Bryan Horowitz

This was the last time it would get quiet all evening.

NKOTBSB w/Jordin Sparks
Izod Center
Tuesday, June 13

Better than: Sitting at home bitching about "manufactured pop."

It was 8:35 last night when the lights at the Izod Center went down, and it was approximately 8:35:01 when the screaming started. The loud, screechy, lusty yelling sustained itself throughout the opening credits for the show by NKOTBSB—the hybrid of New Kids on the Block and the Backstreet Boys, two "boy bands" more contemporaneous than collective memory might remember—and up until the two bands, joined as one in a Voltron of parethetical title asides and indelible hooks and proclamations that the ladies in attendance were all beautiful, appeared above the stage, looking deadly serious, staring stonily outward.

And then... the opening to Coldplay's "Viva La Vida" kicked in.

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The year in music, circa 2010, started at the Cake Shop, with a shred-down to the New Year courtesy of Siren Festival MVP-to-be Marissa Paternoster and her band Screaming Females. After a tour through the NYE fetes of the Lower East Side and Williamsburg, that night ended amidst a marathon show at Bushwick's Shea Stadium, right around the time the Blastoids' drummer poured paint on his kit and started splattering away.

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Still talking about sex, albeit very briefly. Pics by Rebecca Smeyne, more below.

Salt-N-Pepa/Naughty by Nature/Slick Rick
Wingate Field
Monday, August 2

"Y'all look like a free concert out here," notes Salt wryly, shortly before launching into "I'll Take Your Man" in front of, indeed, thousands and thousands of nostalgia-crazed people. Yes, it's a "Y'all remember this one?" sort of show, which is great, actually, when we're asked to remember stuff like "Push It," "Hip Hop Hooray," "Children's Story," and the dynamic public-speaking acumen of Marty Markowitz.

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Naughty By Nature
Southpaw
March 16

In middle school, an older female cousin of mine asked if I knew what O.P.P. meant. I admitted that I didn't. "Other People's Privates," she said. "Okay," I said, still unclear about it. How did one come to be "down with O.P.P." exactly? Was it cool or shameful? Had the acronym been in circulation before the song came out, or did Naughty By Nature make it up?

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