New Kids On The Block back on tour

Jan. 20, 2015 9:14 AM PT

New Kids On The Block are reuniting yet again, this time for a 2015 North American tour that begins May 1 in Las Vegas and concludes July 2 in Buffalo, N.Y. It includes a May 11 show at SDSU’s Viejas Arena.

Dubbed “The Main Attraction,” the tour will feature opening sets by TLC and Nelly. TLC recently announced it will be recording its final album and has launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund it. NKOTB, as New Kids is known by many fans, has kicked in $10,000 to help underwrite the album, bringing new meaning to the phrase “pay to play.”

The veteran teen-pop vocal quintet announced the tour Tuesday on “Good Morning America.”

“We’ve decided to reform again - not that we’ve broken up, but we’re gonna go back on tour this summer,” NKTOB member Donnie Wahlberg said on the show.

Alluding to the fact that the group’s once teen and tween-aged fans are older now, Wahlberg disclosed a more adult tone for the production for the upcoming NKTOB tour. Specifically, the stage set up will include bar seats on the perimeter of the the stage.

“Our fans can literally sit right on the stage and converse with us, hang out and heckle us, and we can share their snacks and drinks if we want to,” he said. No word yet on what happens if any fans become tipsy and start acting out.

Tickets for all “The Main Event” tour dates go on sale Jan. 31 at Ticketmaster. A pre-sale for American Express card holders begins Friday. a fan club pre-sale begins Thursday.

As of this writing, the San Diego tour stop at Viejas Arena does not yet appear on the websites for Ticketmaster or Viejas Arena. However, the San Diego show is listed on the group’s website.

Read the full story on utsandiego.com

Source: DiscoverSD

Music

George Varga

San Diego Union-Tribune music critic George Varga began drumming in rock bands at 12 and writing professionally about music at 15. A Louisiana native who grew up mostly in Germany, Varga has earned three Pulitzer Prize nominations for his writing at the U-T and is a voting member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In addition to providing live coverage of the Grammy Awards and festivals from Coachella and KAABOO to the 1994 edition of Woodstock, he has interviewed everyone from Miles Davis, Britney Spears and (over a game of chess) Ray Charles to Willie Nelson, Kanye West and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Anthony Davis. A triple first prize-winner for criticism and arts writing at the 2022 San Diego Press Club awards and a double first prize-winner at the 2022 San Diego Society of Professional Journalists awards, Varga is also a contributing writer for Jazz Times magazine and has written for Billboard, Spin and other publications. After attending San Diego City College and San Diego State University, he created and taught the 2002 UC San Diego Extension course, “Jazz in a Post-Ken-Burns World.” Varga has written liner notes for more than a dozen albums, including by jazz sax greats James Moody and Michael Brecker, and contributed two chapters to the book, “Dylan: Disc By Disc.”