I was watching CNN this morning, a sad little morning ritual these days (mostly an excuse to sit on the couch in my dressing gown sipping tea and refusing to greet the day), and I was amused and a little nauseated to see that the original whiter-than-white boy band, New Kids on the Block, are reuniting. Yes, it’s true. Despite the fact that they’re all pushing 40 and look like insurance salesmen, they’re giving it another go.

I get that a lot of the old super groups like The Rolling Stones and The Eagles do these reunion tours and so on, but that’s because they had something to offer music history: MUSIC! I guess that’s why NKOTB are planning on releasing a new album, because let’s face it, there’s nothing in their old stuff that hasn’t been done over and over since they split up in 1994 by every other boy band on the face of the earth. Sure, there’s a kitschy sort of nostalgia about watching their old music videos, but I’ll be damned if I want to see a bunch of pre-middle-aged men doing the running man and singing “Step ONE, we can have lots of fun!”. Actually no, that would be kind of funny.

New Kids on the Block were really smack in the middle of what I guess is my era. I was 13 when they released their first single in Australia and I was 17 when they called it quits, so I was right in their demographic. However, I was brought up in a household that frowned on pulp culture, so I didn’t get into the craze like some of my friends did. Sure, I danced to their music at school dances and listened to my friends squeal and carry on about which one they were going to marry when they grew up, but I remained outside that circle. Perhaps unwillingly, I can’t really remember. Probably the part of me that hated the fact that I wasn’t allowed to watch Young Talent Time or 90210 secretly wished I knew enough about NKOTB to have a crush on one of them. However, I just buried such wishes under a sneering cloak of disdain and a manufactured sense of being above such teenage frippery.

It remains to be seen whether NKOTB will be able to actually produce anything worth listening to. Apparently the ugly one, whose name escapes me but I know you know which one I mean, has been working as a music producer since the band broke up, so you never know. Maybe they learned something in the last eighteen years. One would hope.

In any case, they will surely get a lot of attention just because they are 90s pop icons. But we must remember, even the Beatles couldn’t make a comeback. Anyone remember Free As A Bird and Real Love from 1996? Even using old recordings of John Lennon couldn’t help them, and NKOTB don’t have anyone as talented as Lennon supplying them with material from beyond the grave.

However, any hopes I had that they might embrace the corn of their original incarnation and laugh along with the rest of us were dashed when I read the first blog post from one of the band members, “Joey Mac”. See if you can read this shlock with a straight face. “Long live The Block”? Give me strength.