The Monkee on the back of New Kids on the Block

September 8^th – We’ve talked before, us lot, about the gradual bastardisation of pop music. It’s not something new, s’been going on since the first song-plugger contacted a U.S. radio show and offered cash for airplay; it was dubbed PAYOLA and was the subject of several legal issues in the 50’s-60’s-70’s…probably still happening now. There was something inherently crude about that approach; brown paper bags of grubby bank notes being pressed into sweaty palms in lifts and on public transport, but back then it was the best way of concluding the deal, certainly the safest. As the practice was gradually unmasked the perpetrators had to think on their feet a little more, become more inventive in their methods of pay-off; so it was that the use of the gratuity found favour. That holiday in Portugal; the need for a bigger boat in Poole; that place in the exclusive private school for your daughter…? Suddenly the improbable became achievable. This was brought full circle when the cash for questions and M. P.’s Expenses fiddles surfaced…no, I know, it’s nothing to do with PAYOLA, it’s just all an extension of the same thing; using pay-offs, granting favours and employing interview by nepotism to fill a vacancy. So, what now? What new device have we created in the field of music in the 21^st century in order to get what we want, even when the result is shite? Step forward the twins of Beelzebub; the televised talent show and the boy band.

The rise and rise of the search for a star format has changed, without doubt and to the detriment of, the ability of talented people to be cut their chops as they hone their act before they take it to a national level; key word here: before. What we get with these distractions is a vision of no hard work needed, which fits in so well with the Lottery society that’s been created to captivate us, divert us from life’s truths. The castaway shells of stardom just turn up on telly one evening and the following day they’re that overworked bone in a desert, a star, and that mindset has made us lazy in pursuit of our goals.

Although this method of creating talent has thrown up (did you see what I did there) a number of boy band acts, the one under my spotlight today wasn’t one of them. Suffice to say there’s been hundreds of them, these hollow people dragged up and wrung out for our entertainment before the husk is discarded for the next new thing, like a bloodless gladiatorial games with its lily-white practitioners and arbitrators. Take New Kids on the Block (NKOTB to the street-cool dudes like me). Put together like a clone of so many other pretenders to the loot, they were the new method of PAYOLA except that now the product came before the airtime and was supplied along with the recording. A guy with the apocryphal moniker of Maurice Starr (you couldn’t write this stuff, could y’? Not without being accused of being too cheesy) after auditioning the eventual band members and with the help of the first settled band member, Donnie Wahlberg…yup, you got it, the brother of Mark…put together a group consisting of Donnie’s family and friends (nepotism in complete control here). The splits and rancour that were to dog the band started right from the get-go. It has to be said, in their defence, there was a level of rehearsal and trial and error involved to get them finally into the public‘s full attention but then, if you throw enough money at something, eventually it’s got to pay off…or payola-off…hasn’t it? There were accusations of lip-synching in live concerts, something they vehemently disputed but which wouldn’t go away, and eventually they did admit to using backing tracks for their live performances… Call me a bluff old traditionalist but I thought this was the same thing – Backing Track/Lip Synch…? Me wrong, obviously…after this their popularity started to slide in the public’s opinion. Really? Can’t imagine why.

What it didn’t lessen was the marketing opportunity that the band still were, a marketing opportunity that even included, Monkee’s-like, a film series about the band. There’s original. On this day in 1990 the cartoon series of NKOTB opened on ABC which covered such weighty subjects as the band touring around the world and solving the logistics of getting to the concert on time; must have been a roller-coaster ride of emotions from A to B. What, you may be asking yourself, those of you who are still awake that is, is why a cartoon? Why not a film, like The Monkees series was? My guess? Because drawings of the characters were less wooden than the real thing.

I now hand myself in to the BeNice Police for inoculation against further attacks of beingunpleasanttohardworkingboyband-itis.