New Kids On the Block: Dirty Dawg: A Review

I was watching videos on the internetz and I found this stone-cold jam from the Soul Train History Books. This are the New Kids on the Block! This captures our friends, (then rechristened NKOTB), at a particular juncture. They broke with their manager, Admiral Maurice Starr. By 1993 the guys wanted to toughen up their image and do material that more in keeping with their individual music tastes. Clearly being pop superstars wasn't enough. It seems the guys wanted to be moderately successful R&B singers too! "Dirty Dawg"  was filmed during the Womenz Iz Wicked era of video history, 1989-1994. To that end, there's no short supply of floozy skeezers close talking after most folks bedtime. To add more sugar to the Kool-Aid, I heard these ladies were prostitutes. That's instructive because it looks like our heroes are visiting a brothel. And you know what else? From the looks of it, they were fooling around outside. They better be careful, they might catch a cold!

Jordan's Having Fun!
For fans of the group, these non-golden times were typified with Jordan Knight taking more of a prominent role. It wasn't surprising. To that end Donnie is smoking cigars laced with angeldust, Danny is relegated to dancing around and Joey is seen walking around in his father's suit. Still these guys tried to present a unified group approach despite the diminishing returns. For "Dirty Dawg" the New Kids were helped by 90's rap duo Nice N' Smooth. The rap portion of the song itself is filled with plenty of colloquial kernels of wisdom like, "break camp," "Little Jack Horner" and the best of all, "wet food stamp." Now that's the kind of rap I like: Corny. The sample here is of course James Brown's 1974 classic, "Papa Don't Take No Mess." When asked about this song, James Brown reportedly did the "old-man shooing" motion and walked away.

Hey Look, An Elephant: While most of the guys seemed to solider on during this shoot, one particular New Kid had problems with this video: Jonathan Knight. While the strains of showbiz and videos could be allayed with fewer duties on camera and dog washing scenes out of a Country Time commercial. Sadly there's no where to hide in this presumably cool and dank shoot. In fact it looks like Jordan's panic attacks condition was getting the best of him as he looked wan.There's been many explanations why Jonathan looks so distracted here. In fact, a YouTube psychologist surmised that Jonathan's anxiety disorder was started with a scene in the video where he got a glass of water thrown in his face. Yep, that's it, Water Torture. 

Where The Story Goes: Timpani! Donnie Wahlberg miraculously recovered and was able to get along without his walking stick. He later became a cop just like his dad Tom Selleck.

Look, It's Miss Camille! Woo hoo! Looky, that's Miss Camille from my fav-o-rite story, As The World Turns. You can't tell me she's not ready to rock n' roll. Of course Camille was a gentle and reflective character. This "character" here? Not so much.

The Video's True Stars: Now don't you try to cry thinking about these damn old dogs. I see you, doing the timeline, dates--you think it doesn't compute. It does. Champ and King are still around chasing and killing people in the tri-state area. I'm so happy! Ruff!!!