A tour of the *NSYNC concert stage has him wondering: What about the songs?
From a New Orleans Newspaper (Thanks SyncLB5479): Warning: It's long and a little concert spoiler!!!
By Chris Rose 05/15/01 Staff writer/The Times-Picayune

So they gave the press a tour of the ‘NSYNC concert stage the other day. The band itself was unavailable but we newspaper, TV and radio guys were graced with the unveiling of the five-story Superdome stage that can only try to contain the charisma of teen pop's reigning bubble gum balladeers when they take to America's highways this summer.

It was fitting that only guys arrived for this assignment. Gathering in the Dome lobby that morning, the testosterone-filled harrrumphing and sniggering and studied ennui emanating from the dozen or so of us was textbook journalism. We are the media therefore we cannot take this band seriously. It's in our contracts to loathe all young, successful and pouty men.

The Dome brass retrieved us and introduced us to the *NSYNC brass and then we were introduced to the stage -- one of three exact replicas -- that will house this summer's massive "POPODYESSY Tour."

(I am convinced *NSYNC capitalizes everything they do out of deep-seated insecurities about the musical road they've taken, but that's another column altogether.)

You may recall from last week that the *NSYNC members are in town for a couple of weeks rehearsing for their upcoming tour (New Orleans will likely get a late-summer date). At the same time, the road crews are in town rehearsing the stage set-up and breakdown. Thus, the press tour.

The stage set-up, I must say, is truly impressive. It is a massive collective of light and video machinations, blinking totems and pyrotechnic devices, banks and banks of computers and sound boards all over the place, a mother lode of technology, illumination and sound.

The stage is as wide as a football field is long and taller than a suburban apartment building. It reaches out a long runway into the middle of the Dome floor, where it all rises again in a new five-story structure, all metal and futuristic iconography and you look at it and you think: What about the songs?

I think I heard the *NSYNC guy say it's the biggest touring stage ever, with something like 20 more trucks than the caravan that carried the Rolling Stones Steel Wheels tour in 1990.

It looks like a space station, and easily contains as much technology as MIR. The *NSYNC road crew performs the formidable task of assembling this structure in 3 1/2 days and tearing it down in one, and when the *NSYNC guy is telling us this, all I can think of is how it takes the City of New Orleans eight weeks to build those temporary bleachers on St. Charles Avenue for Mardi Gras.

These guys are amazing. If we could hire out *NSYNC's road crew for eight weeks in New Orleans, we could fill all the potholes, run the streetcar line out to City Park and build Tom Benson's stadium wherever he pleases.

This stage set-up is so complex, with all its harness wires to fly the band around like pop Peter Pans, and all these techno-mechanical bulls that ferry them from place to place, and all these stage surfaces that are made of moving conveyor belts.

It's amazing how far the pop medium has come: Groups like these guys rarely write their own music, don't arrange the songs, don't play the instruments.

And now, with all this space-age people-moving equipment all over their stage show, they no longer even have to actually move under their own power. It has all become one long music video.

Then, up on the second or third level, we actually did come upon a music set-up -- about a half-dozen super-fancy keyboard ensembles and two drum kits with every bell, whistle and echo device known to the studio. And, amazingly, over in a corner, underneath the three-story video screen and set behind crates of technology, I spied two guitar cases. I was awash in nostalgia.

Guitars! I was trying to reconcile myself with the notion that underneath all the synthesized noise-making and fireworks and silly danceroutines, maybe there is, in the very deepest core of their music, the heart of rock n' roll.

But I doubt it.

I left while the tour was still in progress, right after asking if I could fly out over the Superdome floor in Justin Timberlake's body harness. But it was such a stupid question that the *NSYNC guy -- it was rude of me not to get his name, I admit -- didn't even acknowledge it.

I thanked all the authorities involved and was escorting myself out to the street when I noticed a number of signs printed on brightly colored 81/2--by-11 inch copy paper that said: " *NSYNC Wardrobe" and " *NSYNC Quiet Room" and " *NSYNC Toy Room."

*NSYNC Toy Room? What do they call all that stuff out there on the stage?

There were arrows under the signs, so I looked around and the dozens of tech and operations and security guys all looked either a) super busy, or b) super bored, so I followed the arrows through some glass doors and down a corridor that ran under the stadium seats to a door, finally, that had all those same little brightly colored signs.

There was a security guard there, reading a book. As I reached for the door, it opened from the inside, and I withdrew quickly, whipped out my cell phone and set myself firmly into the internationally recognized position for I-am-a-very-busy-and-important-man-doing-exactly-what-I'm-supposed-to-be-doing-in-exactly-the-place-I'm-supposed-to-be-doing-it-so-leave-me-alone-lest-your-job-be-in-jeopardy.

This was made difficult by the fact that I was wearing my Gap relaxed-fit khakis and a gray madras jacket, but maybe I looked so far out that I was in.

Whatever, it worked. Two *NSYNC factotums walked right by me without as much as an arched eyebrow. I looked over; the security guard was deeply immersed in a novel. I entered the world's most popular boy band's inner sanctum.

Or would that be, *N'ER SANCTM?

Whatever.

I could hear talking down the hall, in one of the several rooms that ran off on either side. I got to *NSYNC Quiet Room. My knees fairly trembled. I reached for the door. And then I stopped.

You can just picture my hand perched there above the doorknob, like in a movie close-up. Then I withdrew it. It was not a karmic debt I was willing to pay were I caught and convicted of this deed of trespass.

I didn't want to break the sanctity of the *NSYNC Quiet Room, to impose myself upon the very space that these young men use to relax, reflect and unwind. The place where they recharge the cognitive batteries, plumb their souls for the source of all music and ponder the universal condition of man's inhumanity to man.

At least, that's what I would do if there were a Chris Rose Quiet Room somewhere in this world. But there isn't.

I withdrew my hand and turned and walked up the hallway and out of the inner sanctum, making sure I said an audible goodbye to the security guard, who nodded at me as I left with, naturally, my cell phone to my ear, though the line was dead.

I walked out of the Dome and into the scorching heat and light of Poydras Street. I ran a few errands, took a few meetings. The day passed without incident.

When I got home, I went upstairs into my office and played a Radney Foster CD. Really loud. And it was good.