BOY BAND CONFIDENTIAL (Diablo Magazine Article)

Below is the article from the June 2002 edition of Diablo magazine. Following that is the article typed out for easier reading.

ON TOUR WITH THE BAY AREA'S HOPEFULS [cover]

POP SECRETS 42 It's recess time-do you know where your teenage daughter is? She just might be screaming for five young men known as Townsend. Meet a Bay Area boy band that's following the formula for stardom. By Jon Steinberg Bay Area boy band Townsend isn't too cool for school. See our feature on page 42.

[table of contents]

Assistant editor Jon Steinburg gets the rock-star treatment as he reports from Walnut Creek Intermediate School on what it's like behind the scenes with a Bay Area boy band-and why young girls go ga-ga for these guys. [Behind the Scenes]

...Speaking fo temptations, after I saw Townsend perform at ARF's January benefit at the Dean Lesher Reginal Center for the Arts, I had to assign a story about this sexy young Bay Area boy band. (I mean, if the come to our offices to get dressed for their photo shoot and serenade us while they're here, well, so be it!) I must be young at heart, because Townsend's target demographic is 12-year-old-girls, which explains why they were rocking Contra Costa's middle schools this spring, trying to "break" the band. For a glimpse into what makes young girls (and grown women) go ga-ga, please turn to page 42...Susan Dowdney Safipour, Editor. [Summer Fun (Intro)]

THE BOYS OF TOWNSEND

THE SHY GUY Ryan Torres, 21 He's a rad downhill skier (whoosh)and he had a bit part in the teen flick, Boys and Girls (splat).

THE FLIRTY ONE Dom Restani, 22 He's a volunteer firefighter who loves wrestling, Italian food, and saving people from burning buildings.

THE SWEETY PIE Nick Restani, 22 His biceps make the girls hyperventilate, but not to worry: He's a certified CPR instructor.

MR. TALENT Matt Yoakum, 21 He can write songs, play the guitar, and sing well enough to land a spot on ABC's Making the Band.

THE RAPPER Todd Dolci, 23 He says he has never done his own laundry. But he has done a "720" on his snowboard.

POP SECRETS

WHY YOUR DAUGHTER LOVES THESE BOYS

The 400 students who have rumbled into Walnut Creek Intermediate School's "cafetorium" are divided along party lines. That is to say, some of them came here to party, and some, resolutely, did not. The kids have arrived from their sixth-period classrooms as a heterogeneous mob, but upon entering the hall, they segregate immediately. Girls rush the front; boys (nine out of 10 of them, at least) fumble towards the rear. Near the stage, the air is ajitter with ponytails and pre-teen gossip. In the back, the male half of the crowd weighs its encroaching jealousy and boredom against its overwhelming desire not to be in math class, and elects, wisely, to stay put and watch.

The spectacle these kids, ages 11 to 14, are about to witness is designed to satisfy the saccharine tastes of adolescent girls, which explains why most of the boys have instinctively retreated to the shadows. They simply can't compete with the hunky magnetism of Townsend, a five-man "boy band" whose members have been specially trained and fastidiously groomed to feed young ladies' fantasies.

As a pre-show warm-up, the band wanders amongst the grouplets of girls, chatting, shaking hands, and sending them into near-convulsions. Most of the girls haven't heard a lick of Townsend's music, but that doesn't seem to matter. "My friend's heard them, and she said they're good," says Katie, a seventh grader, as she nabs a spot in the front row.

As far as Katie and her friends are concerned, a band doesn't need a hit song, or any musical talent really, when it's as pretty as these boys. By the time Townsend hits the stage, dancing like pumped-up Raiderettes and singing along to pre-recorded pop tracks, the female side of the room is positively giddy. The girls scream straight through the next half-hour.

"This is how you break the band," says manager Julie Tittel, of Concord, watching from the wings of the cafeteria with an armload of promotional flyers. Tittel's job is to book and promote Townsend's gigs, to dole out their $30 per diem wages, and to shuttle them between dance practices in Concord, singing lessons in Castro Valley, and "meet-and-greet" sessions everywhere else. She's the person who turns down loopy fan requests, like "Can I give Ryan my phone number?" or "Will Matt come over to my house tonight?" "The first rule of being in a boy band," she says, "is to never say no. It's my job to be the bad guy."

Barnstorming middle schools is not just a rite of passage for teen pop star wannabes like the Bay Area-based Townsend. It is a money-tested and industry-approved formula for making it, like, totally big time. Every major act-from Brandi to Britney Spears to *NSYNC-has embarked on a grassroots campaign like this one in order to build up a fanbase of sixth to eighth grade girls.

Starting with its whirlwind tour this spring, the group hopes it can seduce its young audiences into purchasing albums, blitzing radio request lines, and getting the word out on the Web. Next (cross your fingers, boys) come the national tours, TV-show appearances, and co-branded marketing schemes, all with the single purpose of "building the story" of Townsend.

So far, everything's going swimmingly, says San Jose-based manager Robert Hayes, who also manages the multi-platinum rock band Smash Mouth. Townsend has already sold more than 3,000 copies of its debut six-song CD on Spunout Records. The band's Web site (www.townsendboys.com) has logged as many at 48,000 internal hits in one day, and they've inspired several dozen fan pages, including one that's called townsendstalkers.com. Townsend's still-nascent fame seems to grow cyberspacially by the hour. "Even though the whole boy band craze seems to be diminishing," says Hughes, "their fans are still absolutely crazed."

The boys-well, really, the men-of Townsend, ages 21 to 23, couldn't be better suited for their uphill quest. Though they've been together for a little over a year, they're well practiced, well mannered, and really well biceped (especially Dom and Nick Restani, the ultra-fit identical twins). Unlike many teenage pop groups, they weren't slapped together by shadowy corporate suits-in fact, they're really friends; four of them met while working for the promotional team at Wild 94.9 FM in San Francisco. And most importantly, they genuinely, estatically enjoy performing in front of their growing legion of fans. (That goes double for the twins.)

"Whether it's five kids bored to death, or hundreds screaming for us, the important thing is that we're performing," says mouthpiece Dom over a pre-show lemonade at Tomatina in Walnut Creek.

For four months, starting last December, the group chugged up and down the West Coast in a rental van, giving two school performances a day, five days a week. It's a far cry from the Times Square studio of MTV's Total Request Live ("TRL"), where golden boy bands have reigned for years. But, hey, it's a start.

In early March, Townsend spent a couple days hurdling through the greater East Bay, rocking the house at Iron Horse Middle School in San Ramon, Stanley Middle School in Lafayette, Bristow Middle School in Brentwood, Diablo View Middle School in Clayton, Diablo Vist Middle School in Danville, and lastly, Walnut Creek Intermediate School.

The shows were sponsered by the QSP fundraising company, which gives middle schoolers pop concerts in return for hawking magazine subsriptions. Walnut Creek Intermediate's student body sold $148,000 worth of periodicals; the school's teeny-boppers recieved an afternoon of boy-mania as a reward.

Throughout Townsend's four-song repertoire, which is interspersed by long, flirty asides ("I don't see a lot of guys out here," shouts lead singer Matt Yoakum during one intermission, "but I see a lot of good looking girls"), the young ladies in the front scream and scream and scream. Afterwards, many of the wax poetic about Townsend's collective hotness. "They are really hot-way hotter than the Backstreet Boys," says Kathryn, an eighth grader, after collecting post-concert autographs. Natalia, another eighth-grader, chimes in, "I can't wait until they're really famous so I can say I met them." Adds Kathryn, blushing not even a little: "I'd make out with all of them."

Scary news for parents: The girls seem barely fazed by the decade or so age difference between themselves and the Townsend lads. "They're not too old for me!" says Vicky, 13, obviously shocked by a reporter's doltish suggestion that they might be. Vicky insists that hotties in their early twenties are still in her playing field. But she says she draws the line at "anything above 25."

Fortunately, Townsend, an intelligent and decent group of dudes if there ever was one, draws its own lines well north of legal borders. "They know they can't be overly suggestive or overly sexual on stage," says Tittel. "I tell them, 'Remember guys, this [pointing towards a clique of minors] is called jail.'" Not coincidentally, the band named its song-publishing company "5 to Life," as in, that's what they'll get if they touch one of their adolescent devotees. Tellingly, one of the leedman Yoakum's favorite T-shirts reads, "Got a Sister?"

Toeing the line between innocent, big-brotherly flirtation and rampant underage courting-well, that's the boy band way. Just look at the history of pop music, says Hughes-look at Elvis, the Beatles, or the Jackson 5. Each of these legendary acts originally relied on its cuteness to attract a loyal teenage following. "There's always going to be pre-teen kids who like pop music and good looking guys,"says Hughes. "There will always be a market. You just need to be able to grow and move with the trends."

Do that, any good businessman will tell you, and there's money to be made. Even Kathryn and Mariele, a pair of entrepreneurial eighth graders, can grasp this concept. Gripping an empty water bottle that had been absently tossed by one of the Townsend boys, Kathryn is asked if she plans to keep it forever. "No way," she says, "I'm gonna sell it on eBay." Her friend, Mariele, corrects her: "No! Wait 'til they're on 'TRL.' You'll get more money for it."

That's right girls-grow with the market, move with the trends. It makes you wonder who's seducing whom.

Diablo assistant editor Jon Steinburg once ate burritos with teen rock starts Blink-182. [article]

BOY BAND TIMELINE

1950s Elvis Presley The original King of Pop. Elvis thrusted his way into many a teenager's heart.

1960s Beatles From the Ed Sullivan show onwards, they were the quintessential pop stars.

The Monkees Tailor-made for TV, they were the modern-day boy band.

1970s Jackson 5 With lil' Michael at the helm, they had the style and the moves to make millions.

1980s New Kids on The Block Boston brats were the dreamboats of the "Me Decade."

1990s *NSYNC Along with Backstreet Boys and Britney, they continue to dominate the charts.

FUTURE Townsend? The odds are mighty, but these upstarts hope to become the Next Big Teen Thing. [side-panel]