The Jonas Brothers @ Birmingham LG Arena – 17th November 2009

The Jonas Brothers.. Stars of two Disney TV shows (JONAS and Jonas Brothers :Living The Dream), two number one albums, two covers of Rolling Stone magazine and, as well as all of that, The Jonas Brothers have stared in hit movie Camp Rock (with Camp Rock2 in the pipe line). All of which we were reminded of by band during the almost sold out show at the LG Arena.

This being my first experience of the brothers I didn’t really know what to expect. The few people I have asked about the Jonas Brothers have all said they’re like Busted/The Monkees and other stereotypical boy bands and, like all the other,s that the kids love them – well maybe apart from the Monkees.

As the house lights dimmed the already excited crowd began to chat “Jonas Jonas”, so loud in fact it was drowning out the venues P.A system, then on came the lights and up from the middle of the stage rose the Jonas Brothers, and from the sides of the stage came the backing musicians that included 2 violinists and a 4 piece brass section and, in what seemed like no time at all, the Jonas Brothers sped though the first 5 songs.

To my surprise, live they are a very solid, with great stage presence, and, shock horror, unlike most other boy bands (Westlife, Boyzone) they play their own instruments, and very well they play them too! This was demonstrated by Nick Jonas who, after the supporting musicians and his brothers left the stage, sat behind a beautiful white piano that has rose from the centre of the revolving stage to play a heartfelt version of “A Little Bit Longer”.

During the song Nick took time out to explain he wrote the song after he found out he had type 1 diabetes and it was 4yrs ago yesterday that he found out about his diabetes. It was also at this point Nick mentioned their two no1 CD’s, hit movie etc..  and the fact they had recently met the president and he said he “hadn’t let let his diabetes slow him down and the fans shouldn’t let anything slow them down”. He then finished the rest of the song and got a standing ovation that lasted for well over a minute. As Nick was rejoined by Kevin and Joe, Nick looked like he was trying not to cry after the great response to his solo song.

Before he could get too lost in the moment the band blasted into a version of Busted’s “Year 3000”, this being the first of three cover versions, the others being Black Eye Peas’ “I Got a Feeling” and then Joe Jonas said “We’re having so much fun today after visiting Warwick Castle and playing to one of the best crowds on this tour we would like to play a song by one of out favourite artists. This is the first time we have played this on the whole tour” – a cover of Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline”. Maybe they did that as a song for the parents in the audience as the average age in the crowd couldn’t have been much more than 12-14.

One of the other crowd-pleasing moments was when Joe asked for a young girl to come up on stage and sing with him, nervously the little girl who looked no older than 5/6 joined him on stage and after a few words in her ear from Joe the girl sang the chorus with 10,000 strong crowd backing her.

The Jonas Brothers play for a solid 1hr 30mins before leaving briefly to come back for a 2-song encore that included “World War 3”.

My final thoughts on my first experience of the Jonas Brothers – They’re not your average boy band. Yes at times they can be a little cheesy, but their music live is much more rock with bits of jazz and country throw in for good measure, and they take more influence from bands like Dashboard Confessional and Bon Jovi than they do from traditional boys bands.

Personally I would much rather the younger generation follow bands like the Jonas Brothers and Mcfly than JLS and Boyzone etc.. as they are passing on the torch of rock and guitar music to many. Judging by the age of some of the crowd,  this would probably have been their first live show, let alone ROCK show, and I’m sure after that gig there will be more than a few letters asking to Santa asking for guitars and that’s not a bad thing.

Review & Photos – Andy Watson

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