wall, yeah they may not dress as YOU see appropriate but they are harmless, sweet girls. I was quite angry to hear that another girl had made one of them cry in VIP by making a nasty comment about them. Let them be. The world needs characters!
The photo-op was pretty funny. In fact I don't call it photo-op anymore, I call it grope-op. It's the one time you get to have a sneaky grope and it not look shady. I like to go for the 'behind the back, lower torso squeeze' followed by the 'lingering arm rub' as I'm walking off. I'm thinking of switching it up next time and going for the 'nape of neck fondle' with a side of 'top of ass finger grazing'. After my little group had all had their photos and were sitting there with our roses, myself and MC decided to have a balls out rose fight and proceeded to bash the crap out of each other. As the petals scattered all over the floor I thought for sure Victor would be over to chastise us for making a mess and generally being 'trouble'.
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| Hey Victor? |
lol, so as we were on our hands and knees tidying up the dead roses we decided to get creative instead. 'Lets make a word!'. Before we knew it, 'We heart JK' was spelt out on the floor in rose petals. With 5 of us crawling around on our hands and knees, JK shouted over 'Are you guys playing Twister?'. Nooooo! But come and behold our fantastic creation! Over he came. 'I wanna lay down with my hareem of bitches'. He's a good sport is our Jordan!
The MnG ended with a kind of casual Q and A session. During this Q&A we noticed a guy, hovering menacinally on the stairs. He didn't look like a fan. He sort of reminded me of this...
Then out of nowhere in a rather panty wetting display of pure male testerone, the normally placid and personable Victor starts yelling at him. 'I told you, NO!!! THIS IS A PRIVATE EVENT!! GO AWAY!! I WILL NOT TELL YOU AGAIN!!' Yeah! Piss of moonbeam. And take your tinfoil beanie with you. LOL! It was hot.
As we left the venue we stood outside for a bit having a ciggie and saying goodbye to our friend Nat, who lives in Ottawa. A couple of fans, who shall remain nameless seemed to linger for a long time in the VIP area even after Jordan had left. Like he was going to come back, sweep them up in his arms and carry them off to the musty tour bus for some groupie sex. Guess what?
Now I ain't hating on serial offenders. I think its great that people support Jordan. We need more people to go to his shows and buy his music. However, if your face is popping up in EVERY SINGLE VIP photo session in the US and Canada, don't front it out like you are there for the love of the music. Don't even front it out that you are there to have fun with your friends, when you are standing in VIP on your own, talking to nobody but yet staring down all of your imaginary "competition". Remember kids, competition is created in your own head! I make a mental note for future reference to file these people under this category in my mind...
HIDE YOUR BUNNIES JORDAN!!! ;-)
The Montreal show had an entirely different vibe. The venue was more casual with tables instead of a theatre style layout which made the whole thing feel a lot more relaxed. Soundcheck was longer this time and we got to see the Rockstars audition. We'd been pushing for Jen to be one of the Rockstars all week, knowing that she caves to pressure easily. lol! After much jumping around when he was picking Rockstars, Jen made it up onto the stage. She did good! Displayed a sense of rhythm, didn't look too desperate, didn't chase him around the stage and managed to throw in Gangham Style. Awesome! To be fair, all the Rockstars were pretty good that night. I particularly loved the girl in the short purple dress. Underwear = destination unknown. I actually love people who just don't give a fuck what others think! 'I'm gonna be the Rockstar, I'm gonna wear the shortest dress possibly, and bitch I ain't wearing any panties'. YOU GO GIRLFRIEND!!!
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| Whatever, haters! |
So at 9pm Jordan takes the stage. Dressed in leather and wearing dark glasses, he appears from nowhere as Lets Go Higher starts to play. The hormonal Montreal crowd goes wild. Backed by his band Elevation Theory and two backup dancers that I lovingly refer to as Bert and Ernie, he belts out the song to the delight of the caterwauling females. I love Lets Go Higher! I love any song that has a dance, especially if its simple. This song has the finger bang followed by the body roll. I love a good Jordan finger banging. lol
We move into the slower part of the set where he takes to the keyboard to perform a medley of some of his best loved ballads.
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| Tender Luuuuuurve.... |
Never Take the Place of your Man, Broken By You, Tender Love and I Wish. I LOVE NTTPOYM and Broken by You. I am less keen on Tender Love and I Wish. I think I'm in the minority as those seem to be fan favourites. I was really happy when he added Separate Ways in during soundcheck, that's one of my favourites and I would rather hear that than Tender Love. Regardless, all performed beautifully.
I can't remember the exact order of the songs but soon after came O-Face. Always a crowd pleaser mainly because its about orgasms and involves Jordan crawling around the stage like a panther on heat usually clad in impossibly tight red jeans. Up and Down follows. Now this is probably my favourite song live. Upbeat, full of energy and includes yet more finger banging. Like A Wave follows sometime after. Not one of my favourite songs from the Unfinished album BUT, I love it live!
One More Night and Inside are also part of the set. Both great songs but again not my favourites on the album. LOL! I sound like I hate the album. I don't, its awesome! He's just chosen to NOT include my favourite songs but, guess what?
My favourite songs are Believe, Unfinished, Stingy and Rockstar and I can't help but wish that both Believe and Unfinished had been included in the set. Particularly as one of them is the title track of the album. Those are minor complaints though, its a stellar set that appeals to new and old Jordan fans.
Rockstar is probably the highlight of the show. I'm not going to try and explain it, instead, here's the video of the Montreal rockstars. :-) Yes thats me yelling like a banshee in the background. lol
Jordan Knight, Rockstar, Montreal
The set closes with Stingy, a personal favourite! Such a great song! The last time I saw this live it was on the NK Cruise and Donnie Wahlberg was there to sing his part. Unfortunately no Donnie tonight, he was busy combing Tom Selleck's moustache, so the crowd was left to improvise on the rap part. To be fair, we were more in-tune. haha!! Just kidding, love you Donnie! #loveeternal
After the show, we went to the VIP MnG again. Alot more people at this one but again he took the time to make everyone that attended feel special. As promised, I deployed the 'nape of neck' grope this time. :-)
After MnG, we were lucky enough to get invited to go hang with Jessie Labelle. Now, I'm 33 not 23. I'm old and I get tired and it had already been a very late night! To be honest all I really wanted to do was take off my damn heels, go home and slob on the couch in my NKOTB onesie. However, its not often you get invited to a party with a cute, possibly soon to be famous musician. So, we all got into Jen's 'shagging wagon' and made our way to Old Montreal trying to find this club that according to the GPS was in the middle of a river. Eventually we found the club and it was just the kind of place I hate! Busy, full of drunk people and sort of scary. We stood outside in the smoking area as we couldn't see Jessie and got talking to these two total nerds. They tried hard to get our digits and considering this was probably the first time they had ever spoken to people with breasts, they didn't do too badly. Sadly, their 'game' withered away like an erection in an igloo when Jessie came outside to get us. The nerds were smart enough to know that they could no way compete with the brooding rockstar, dressed in leather, being followed by a band of impossibly attractive people. Jessie kind of stared at the nerds. I wanted to scream 'WE ARE NOT WITH THEM!!!!', but I didn't. I felt bad.
So there we were. Us three and Jessie Labelle. He led us to the club area downstairs. It reminded me of Buffalo Bills house in Silence of the Lambs. lol!
We walked down a long brick tunnel into a dark, dark, smokey and musty room. 'All drinks are on the record label!!' wooooo! Well, I guess we should stay for one. Soon after we made a quick exit. After all, we had a brunch to prepare for in a few hours.
Saturday morning was brunch and my last day in Canada. And I was in a BAD mood! I can't function on 2 hours sleep without the aid of some kind of drugs. Decided against crushing a codeine pill all over my cornflakes to kill the GOD DAMN DRUMMER BOY in my head, in favour of just having a coffee served with a side of loud complaining, bitching and moaning.
When we got to the Intercontinental hotel we met up with Nat again and made our way to the brunch. It took us so long to find the room in that maze of a hotel that we arrived dead on 10am. Of course, we forgot that most Blockheads had probably been sitting in the lobby since 4am waiting to go in and so we were last to get there. The room had lots of round table that sat about 10 people on each. There were not 4 seats together on any of them. We refused to sit down, causing Victors vein in his temple to start throbbing. Eventually he gave us our own little table at the back. Essentially, he had put us in the naughty corner.
Breakfast was kind of suspect. As I stood in line with my little plate waiting my turn to scoop up these glorious morsels of culinary excellence, Marcus was hovering around the bacon. I think it was his job to check to make sure that no one was taking more than their allowance. I put one piece of bacon on my plate, looked at him, and then put another piece of bacon on my plate. I was going to go for a third piece but felt a comment of 'Oh don't even think about it bitch!'. I guess I was eating into his profits. Literally and actually. lol. I can't comment on this breakfast without mentioning the eggs. The eggs weren't so much eggs, more like yellow, eggy water. They were like a wet dream for the salmonella virus.
Despite all this, brunch was fun! Jordan did the rounds of all the tables, smiling, chatting. It was all very chill. One girl's not so subtle attempt to earwig on Jordan's conversations with other girls at different tables was reasonably amusing. Pretending your talking to the waiter, huh? bwahahaahaha! We see you!!!! When Jordan got to our table, he was talking away and then decided to apply chapstick to his lips. It came out a bit quick and smudged all over his face so he grabbed a napkin and started wiping it all off. A tiny piece of the napkin stuck to his face. How do you politely tell, your teenage crush that they have tissue paper stuck to their lip??
Finally it was photo time. They started doing photos from the front of the room so as we were at the back, we were last to have our photo done. The photos were being done in a little room adjacent to where everyone was sitting so when we were called we went through to the room. A couple of girls who had their photo done quite a while before us were still hanging around in there, doing a little MnG of their own with the line of people coming in. I'm not quite sure why you would stand there greeting fans after your photo was done other than possibly wanting to eek out as much time breathing in the same molecules of oxygen as him. It was like they were fluffers, making sure we were all suitably excited before presenting ourselves to the Aplha male in the room. Guess what?
LOOOL! ;-)
As we left the hotel that afternoon it was tinged with sadness. Another NK adventure over with and all that was left was to go to MC's, pack my suitcase and get on my flight home. As we drove past the entrance to The Intercontinental we could see Jordan's bus. We waved it goodbye and had a giggle at the bus stalkers pretending they were not bus stalking because they were hanging further down the road. We see you boo boo's. haha! Keep that crazy flowing! ;-)
All in all, a great show, a great time! If you can get to a Jordan show during his tour of Canada I would highly recommend grabbing your girlfriends and going. It's a fun time!
If you don't have a copy of Unfinished, again I highly recommend downloading it off of iTunes or at least burning a copy from a friend. The economy is in the shitter, I'm sure he'll understand. ;-)
Until next time Bloquitas x
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