By Gabrielle Fimbres
PHOENIX- She’d been waiting for this moment, it seemed, all her life.
And now she was here, and had the T-shirt and the posters to prove it. Last Night Stephanie Collins was in the same room with the Backstreet Boys along with nearly 20,000 screaming fans here in America West Arena.
“It was worth all the wait.” said Tucson seventh-grader with her mom, Cheryl, and her 8-year-old brother Sean, at her side.
Down the row, 11-year-old Robert Hoffman listened to his favorite band as his dad, Bob, 49, danced.
“I like these guys a lot,” said the elder Hoffman. “It’s nice to see a nice, clean group.”
Robert, a sixth grader at Magee Middle School, said none of his friends believed he was going to the concert.
“He called all his friends on the cell phone on the way down here,” the Tucson dad said of his son.
During his favorite songs, Hoffman called his wife back in Tucson and helped up the phone, so she could hear some of the Backstreet Boy’s trademark love songs.
Listening to parents talk last night, the Boys are the Beatles, the Beach Boys and the Bee Gees all rolled into one. “They are awesome” said Mesa Mom Ruthanne McClelland, who brought her five children and her sister to see the show. When the concert sold out in less than an hour back in August, McLlelland was forced to turn to a ticket agency, where she spent “hundreds” on each ticket.
But for McLelland, whose children adore the band, it was worth every penny. “I was a Beatles freak, and I understand it,” she said.
Carolyn Keys and her friend took five girls, 7 to 8 years old, to the show each of the girls clutched handmade posters and professed their love for band members on their painted checks.
“It took them two days to make the posters.’ said Keys, 36. “With some of these songs, they don’t even know what the words mean. But it’s great to see how happy they are. It’s such a memory for them.”
Starting with the Boys’ grand entrance, where they reality literally flew through the air, fans were treated to nearly two hours of hit after, hit, along with fabulous dance moves and special effects.
Fans screamed wildly as each of the Boys took turns singing. Many in the audience held elaborate signs, and had the names of the Backstreet Boys written on their bodies.
The bubble gum pop group, which formed in Orlando, Florida in 1993 has become wildly popular in the last couple of years. The audience sang loudly to each song belted out by Nick, 19, A.J, 21, Brian, 2, Howie, 26 and Kevin, 28. source:www.tusconcitizen.com
Citizen Staff Writer
