26 Days at a Time. The Boy Band Story

February 25th, 2009

Big up and props to Ziggy for copping a great time on video with Day 26. Ziggy hung out and interviewed the group at the Women’s Empowerment Conference in Raleigh, North Carolina.

In 2002, Puffy began transitioning himself from radio to television in a quest to form the latest super band of blended talents.

Despite hardships and the fact that several groups he created flopped, Diddy didn’t stop. Finally, in 2007 a new boy band was born. Brian, Robert, Willie, Qwanell (bka Q) and Mike combine their harmonious tones, complemented by their cultural diversity to form the dynamic “Day 26.”

This group was like no other group Diddy fused together during the Making the Band series. Day 26, a name derived from the day Diddy officially made this band, is arguably the most talented musical group Diddy has presented since he began his “Making the Band” career. But, can even Diddy create a group music lovers love? So far, Day 26’s official debut single, “Got Me Going”, moved from number 74 to 54 in a week’s time on the Billboard charts. With the help of Diddy, super producer, Bryan Michael Cox, and New Edition’s Michael Bivins, Day 26 is destined for success.

Boy Bands rule the world and they always have. You wouldn’t think pubescent girls had that much power, but you underestimate sexual hysteria at your own peril (cf. The Bacchae by Euripedes. Any right-thinking director would update the play by setting it at a Backstreet Boys concert.)

I wound up digging both the big Backstreet Boys hits [of 1999], but those guys’ problem is that they’re not bubblegum enough: They’re way too indebted to the adult-oriented ballads of Boyz II Men. I couldn’t imagine Betty of the Archies shaking a tambourine to their music. (Chuck Eddy, Pazz & Jop, Village Voice)

Are Boy Bands even bubblegum to start with? It’s tough to draw a clean line between bubblegum and teen idols. Some pop fans take a hard stance here insisting that true bubblegum bands don’t have teen-only faceless studio bands or cartoon creations qualify. Sifting through the pop dig of the sixties and seventies, however, it becomes clear that this facile bit of taxonomy can’t hold. The Monkees sold on their faces (Davy foremost). The teen idol of the Seventies, David Cassidy, sang lead in the canonically bubblegum Partridge Family. Tommy Roe, Mark Lindsay, Dino, Desi & Billy, Tommy James they all did hard time on planet Tiger Beat. When the quintessential bubblegum voice, Ron Dante, put out his solo album (essentially an extra Archies record with the same musicians and pool of songwriters) he angled for that teen mag audience right down to his photo insert.

The history of boy bands takes many a wayward turn beyond even the most generous definition of bubblegum. But be patient, I’ll keep it brief and on point and you’ll see how Boy Bands partake of the gumly wafer while staying something less than devout.

The Beatles

While brother acts and vocal harmony groups pre-date Vaudeville, the Boy Band as we know it first emerges with the Beatles. Their non-threatening cuddliness (quite a makeover by Brian Epstein on a bunch of working class speed freaks from Liverpool) was one of their big selling points and the band notably sold below the puberty line. Subject to outright scorn and dismissal when they broke in America, the band grew up and took their pre-teen fanbase with them. The mop tops left a motherlode for bubblegum musically (and their Pronoun Phase of early hits rarely rises above bubblegum standards lyrically). But it was their image as four complementary cuties that gave us the working model for Boy Bands ever after. Prior to the Beatles nobody gave a damn who the Belmonts were. Okay, after the Beatles nobody cared who Dion was (their loss), but the point is that in the post-Beatles era you sold your group as a merry band of (artificially and narrowly typed) lads.

The Jackson 5

Berry Gordy did not become the most successful music mogul of the sixties by missing trends. Berry saw the Monkees, the Kasenetz & Katz acts, the Archies and quickly sussed that Motown could do that and do it better. And they did. But more importantly (as we’ll see) the J-5 are indirectly responsible for the current teen pop explosion. Berry worked the bubblegum angle through the Jacksons, early recordings and backed it up with the hottest tracks ever recorded. The early Jackson 5 singles have no peers in pop thrills. But even in the J-5 cartoon we find an only partially successful effort in differentiating the boys. Sure, Jermaine was The Pretty One and Michael was The Prodigy. But Marlon? I’m drawing a blank on Marlon. And Tito was well, Tito had The Hat. Despite this failure in product branding, the Jackson 5 still got into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The Osmonds

Operating on Sam Phillips, dictum that if you just find some white kid to sing like those black kids you�ll make a bundle, the Osmonds were quickly foisted on a suspecting public. Showbiz vets, the Osmonds started on The Andy Williams Show and were cooling their heels between gigs when the market niche for a white Jackson 5 opened up. The Osmonds are sorely underrated in today’s pop market and their Mormon Anomalousness has been overshadowed by Michael Jackson’s unslakeable ambition to embody Every Conceivable Celebrity Oddity. But snappy Osmond hits like “One Bad Apple” and “Yo Yo” deserve a new audience, and besides, Donny sang his ass off. Sure, he wasn’t Michael Jackson but he had a freakishly soulful style for a white kid from Utah. (Donny’s George Michael inspired comeback attempt in the ’90s was not such a stretch.)

The Osmonds passed on the usual N.Y. musicians who played on so many bubblegum classics, nor did they use the Wrecking Crew in L.A. Instead MGM prexy Mike Curb, sent the boys to Muscle Shoals. In Memphis, George Jackson, one of Rick Hall’s staff writers, gave them “One Bad Apple” and they were on their way. Admittedly, recording in Memphis was the pop move to make in the late sixties, but aside from Dan Penn’s work with the Blue-Eyed BubbleSoul of the Box Tops it’s rare to hear the Muscle Shoals rhythm section on a bubblegum record.

Frankly, The Osmonds are ripe for a full hipster reevaluation. Not only did they pull off a credible Glam Rock gesture with “Crazy Horses” but they’ve got an Apocalyptic Mormon Concept Album (The Plan) simply begging for Lisa Suckdog’s exegesis and a Money Mark remix. Their heavy metal rewrite of The Book of Revelations, “The Last Days” successfully exceeds any satire that Spinal Tap could muster.

Bay City Rollers

The Rollers occupy a weird space in the pop continuum. They are equal parts bubblegum, Glam Rock and Boy Band. Rollermania proves once again that the durable Boy Band formula transplants beautifully to any number of locales. Scotland, Puerto Rico, Orlando, Florida it doesn’t matter. The Rollers music holds up well due to the careful pop craftsmanship of Phil Coulter (”I Can Only Give You Everything”), Bill Martin and Phil Wainman (the Sweet’s engineer). Their earliest hits (as with so many ’70s Teen Idols) rehashed Brill Building staples, but they struck gold when they recorded Coulter & Martin’s Saturday Night. Tartan shock waves rolled through the popverse with striking and unintended consequences.

I hate to blow the mystique, but at the time we really liked bubblegum music, and we really liked the Bay City Rollers. Their song “Saturday Night” had a great chant in it, so we wanted a song with a chant in it: Hey! Ho! Let’s Go! “Blitzkrieg Bop” was our “Saturday Night.” Joey Ramone

TV shows followed both in Britain and in the U.S. (Krofft produced, no less) but creative differences and the pressure of Rollermania itself ended their brief reign. The Rollers post-fame slide ranks with Motley Crue for Behind the Music fodder: child molestation and child pornography, vehicular manslaughter, suicide attempts, AIDS, financial mismanagement and fraud. Inevitably, Courtney Love optioned their story to be made into a movie.

Duran Duran

There’s a huge gap in Boy Bands between the Rollers and New Edition. In between (from a teen pop/Top 40 perspective), you’ve got the Disco era and the early MTV groups of the ’80s. Disco gives us nothing Boy Band. Well, the Village People might qualify as a Boy Band on Christopher Street, but the Bee Gees were far too old and hairy and dentally intimidating to play the brother act for pre-teens. While neither a Boy Band nor particularly bubblegum, Duran Duran did efficiently plug this gap in the pop cultural psyche. They made danceable hits, the boys were cute (and distinct enough to allow a variety of favorites a staple of Boy Band dynamics) and young girls had to be hosed down after their concerts. Further, Duran Duran’s avowed ambition to cross the Sex Pistols with Chic differs little from the formula advanced by the Backstreet Boys of grafting Boys II Men harmonies onto Gap Band grooves. It’s a Pop Funk thang.
One further fascinating but tenuous connection between Duran Duran and bubblegum involves the men who directed their early revolutionary videos, Godley and Creme (”Girls on Film”, “Hungry Like The Wolf”). When Graham Gouldman contracted with bubblegum kings Kasenetz and Katz, he recruited his buddies Kevin Godley and Lol Creme, with Eric Stewart, to record one of the last Ohio Express singles, Sausalito. Whatever happened to those guys? They formed 10cc, of course.

New Edition

Maurice Starr is a genius and Ving Rhames ought to be lining up the rights for a film bio before Courtney Love moves in. Maurice got his start with the second tier funk band ConFunkShun but didn�t make his mark until he and his nephew, Michael Jonzun grasped the import of the cheap synthesizers popping up on New Wave hits and more significantly, Afrika Bambaataa’s Electro landmark, Planet Rock.
Soon under the moniker the Jonzun Crew they crapped out the endearingly rinky-dink “Space Cowboy” and techno forerunner, Pack Jam. Thus bankrolled, Michael spotted some kids at a local talent contest (they came in second) and Maurice decided the market was ready for a new Jackson 5 (hence, they were the New Edition).

What was so great about New Edition was their irresistible blend of bubblegum pop and sweet soul, the kind responsible for hits like “Popcorn Love” and “Candy Girl” (guided, of course, by the hand of producer Maurice Starr, who went on to recycle these songs for white-bread clones NKOTB)… Who could have known they would go on to dominate the world of hip-hop and R&B in the ’90s? Rebecca Wallwork, All-Music Guide

New Edition slipped through that narrow doorway Maurice opened for them, pulled themselves out of Roxbury and remade R&B into their own image (New Jack Swing). Bobby Brown, Ralph Tresvant, Johnny Gill, Bel Biv Devoe all went on to score #1 R&B hits as solo artists, and Michael Bivins produced Boys II Men�s (who took their name from a New Edition song) influential first album. Boyz deserve a note here for their over-arcing influence on the contemporary Boy Bands. They provide the immediate touchstone back through the vocal group tradition that includes the Temptations, the Miracles, Five Satins, Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers.

New Kids On The Block

Operating on Sam Phillip’s dictum� does this sound familiar? In a satisfying twist, Maurice exploited his own legacy after New Edition dumped him. He just moved one neighborhood over from Roxbury to Dorchester to find his New Kids. The teen pop market exploded in the late 80s and New Kids on the Block were the Kings of 80s bubblegum. Maurice wrote catchy hooks (he once claimed to write ten songs on the plane from New York to Boston) and saved on session musicians by recording all the instrumental tracks himself. Low overhead, high return. In truth, most 80s bubblegum sounds as dated as last year’s synthesizer. The hooks are there, but the cheap production gives it a brittle edge that hasn’t aged well.

By 1987 Debbie Gibson and Tiffany grappled for the Teen Queen crown, Jem & the Holograms brought cartoon rock back to television, and Menudo worked the Latin Market. The NKOTB phenomenon pulled in hundreds of millions of dollars (largely through their concert appearances) and they established the boilerplate for contemporary Boy Band shows with their frenetic, choreographed hip-hoppity dance moves. What makes Maurice Starr’s achievement even more spectacular is that he didn’t have the combined talent pool of Nickelodeon and Disney that Lou Pearlman works with to draw from. Both Jordan Knight and Joey McIntyre managed to scrape back onto the charts after more than a decade’s absence which must be some kind of record for perseverance in the Boy Band universe. And without NKOTB we wouldn’t have Mark Wahlberg’s fine career as a supporting actor.

Menudo

Menudo fascinate as a conceptual art project. The sheer ruthlessness of taking some poor kid, making him a star, and ejecting him from the group at 16 takes your breath away. Pygmalion as written by DeSade and Warhol. It ranks right up there with Kirshner�s cartoon band revolution for Master of Puppets genius. Like the Bay City Rollers, Menudo suffered a sex scandal within its management. (Running a boy band seems to rank right behind Priest and Scoutmaster on the NAMBLA job board.) Of course, Menudo’s most famous alumni is the hip-swiveliest pop star since Elvis, the King of Latin Pop, the toothiest grin since Donny Osmond, the most fey disavowal of his sexuality since George Michael: Ricky Martin.

Are Boy Bands bubblegum? Sometimes they are and it’s not a tough call: “Candy Girl,” “Saturday Night,” “ABC,” “I’m a Believer,” “Bye Bye Bye,” “One Bad Apple” to cite just the obvious examples. Bubblegum is an undeniable strand through Boy Bands, but so are Teen Idol ballads, and more recently dance music and the vocal harmony tradition. Bubblegum remains only one part of the Boy Band formula, but we contend it’s the best part.

FOR ENTIRE STORY GO TO www.Bubblegum-music.com

26 Days at a Time. The Boy Band Story

February 25th, 2009

“When Makin Money” The HSAN Story

January 7th, 2009

A Hip Hop Soda Shop? The Hip Hop Soda Shop Story

July 2nd, 2009

Law & Order in our court!

June 18th, 2009

“Throw the Ball to Her!” Browns Mill Lady Jacket’s story

June 8th, 2009

“”We Can Fly” The Dr. Stewart Fulbright Story Pt. 2

June 25th, 2009

Runaway Loves. The Ludacris Foundation story

June 26th, 2009

It’s at the Y! The YMCA story

July 3rd, 2009

A Hip Hop Soda Shop? The Hip Hop Soda Shop Story

July 2nd, 2009