source :The Age
By Andrew Murfett
February 3, 2006
Before Myspace, iPods or The O.C. there were boy bands. At the time, the Backstreet Boys played smallish clubs. Last year, the reality set in the boys were now men.
Nick Carter, Brian Littrell, A. J. McLean, Kevin Richardson and Howie Dorough were last night in Melbourne for a full show with all the bells and whistles of an arena concert.
While their ironically titled comeback album of last year, Never Gone, was a tougher sell than expected, last night 12,000 screaming fans sold out the Rod Laver Arena.
After opening with The Call, the group, helped by a five-piece band, ventured into a virtual greatest hits set.
The crowd, overwhelmingly female, screamed in delight at video montages showing the band's glory days. Although there's now receding hairlines and expanding waistlines among the boys, hits such as The One, Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely, Larger than Life, Shape of My Heart, and I Want It That Way had the crowd screaming wildly.
Littrell even managed a Lleyton Hewitt impersonation.
The experience had fans aching for the halcyon days of, say, 1999.