Yahoo.com   April 18, 2001

FEATURE-O-Town seeks to make to make it as a band

By Gary Graff

DETROIT (Reuters) - Last year they made the band. This year, we're finding out if the band makes it.

ABC has just launched its second season of the music-biz reality series ``Making the Band,'' following up on the lives of the five young men assembled into the pop vocal group O-Town on national television.

The series premiered last year with more than 1,800 hopefuls competing to be part of a quintet fashioned by Lou Pearlman, the Orlando, Fla.-based pop Svengali who also worked with Backstreet Boys (news - web sites) and 'N Sync (news - web sites).

This season, the series picks up with O-Town as it builds on some early successes. The band has signed with the new J Records label of former Arista Records chief Clive Davis, and the group's self-titled debut album opened at No. 5 on the Billboard Top 200 chart, thanks to the hit ``Liquid Dreams.''

The album has slid more than 90 spots since its release, however, and the five O-Towners are keenly aware that their greatest challenge now is establishing credibility in a marketplace overrun with similar ``boy bands'' hoping to become the next big thing.

``For the longest time, people had us confused -- 'Are these guys just personalities or actors, or are these guys gonna be a group?''' says O-Town's Dan Miller. ``Then there was a delay from when the TV show ended and when we got things started and the record came out. Now people are starting to realize that we are a band.''

Adds Ashley Parker Angel, ``I completely understand any criticisms. I was critical in the beginning -- 'Where's it gonna head? Are we gonna get signed?'

``Yeah, we have cameras around us all the time, but that won't mean jack if we don't get signed and come out with a legitimate album that sounds good,'' Angel says. ``None of us got in this group to be on TV. I'm a musician; so are the other guys. We got in this to be a group.''

Looking For Credibility

But Angel, Miller and the other O-Towners -- Erik-Michael Estrada, Trevor Penick and Jacob Underwood -- say they're perfectly willing to work their way to success like any other band. And they feel that being signed by Davis -- who helped to launch the careers of Whitney Houston and Patti Smith and engineered Santana's ``Supernatural'' comeback -- is a sterling endorsement of their legitimacy.

``Clive is a music legend, basically; he's known for backing huge, huge entertainers,'' says Angel, 19. ``I think when he got behind it, that definitely made it a lot more legitimate.

``He sat down and said, 'Here's the deal; I'm not in this to make a quick buck. I'm not in this to take advantage of the fact I can sell a lot of one album. I sign people who I think are long-term artists; that's how I view you guys. I see the potential to be huge, to be big artists.'

``Making the Band'' is a considerable stigma to overcome, however, and there was certainly no absence of drama; Angel, Estrada, Penick and Underwood -- were chosen after an arduous ''Survivor''-like boot-camp process that winnowed out the final lineup. Miller came in later to replace original choice Ikaika Kahoano, who opted out of the star turn.

The lineup of O-Town has the look of any other pop act scoring hits these days -- a carefully chosen mix-and-match of personal styles and sensibilities.

Angel is the brooding blond heartthrob, while Miller is the outgoing Joe Ordinary. The dreadlocked Underwood is O-Town's rocking rebel, while Estrada and Penick provide ethnic flavor.

The blend seems so perfect that it's hard not to feel that there's more artifice than art. Even some of O-Town's putative peers rushed to denounce the project.

``I think it's just stupid. It's not real,'' says Lance Bass of 'N Sync. He's particularly troubled that the prefab nature of O-Town winds up reflecting badly on his group and others like it.

``A lot of older people watch that show and say, 'Oh, that's how you got together,''' says Bass, who's in the midst of making a new 'N Sync album. ``We weren't put together by anybody. We didn't go through a boot camp audition. There was no training like that whatsoever. ... I don't think it will ever last.''

Making A Band

O-Town hopes to prove him wrong, of course. And they're eager to defend themselves against such naysayers.

``We don't expect that everybody in the music industry right now will welcome us with open arms,'' Angel says. ``We're a group that is being put together on television; of course it's going to be different than how 'N Sync came together, or how Backstreet came together.''

Adds Miller, ``We know how hard other people have worked to get where they're at. We're just lucky. We've met a lot of the other groups, and everybody's been cool. I don't think there's been any reason for them to show us any attitude, at least not to our face. I hope they don't go back and bad mouth us behind closed doors.''

For their part, the O-Towners are concentrating on making the band work. They one day hope to write more of their own material -- Underwood has a co-writing credit on ``O-Town'' -- but this time out were happy to let Davis work his magic in teaming them with writers and producers, including veteran hitmakers such as Desmond Child and Diane Warren.

They also plan to tour extensively, providing even more fodder for the second season of ``Making the Band.''

``It'll be much more about the music, I hope,'' Angel says. ''There's much more at stake now than who's gonna make it; now the drama is millions of dollars on this project, the album coming out, going on tour. ... It'll be a much more real, in-depth look at what really happens behind the scenes in music.''

At the same time, O-Town is also trying to make itself a band. The five singers are living in the same house in Orlando -- when they're home -- and when the cameras aren't rolling they play basketball and video games and try to go to the movies and clubs.

Miller says he and Penick are particularly competitive. Underwood gets marks as best cook (he's also the only O-Towner currently with a girlfriend), while Estrada is the consensus pick for the sloppiest roomie.

They also catch a little TV, and Angel says O-Town has kept tabs on ``Pop Stars,'' the WB network's female equivalent of ''Making the Band'' that has launched another new group, Eden's Crush.

``I don't get a lot of time to watch TV, but I made a point to watch it,'' Angel says. ``I think it's interesting to watch someone else going through the same process; I could relate with what's going on a little bit.''

(Gary Graff is a nationally syndicated journalist who covers the music scene from Detroit. He also is the supervising editor of the award-winning ``MusicHound'' album guide series.)

Reuters/Variety