Emerging group C Note is the newest in the boy group craze

Web posted on:
Tuesday, January 19, 1999 11:29:31 AM EST

From Correspondent Mark Scheerer

NEW YORK (CNN) -- They dance and sing, and girls scream. That's how the boy-bands phenomenon works. From Menudo to New Kids on the Block, boy bands have come and gone. Lately, groups like the Backstreet Boys, 'N Sync and 98 Degrees are driving teen-age audiences wild.

And for fans who can't get enough, there's at least one more teeny-bopper boy band heading for the charts.

So, what kind of boy makes the cut?

Where boy groups are found, so are hordes of screaming teenagers

"Well, you have to be cute," says Jim Farber of the New York Daily News. "You have to be willing to be manipulated, and you have to be able to have really strong eardrums for all the screaming girls that you're going to meet everywhere you go."

What you don't have to do is play an instrument or write your own songs. The groups rely on creative dance steps, and on emitting a healthy dose of charisma to their audience as they croon out pop hits. Also, the boy groups rely on a manager.

In the 1980s, Maurice Starr was the man behind New Kids on the Block. The 1990s version of Starr is Louis Perlman, the brains behind the Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync. Perlman's Trans Continental Media, which sits in an Orlando studio complex, is a pop group factory.

"We have like a little boot camp down in Orlando, and what we do is we have choreographers, we have vocal coaches, we have a recording studio, and so forth," says Perlman.

His latest project, C Note, was already a group when he found them, unlike many boy groups assembled through auditions, something that doesn't seem to bother many 13-year-old girls.

98 Degrees

"Well, you know, if you think about it, I think that's more of a business outlook -- whereas, is it prefabrication when you audition for a movie or when you audition for a play?" asks Perlman.

Like most of the groups, C Note insists they are not like all the rest.

Howie Dorough of the Backstreet Boys

"It's not all, you know, 'OK, let's put four guys together, throw them out, they got a record deal, and that's it,'" says C Note's Dru Rogers. "I mean, we've been busting our humps."

"Just because you appeal to a younger audience sometimes, does that make you not real?" asks Rogers' bandmate, Raul Molina.

Nick Lachey of 98 Degrees says his band strives to overcome the stereotypes by committing time and effort to their work.

"We kind of concentrate more on the musicality of it," he says. "You know, we write and produce, and we try to have more of a hands-on approach."

"What you see is what you get. I mean, we don't try to groom ourselves any certain way," says Howie Dorough of the Backstreet Boys.

Instead, they leave that to guys like Perlman.