FANS CATCH THE FEVER

Girls camp out for 98° show

SUSAN SEMENAK

The Gazette

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Luckily, the weather co-operated for Julie Ouimet's camp-out on Ste. Catherine St. W. this weekend.

The 17-year-old girl from Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines and four friends slept outside the Spectrum club Saturday night, their pillows and blankets tucked inside sleeping bags, to get choice standing-room spots for yesterday's sold-out show by 98°, the hot new teenybopper band. One loyal fan began her vigil Friday night.

"Their rhythm-and-blues music is really great and they are sooo handsome," swooned Quimet, sporting purple lipstick. "And their harmony is to die for."

They had plenty of company. By 5 p.m. yesterday, nearly 1,000 fans who had purchased the $15.35 tickets without reserved seats were lined up along Ste. Catherine and down Bleury St.

When the doors opened just before 6:30 p.m., a stream of shrieking, running, wriggling teenage girls - dressed in elephant pants and platform shoes, sporting braces and lime-green sweaters - held hands and squeezed through.

Album nears gold in Canada

It took an army of doormen to shepherd them in safely for the one-hour show.

For those too old or tuned out to know, 98° is composed of four cute guys from Ohio in their early 20s who just released their first album of rhythm-and-blues tunes a month and a half ago.

Their hit single, Invisible Man, has been on the Top 10 charts for several weeks. Their other songs, Heaven's Missing An Angel and Take My Breath Away are big, too. The album is approaching gold status in Canada, having sold nearly 50,000 copies.

"It was really, really worth it. We've done it before for the Backstreet Boys, but these guys are even better," said Nathalie Lachance, an older fan at 29, who elbowed her way through the Spectrum doors when they finally opened for the band's first Montreal show. "They do fabulous rhythm-and-blues."

Michel Allary, who drove his daughter and her friends to the show, hadn't seen anything like it.

"It's crazy - a little girl could get killed in here," said Allary, pacing through the Spectrum lobby after one of the girls he'd driven was shoved through the line only to lose her ticket and break out in tears.

"Do you think they'll be safe in there? Maybe I should go in and check on them."

Marcel Rodrigues and his wife, Suzanne, have 98° coming out of their ears. Their 16-year-old daughter, Gina Testa-Rodrigues, plays the music incessantly.

Last night, the entire family drove to Montreal from their home in Sherbrooke so Gina could see the show. Then her parents were posted at the side entrance to the Spectrum with their video camera on the off-chance they could catch the band arriving.

Denis Fortin, a disc jockey at CKOI radio station, said "boy bands" are the biggest rage these days, with the Backstreet Boys at the forefront. What 98° have going for them, Fortin said, are great a capella voices, ballads and a wholesome image as "nice guys."

"With adolescents, these things just snowball - and it doesn't take much time," he said.

Paul Jessop, the band's agent, said the guys are so nice they don't just answer their fan mail - they call back personally.

And recently, after they appeared on a MusiquePlus television special, they hung around for coffee with some teenagers who had turned up.

"They are really nice to their fans," Jessop said. "They'll call the girls who hand them their phone numbers - just to say hi."

Amanda Malagisi, 13, said she and her friends find 98° not just cute, but sentimental.

"The Backstreet Boys' songs are all about them, but 98° are more sensitive," said Malagisi, whose mother drove her and two friends to the show, but was under strict orders to stay at the back of the hall.

"Now the Backstreet Boys are getting too old. This band is taking their place."

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