Boys about Town

Moving from our TV screens onto our stereos, O-TOWN just won't slow down! TOTP met the boys in LA to ask that all important question: can the band make it?

Is there an X-rated version of Making the Band?

Dan: Whoa! There's probably too much stuff!

Jacob: But there's definitely X-rated footage.

Erik: Let's just say that if the show was put out on MTV, it would be a very different programme!

Ashley: We're high pressured and we're normal people, so be cussed on camera and lived our everyday lives like we normally would. So basically there are a lot of boy things-you know, dirty habits and stuff!

Details please!

Erik: Oh come on! We're guys and we do the normal guy things!

Dan: We got rude, ha-ha! We would fart and stuff as soon as the camera went off!

Erik: We'd actually fart when they were on!

Jacob: What was frustrating about the last season was that we'd rehearse for about 12 hours a day, then we'd go home and hang out for about an hour, and that one hour turned out to be nearly the first six episodes!

Trevor: It didn't really show the struggle.

Jacob: The majority of our everyday lives were spent rehearsing, but they made it look like it was only hanging out. WE never sat around!

Why have you chosen to make a second series?

Erik: We could have left it at the end of the first season, but we left viewers hanging on when we had just been signed, so people wanted to know what's been going on. Now we're moving on to 'can the band really make it'.

Do you mind being called a boy band?

Trevor: No not at all-although I think the while 'boy band' phrase has taken on a negative connotation. Other actual boy bands like the Beatles or the Jackson5, they were all highly respected groups. Then all of a sudden the whole craze went away, but now it's come back and it's a bad thing. It's like people are saying that we're just five guys who work our butts off, travel the world, practice and rehearse for fourteen hours a day, but that we don't count as real artists!

Has the new-boy Dan fully bonded now?

Dan: It was tough at first, not cause I didn't get along with them, just cause I wasn't used to them.

Erik: His jokes wouldn't make us laugh, same as our jokes wouldn't really make him laugh.

Dan: It's tough love in this group-they weren't going to pretend!

Trevor: Dan sleeps with fresh fruit in his underpants and we weren't really used to that-ha-ha!

Who's the most popular?

Erik: Well, Ashley is the most popular cos of the market we're aiming at.

Ashley: I think it's the blond hair thing. And Dan is like Tom Cruise in the Midwest, ha-ha.

Jacob: I don't care about that, as long as they like the music. It just so happens that our biggest demographic is little girls, who love blond hair and blue eyes.

You're supposed to be fully trained for everything, but has anything taken you by surprise?

Ashley: Working from 8am until maybe two or three in the morning.

Dan: You get told about that, but you don't realize that you have to wake up extra early, do press, rehearse and do your show-it all adds up. We work about 80 hours a week!

Erik: we get paid about 75 cents an hour!

Trevor: Hopefully the second season of Making the Band will show just how busy we are.

Which "O" word best describes you?

Jacob: Orgasm (as in the lethal cocktail we presume!) ha-ha!

Dan: Oodles and noodles!

Ashley: Ovaries! (Erm!)

Erik: Oysters?

Trevor: Octagon!

Jacob: Optimise!

Dan: Osteoporosis (Eh?)

Trevor: O-capella, ha-ha!

Ashley: It's a big fat O!