Thursday, July 23, 1998
By MIKE ROSS -- Edmonton Sun
"This is what's selling now,"
muttered a music industry executive, gesturing to the throng of
excited teenage girls lined up to see 'N Sync earlier this month.
The same can be said of the Backstreet Boys, Spice Girls, All
Saints, Savage Garden, Hanson and so on and so forth. Pop,
sometimes called "bubblegum," is huge - like it or not.
Recent albums by country stars, on the other hand, have, with few
exceptions, sold less than their previous releases. Commercial
country, sometimes called "hot" country, has cooled
down considerably.
The Moffatts are the ideal poster boys for this turning of the
tides. Canada's answer to Hanson used to be a kiddie country act
in the early '90s, briefly famous for the Caterpillar Crawl line
dance. But on the new album, Chapter I: A New Beginning, the four
teenage brothers from Victoria made the switch to a slick pop-rock
sound with spectacular results. While not yet as huge in Canada
as they are in Southeast Asia - where the boys were nearly ripped
apart by 10,000 frenzied fans at an ill-planned mall appearance -
they're on their way.
Riding high on the hit single I'll Be There For You, the Moffatts
will sign autographs at Music World in West Edmonton Mall today
at 2 p.m. It's a homecoming, in a way.
With mom and dad poring over itineraries in a hotel coffee shop
in downtown Edmonton yesterday, Clint, Bob and Dave - the 14-year-old
triplets - and brother Scott, 15, sat down to rehash old times.
"Our first performance together was at West Edmonton Mall,"
Clint says. "It got us started. We wanted to record a song
for our grandpa for his Christmas present. So we were in Studio
86 and and it's got see-through glass. While we were rehearsing,
we looked up and there were tons of people gathering around the
studio. So we decided that if people wanted to hear our music,
maybe we could start doing some more stuff."
It wasn't a very memorable song, Bob remembers: "We had
really squeaky voices."
Of course, the Moffatts were only four and five years old at the
time, but the die was cast. The brothers had decided what to do
with the rest of their lives. A few years later, they convinced
their father, Frank, to let them busk at the Victoria ferry to
raise money for a trip to Disneyland. With dad playing guitar,
they pulled in $800 in just one hour.
With public schools replaced by home schooling, the next stop was
Nashville, where the Moffatts became the youngest country act to
be signed to a major record label. By the time they entered the
double-digit age group, the Moffatts were already injecting Van
Halen riffs into their shows and listening more to bands like the
Beatles, the Doors and Nirvana than to George Strait.
"It wasn't a drastic change for us," Clint says, "because
even though we were playing country, we would play rock in our
shows. Country fans of ours basically grew to rock music with us."
Says Scott: "What we did was a total gimmick, the kid
country thing, which had never been done before. We were pretty
big on country, but now that we think back, why did we even like
country? That's not our favorite music at all. But that's where
we came from."
Were it not for a delay in switching record labels, the Moffatts
might've come along before Hanson, though it scarcely matters now.
According to father Frank, Chapter I: A New Beginning is
outselling Hanson in Europe and Asia by a wide margin.
The subject matter of the Moffatts' music is just as straight
ahead as any boy group's - aimed right at the hearts of teenage
girls. Titles like Girl of My Dreams and Say'N I Love U are
typical.
Scott explains, "In pop-rock music, there aren't that many
opportunities to write about different things. When you're in
rock music, you can talk about basically anything: Anger, love,
relationships. But in pop music, pop-rock, what we're playing,
love music is what the girls want to hear. And that's what sells
records, I guess."
It would be easy to imagine that the Moffatts' minds and egos
have been warped by a childhood spent in show business. It's hard
not to be affected by the love and adoration of thousands of
teenage girls - especially if you're a teenage boy. But they
somehow stay grounded.
"We have a thing where stars come out at night and that's
the only time that they do," Bob says. "What we're in
this for is to make people happy and love what we do."
The Moffatts aren't planning to tour Canada until next year at
least. Let's hope not too many MMM-Bops go by before they get
here.
(Original text: http://www.canoe.ca/AllPop-Moffatts/980723_mad.html)