Photographs by Angelo Marchini.
A sold-out crowd lined outside Lee’s Palace on Monday, December 8th to relive their youth watching 90s boyband group O-Town.
Having recently reformed after 10 years apart, with a new album, Erik, Dan, Trevor and Jacob headed out on a North American tour, minus their fifth member Ashley Parker Angel.
Taking stage first was opener, Todd Carey. He’s the guy responsible for that “Nintendo” song, which peaked at number 1 on the Billboard charts. Sadly, when he closed with it, no one in the room knew it. He did however, brought Jacob up on stage with for a cover of Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition”, which had the crowd of mostly women go crazy. He gave a nod to past boybands with a medley of The Beatles, Jackson 5, New Kids On The Block, Hanson, Backstreet Boys, N Sync, and ending with New Direction. He mostly played as filler, since it was clear that most of the crowd was just waiting for O-Town.
Running out on stage with their biggest hit, “Liquid Dreams”, the boys – or shall I say, now men, of O-Town kicked off with high energy. One thing was clear; they really must have missed the stage. However, it seemed that even simplifying the moves from the music video, there was struggle with breathing. Maybe spend a bit more time prepping for tours guys, up the cardio, and hit the treadmill with your songs.
In between each song, a member would talk to the crowd, at one point saying how three of the four are single, Dan is happily married with two children, and they were looking for some ladies to help drink some beer after the show. Everything they said was met with cheers from the packed room.
They took their time to give thanks to Toronto and Canada as a whole. Their first time going platinum was in Canada and their first sold out show was in Toronto. This seems to be a trend among boybands and our country since BSB holds the same record.
Even though anything they did was given a warm response from the audience, the ten years away from the stage really come into play. It was rough at times. Sometimes having one of them leaving the stage to what I could only assume was to catch their breath, or there was that time Jacob decided to take a whiff of his E-cigarette at the back of the stage. Maybe this was the reason they weren’t the top boyband of the 90s?
Their set included songs from the two albums from ten years ago and their current album “Lines & Circles”. They went into a weird ten minutes of covers that included Jay-Z and Kanye’s Otis, Macklemore’s “Can’t Hold Us Down”, Sam Smith’s “Money On My Mind” (boy did we get that) and Aloe Blacc’s “I Need A Dolla” (you don’t have to be so obvious”. When they stripped down everything and did a song acoustically, it was clear why they were hand picked by boyband mastermind Lou Pearlman.
Overall, Toronto seemed like a special night for them, saying it was the best yet on tour so far. As long as they’re having fun and the fans seem to be enjoying it, hey keep living the 90s dream O-Town!
