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Meet the Wiggles
02/21/03 JANET FILIPS Stick Barney in the wa-a-ay-back seat. Get ready for Wigglemania over four Australian blokes who wear jelly-bean-colored, long-sleeved T-shirts (skivvies in Aussie speak), smile so deeply that your face aches just watching them, and thrill tots with a combination of upbeat songs, slapstick humor and friendly capers. Think of The Wiggles as part favorite uncle, part 'N Sync and part hip Mama Goose. Little kids lock into the group's act with the intensity usually reserved for nibbling appendages off animal crackers. The Wiggles can sing -- catchy, silly, kid-friendly ditties they've composed. They can play music -- expertly, from rock to world beat. They can sorta dance -- imperfectly, which is perfect for wee ones copying The Wiggles' basic moves. And wonderfully, The Wiggles can talk to nippers without the grown-ups in the house cringing: Three of the four hold degrees in early childhood education from Macquarie University in Sydney, by cracky, and the training shows. (The fourth Wiggle, purple-shirted Jeff Fatt, joined from the rock music world.) Fatt, Greg Page (yellow shirt), Murray Cook (red) and Anthony Field (blue) share screen and stage with Captain Feathersword (a pirate who brandishes a sword of feathers), Dorothy the Dinosaur (who snacks on roses), Henry the Octopus and Wags the Dog. Their current tour of the West will finish with two shows in Portland on Thursday and four in Seattle, March 2-3. This five-week tour is on top of the five months they spent in the United States last year, hitting the East, Midwest and West -- including two Portland shows in the Newmark Theatre in June that sold out faster than Wags says "Woof." Demand for seats was so high up and down the East Coast that determined parents camped outside box offices. In New York City, tickets reportedly fetched $300 on eBay and street corners. The Wiggles squeezed extra shows into the lineup wherever possible, making for 43 concerts in 20 days on the East Coast. And they posted a message on the HIT Entertainment Web site, apologizing to fans for the trials in getting tickets. The seat squeeze is partly born of philosophy and partly of profile. The Wiggles favor midsize halls, not cavernous ones, to maintain an intimacy with the audience. Plus, The Wiggles wrote, "we had booked this tour earlier this year, so many of the larger venues have until the last few months been reluctant to allow us to hold a concert as their awareness of The Wiggles has been limited. In recent months, this has changed." And how. Last year alone, The Wiggles charmed morning news shows, joined the lineup on the Playhouse Disney cable channel, dominated the plot of an episode of a network sitcom, cruised in their pirate ship at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, hit the Walt Disney World Christmas Day Parade, and released new videos, CDs and DVDs. Their live concerts, generally in venues seating 3,000 to 5,000, are the hottest ticket in kid show business, offering competitive heat to other touring groups. Their fans include Jerry Seinfeld, John Travolta and his kids, and the audiences who bear roses by the thousands for Dorothy, bones for Wags, and drawings for the guys -- which Jeff and Murray valiantly work to collect from little hands. And despite a schedule that often calls for two and three shows a day, the work always feels fresh to The Wiggles, blue-shirted Anthony Field said in an on-the-road interview. "It's never boring for us; no, it never is," he said. "Because for us, the show's in the audience, and the kids having a great time, and the parents are right into it. "American audiences are just so enthusiastic that they spoil us as performers. You don't have a bad day on the job." The Wiggles target audience is birth to age 8. "I was a naught -- that's zero -- to 5 teacher, and Greg and Murray were 3 to 8," Field said. "That's what we know. And if anyone else likes us, that's fantastic." Indeed, their classroom time -- both as students and teachers -- is the shaping force behind the act, starting with the jiggly name and color-coded shirts. "One of our first songs was called, 'Get Ready to Wiggle.' Children, when they dance, they wiggle. And when we thought about ourselves, we thought we might dance the same way," Field said, laughing. "Also, you won't get confused that we're an adult rock band." Their outfits are simple because the teacher in them knows that young children can pay attention to only one thing at a time. "So if they focused on what we were wearing," Field said, "they would learn us by color, and the name would follow." The group began as a labor of love. As a musician (he took a break from college to tour with a hit band in Australia), Field was excited by the music side of early childhood education. In 1990 or 1991, as an extracurricular activity, he and four others recorded a tape, based on their knowledge of children and music. "I put about 15 pages of theory behind it and gave it to these people at the ABC in their children's music department," Field says. (The ABC is Australia's publicly supported radio and television stations.) And, as preschool teachers, The Wiggles took busmen's holidays, putting on shows at Sydney day care centers and private birthday parties. The 1991 tape and those early shows planted the seeds of a Wigglemania that united parents and offspring. No Barney-like cringing here. A lot of children's music is "pretty insipid and difficult to listen to," said Brianne Williams, mother of a preschool Wiggles fan and the youth librarian at the Belmont branch of the Multnomah County Library -- where Wiggles videos and music are continually checked out. In contrast, she said, The Wiggles are upbeat and rhythmically interesting. The lyrics are built on fun rhymes that build literacy and interaction that inspires kids to get up and move. The activities are age-appropriate. "And," Williams said, "they are so exuberant, it's pretty hard not to like them." |