Westlife to satisfy fans in its coming concert

JAKARTA (JP): Boy bands come and go. Apart from having different names, many of them are essentially the same: beautiful boys singing easy-listening, sweet love songs.

But no matter what, boy bands, like Boyzone, 98 Degree or Hanson, are always good at making teenage girls scream for more and, certainly, at making them buy their records.

The Irish band Westlife is one of them.

Thanks to an aggressive promotional campaign on private television stations and MTV, which keeps on playing their videos, the five-member band's hit singles , If I Let You Go, Flying Without Wings, Swear It Again and I Have A Dream are loved by many teenagers.

Here is a sample lyric from their latest hit:

... If I let you go/ I will never know/ What my life would be, holding you close to me/ Will I ever see you smiling back at me/ How will I know if I let you go..."

For a relatively new band, Westlife is not doing to bad if one looks at how many CDs and cassettes they have sold. Here, over 350,000 copies of the band's debut album, Westlife, comprising their early hit singles and several new ones, have been sold. In England, the album, which was launched around April last year, has sold close to one million copies.

Comprising Shane Filan, Kian Egan, Bryan McFadden, Nicky Byrne and Mark Feehilly, the band are playing here in Jakarta on Monday starting at 6 p.m.

The concert, which is at the Senayan Indoor Stadium in South Jakarta, is sure to lure Westlife fans who were not satisfied with the group's previous promo tour here last year, which included a show at Bengkel Night Park off Jl. Jend. Sudirman, South Jakarta.

Two local bands, Trade Mark and Cool Colors will be supporting Westlife.

According to the concert's organizer, Java Musikindo, the concert here is part of Westlife's Asian tour 2000. Already, the Irish lads have performed in several Asian countries, including Bangkok, Singapore and Malaysia. After Jakarta, their next scheduled concert is in Taiwan.

Here, Westlife's concert will certainly be crowded by teenage girls. As of Wednesday's evening, 85 percent of the tickets, which are being sold at Rp 125,000 each, have been sold out.

"We expect by Monday all the tickets will be sold out," said Arey of Java Musikindo. The stadium itself can accommodate around 8,000 people.

For a boy band, Westlife went through many phases before reaping their present success.

The band started in 1998, when three boys from Sligo in northwest Ireland -- Kian, Mark and Shane -- formed a band called IOU and released an independent single.

No one would have heard from them if Shane's mother had not called Boyzone's manager Louis Walsh and asked him to have a look at the band and sign them up. At that time, Walsh could only get them a support slot for the Backstreet Boys since he felt he would not have time to handle another boy band. But after seeing the boys on stage, he was impressed and asked Boyzone's Ronald Keating to comanage the new band with him.

Three of IOU's original members were later dropped and Nicky and Byran were added to the band, which was originally called Westside. However, in early 1999 the lads changed it to Westlife after learning that a number of other bands were using the same name.

After plenty of tours, including one with Boyzone, Westlife's big break came with the release of their debut single Swear It Again in April 1999. The single went straight to the top of the British and Irish charts. (ste)