Funky Big Band

ULTRA, the newest British smash hit, is not just a boy band. These are real men, this is real pop, and we forsee real big things for them - By Nina Ti from ETC Magazine

The instant the words 'boy band' escape my lips, I'm convinced James Hearn will be cross. That tag has dogged all pretty white pop groups since New Kids On The Block debuted in the '80s. Then with the uprising of Take That in the '90s, came the factory-produced contenders who were slapped together in the wake of ringing cash registers and weeping adolescent girls not heard of since John, Paul, George and Ringo shook their mop tops on national TV.

The magnitude of the boy band movement this last decade has been a pop phenomenon to rival the R&B breakout of the '80s, the rock explosion of the '70s and everything from the '60s. Back then, it was mostly about the music. These days, get "five phat boys with the power to rock you" (according to 'Slam Dunk The Funk' by UK pop group 5ive) and ch-ching! - you're money. Credibility? Never heard of it.

But surprise, surprise -- James Hearn, lead vocalist for the British pop band Ultra, says he reckons the 'boy band' sticker can be rather smamry. "It's a pity that most bands are trying to get rid of it," he says. "There's a certain amount of hype surrounding all boy bands, and some of it can be damaging, but if you think about it, even the Beatles were once a boy band, just in their time, they were called something else."

"And since you asked," he adds, "we were not 'manufactured' because we've been together since school. Some manager didn't put us together, we put us together." We being the strikingly camera-friendly Hearn, and his friends from Buckinghamshire, England - guitarist Michael Harwood, bass player Nick Keynes and drummer Jon O'Mahoney.

"Do you find us appealing?" asks Hearn, his beautiful voice a purring brogue that both calms and strokes his listeners. "I find that flattering because we never expect people to find us vaguely appealing. Our success comes from our songs, not out looks."

They've certainly done all right for themselves in both ways. Their first two singles, 'Say You Do' and 'Say It Once,' were smash chart hits in Britain, Australia, Singapore and Malaysia. Some 16 year old lass, has shown her appreciation by dashing up the stage during an Ultra show and promptly whisking her top off. "She flashed us!" recalls Hearn in 'shock and horror'.

Though Ultra has supported and opened concerts for acts like Louise and Boyzone, for the record, Hearn says they'd much rather look up to Britpop bands like Supergrass and geezer pop groups like Genesis - for writing really good music. "I listen to a lot of Peter Gabriel," he admits, "though my friends laugh at me for that. They think it's fairground music."

Now, their name - despie the allusions conjured up by the media whenever there's talk of the band, Hearn wards off the notion that there's some sprt of message behind a name like 'Ultra'. "We're not the Spice Girls, where the name is supposed to be some kind of tactical game," he says. "We chose Ultra while ruffling through loads of other names; we used to call ourselves Decade, and once we were Just Like Clockwork. We don't surf, but we even tried a name called Suburban Surfers. It was just a running joke for us really; we just kept changing names."

And so, money glory and girls - yes, Ultra will definitely have some more of that. "This sounds like a terrible clich�,, but Ultra will be around for as long as people still want us," says Hearn. "The resaon boy bands fall apart in the first place is because they're put together by managers and songwriters. We're vastly different. First and foremost, we are friends."

Of course, " We're not obssessed about being famous," insists Michael Harwood, Who's also been known to think, "the hype is all rubbish" and that having good music is all that should matter. "We won't pretend to be amazingly deep. Pop is about putting a smile on your face and that's all we want to do."