PUSSYCAT DOLLS'  LEAD  VOCALIST A PINAY / ON  MANHATTAN  TRANSFER

MANILA, MAY 29, 2006 (STAR) FUNFARE By Ricardo F. Lo - I didn’t know that Nicole Scherzinger, lead vocalist of the Pussycat Dolls (the controversial sextet which is the current sensation in America), is a Filipina until yesterday when I got an e-mail from Funfare’s Big Apple correspondent Edmund Silvestre (news editor of The Filipino Reporter) who was reacting to last week’s story about the Dolls’ one-night show at the Araneta Coliseum on July 28 (a day after the concert of The Black Eyed Peas, which also has a Pinoy member in the person of Allan Pineda a.k.a. apl.de.ap, in the same venue).

"Didn’t you know that Nicole is a Pinay?" asked Edmund who sent posthaste a backgrounder on Nicole.

But first, the latest about the sextet (whose phenomenal success is reminiscent of that of the Spice Girls).

According to Edmund, the Pussycat Dolls made headlines last week in New York when giant toymaker Hasbro junked plans to release the Pussycat Dolls, which are patterned after Nicole and co-members Melody Thornton, Carmit Bachar, Ashley Roberts, Jessica Sutta and Kimberly Wyatt.

Bowing to pressures from parents and various advocacy groups (among them the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood), Hasbro was quoted by a New York paper as admitting that the dolls were "inappropriate." The protesting parents complained that the lyrics of the "scantily-clad" sextet’s songs were "sexual," citing as example the line "Don’t cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me" from the song Don’t Cha which was America and United Kingdom’s hottest dance song last year and was, according to the same New York paper, "also a favorite among the sexy stars of ASAP, as seen on The Filipino Channel."

Said to be the most disappointed among the Pussycat Dolls was Nicole, "concerned (as she was) about their thousands of young fans looking forward to the release of the dolls."

Meanwhile, here’s more info about Nicole who was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, to a Filipino musician father from Batanes and a Hawaiian-Russian mother who was a lead hula dancer:

Nicole Elikolani Prescovia Scherzinger, who used the stage name Nicole Kea when she joined an open audition for Pussycat Dolls, was born on June 29, 1978. Fondly called Cola (same nickname as Zanjoe Marudo’s ex?) by her chums, she grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, where her family relocated when she was seven. She has a sister, Ke’ala.

According to her official biography, Nicole began her life as a performer in Louisville, attending the Youth Performing Arts School at duPont Manual High School and performing with Actors Theater of Louisville. She majored in Theater Arts at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio (state of Sam Milby), but put her studies on hold in 1999 to be a back-up vocalist for the rock band Days of the New.

In 2001, she competed in the WB TV Network show Popstars, on which she earned a spot in the all-girl pop group Eden’s Crush. The group’s 2001 single Get Over Yourself peaked at No. 1 in sales and hit the top five on Billboard Hot 100. Love This Way was the second single chosen from the Popstars album; however, their record company folded and the group disbanded.

In 2003, the 5’5" tall Nicole joined The Pussycat Dolls at the time when its girls were being repackaged as recording artists. In 2005, they reached international stardom. Their Billboard top five hits included Don’t Cha, Beep and Stickwitu, and their album PCD went platinum in 2006. Nicole is the only Pussycat member with a songwriting credit on the album. She has also done background vocals for Days of the New, Will Smith and Shaggy; and performed with Japanese superstar Yoshiki.

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Now, did you know that the Manhattan Transfer (MT) was not an overnight success?

This trivia (and more by and by) should be interesting to MT fans who must be waiting (with bated breath?) for the group’s series of concerts here in July, with a repertoire that includes, among other MT hits, A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square, Operator, Smile Again, Birdland, Boy from New York City, Twilight Zone, Until I Met You, It’s Gonna Take a Miracle, On the Boulevard and Shakers Song.

Bass singer Tim Hauser, who founded and formed the Manhattan Transfer, was only 15 when he started a singing group called The Criterions with a few singles. Years later, he formed the first Manhattan Transfer (a five-member group) which broke up in 1971 after its album called Jukin flopped.

In the fall of 1972, the Manhattan Transfer was reborn, still with Tim and three new members, Laurel Masse (soprano), Janis Siegel (alto) and Alan Paul (tenor). Tim, a cab driver then, first met Laurel, an aspiring singer who was his passenger. A few weeks later, Tim met Janis through a drummer friend and, soon after, Alan, a Broadway artist who appeared in the original production of Grease. In 1978, Laurel impaired her jaws in a car accident so she quit the group, replaced by Cheryl Bentyne, a young singer-actress from Washington.

The Manhattan Transfer made music history in 1981 by being the first group to win the Grammy Awards in both categories of pop and jazz in the same year – Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group for the song Boy From New York and Best Jazz Performance by a Duo or Group for Until I Met You.

The group was made.

More hits followed – and more Grammys.

The group’s latest album is Vibrate which contains 12 tracks of both the traditional and progressive styles of jazz, various shades of Latin beat, world and pop music.

(Note: The Manhattan Transfer will have a concert at the Big Dome on July 7. Tickets are priced at P3,500, P3,000, P2,500, P1,500, P800 and P300, available at all SM Ticketnet outlets. Call 911-5555 for inquiries. More shows are scheduled on July 5 at the Waterfront Hotel in Cebu City and on July 6 in Bacolod City. All concerts are produced by Renen de Guia’s Ovation Productions.)