The Ispy award of the week goes to chaz...
It's a Wiggy, Giggly Wiggles World
By David Segal
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 26, 2003; Page C01
Most of the crowd is in tears, or screaming, or so overwhelmed they don't know where they are. Something close to hysteria reigns here at MCI Center on Monday night, the kind of fevered commotion that every rock band dreams of stirring. But there's something very strange about the tumult, and it's this: The concert hasn't started. Not a note has been heard. It'll be another 20 minutes before the music even starts.
What kind of band has fans wailing in the lobby? The kind worshiped by 2-, 3- and 4-year-olds. The Wiggles, to be specific, a tirelessly sweet-natured quartet of Australian men who've become the Fab Four of toddlers. Now on a month-long tour of the United States, the group stopped in Washington to play four shows for a total of 30,000 kiddies and bedraggled parents who paid $20 and up for tickets.
To most adults, the Wiggles will look like nothing more than cheery middle-aged men in bright shirts, singing and dancing to instantly annoying tunes such as "Do the Owl" and "Vegetable Soup." Preschoolers, on the other hand, see something riveting, though exactly what they see is hard to say. Or rather, the tykes on Monday are having a hard time putting it into words.
Why do you like the Wiggles, Seth Hartson?
"Five!" he shouts.
"He's not 5," says his mom, shaking her head.
"Because I'm 1!" he counters. Of course, he's not 1, either.
"What do you like about them, Seth?" mom asks, hoping for better.
"Two!" This, apparently, is Seth's final offer because he grins and turns his back.
This won't be news to parents, but debriefing a child under 3 is a lot like cross-examining someone who is insane or tripping on acid. So how about you, Helena Weisskopf, in the soft-serve ice cream line? Why do you like the Wiggles?
"Because I'm Bambi!" she says.
Because I'm Bambi?
"Noooooo," she says, exasperated. "Because I'm Bambi."
For the record, Bambi has nothing to do with the Wiggles, though the group brings along a handful of recurring characters, including Wags the Dog and a chipper pirate called Captain Feathersword. But at the heart of this cash-guzzling, multimedia machine are Murray Cook, Anthony Field, Greg Page and Jeff Fatt, all between the ages of 31 and 50, who formed the Wiggles in 1991 and have since sold about 11 million CDs and videos. On this U.S. tour alone, they'll play before 250,000 people.
Long beloved in Australia, the group came to the attention of U.S. audiences as the opening act for Barney, the famously pummel-worthy purple dinosaur. Then last January, the Disney Channel picked up the Wiggles' half-hour TV show -- a gentle assemblage of skits, dancing and songs -- and the program now runs about three times a day. Moms and dads have been mercilessly badgered for Wiggles' merchandise ever since.
The group was formed by three friends who met in an early childhood education program at a university in Sydney. They wanted to be teachers, and for a while two of them were. But they also played music -- a pair were in a band called the Cockroaches -- and what they learned in college about the 3-year-old brain they began to apply to their songwriting.
"It's not just that they know less, they think quite differently," says Murray Cook, who chatted for a couple minutes in MCI Center's press room before the show on Monday. "You really have to focus on them more, because they're really egocentric. The world revolves around them, so a lot of the stuff we do is to empower them. A lot of it is interactive, songs that have things for them to do."
Cook, who is well over 6 feet 4 inches takes the Wiggles seriously without seeming humorless or deadly earnest. He and his band mates -- yes, they play instruments -- can do corny without irony, and they all appear genuinely amused by the antics of their audience, which is why their act never seems at all creepy. Cook, for one, enjoys being a celebrity to people who think he lives in the television, or don't understand what perspiration is.
"When I go out into the audience, usually the kids just say things like 'Why are you wet?' Once a kid said to me, 'You're melting!' "
When he has a night off he tries to check out up-and-comers, such as the Strokes.
"I went to see the Detroit Cobras on Saturday at Iota," he says, naming a pretty obscure garage band. "They were great."
As promised, the show on Monday night is interactive, and it happens on a stage that is surprisingly low-tech, nothing more than a couple of brightly colored inflatables that could have come from a Dr. Seuss moon bounce. The Wiggles, each in his signature colored shirt, jog on stage with the glad-to-meet-ya energy of real estate agents. They sing about mashed bananas. They do the monkey, a dance that has everyone, parents included, shaking and giggling. They introduce Wags, Feathersword and others along with a troupe of six dancers, then go through routines that the kids know by heart. They have to scream to wake up Jeff, who is apparently stricken with narcolepsy and often pretends to fall asleep.
"Wake up Jeff!" the room shouts in unison.
Everyone is goofily ecstatic, or on the verge of a meltdown, and everybody is dancing without regard to how foolish they look. If you've ever seen a Grateful Dead crowd, you know what it looked like.
