It's been a whole two and a half months since I last peeked under the dressing room door at the Clique Girlz, I wonder how the new kid is getting along.

Whoops! Apparently Sara got the boot six weeks ago. Whether the problem was that her name was too old-fashioned for sisters Destinee and Paris Monroe or that Jews are no longer the hot ethnic group for a teenybopper band, the Girlz may soon remedy the situation by acquiring a wise Latina named Keana Texeira. OK, Keana isn't officially in the group but she is the girlz' new BFF (though that last F is very conditional for Paree and Dentist). Also, I don't actually know if she's Latina. I just think she looks feisty and lacking in judicial temperament.

Anyway, it's getting to be a regular Thunderdome over there. If I were one of the Monroe sisters I'd be sleeping with one eye open.

4:32 PM :: Comments (2)

When we last left the Clique Girlz, Ariel Moore had just left the Clique Girlz. Depending on who you asked, the non-sister member of the tween supergroup was either fed up at not getting her share of the spotlight or not talented enough to deserve her share of the spotlight. Because the Clique Girlz standards are superhigh.

Well, as of a few weeks ago, Paris and Destinee Monroe have finally cast themselves a new best friend, and hold onto your yarmulkes — she's a Jewess! A brunette Jewess. There go the PTL gigs. This picture shows Sara Diamond joining Vienna and Densitee on the set of their new movie Help! Baby Bottle Pop commercial. And while all three girls are looking appropriately lickable, shakable and dunkable (hey, I didn't write the jingle), the new one seems like trouble. Not only does she have a preposterous first name, she's already working her de-aryanization program on the Monroe sisters by infecting Desitin with her un-blond hair.

If all this sounds vaguely un-American, perhaps it's because Sara is actually from — hold onto your toques — Canada! So what else do we know about this foreign Jewess who has penetrated the beloved Cliquez? Well, she's 14, she's a model-actress (hooker-waitress?), and she has a stage mother who was pushing her into tween pop even before the Clique gig. Oh, and she got her start writing and performing militant marching songs for Hebraic Canadian cabals.

So how are Clique Girlz fans reacting to the new member? Does the word Kristallnacht ring a bell? The knives are out over at the girlz' number one fan site. Sara is wearing Ariel's dress! She's stealing her lucky charms! (Somehow we've never discussed this here, but each of the girlz has symbol that "represents them as individuals." For instance, Paree has a pink princess crown because she's "the princess," while Ariel had the purple heart, because she's "the sweetheart." And because she took some shrapnel in the ass over in Nam.)

Breaking news: Under pressure from the Clique Girlz Youth, Sara has modified her symbol. She will now sport a yellow star red heart. Because: "I love friendship and stuff."

At least the Clique Girlz marketing team is getting somewhat more sophisticated. In the past, my blog posts have been flooded with different people all making the same pre-approved comments. This time, I was alerted to the arrival of Sara by one person commenting under different names both supporting and attacking her. Maybe in time for the next cast change they'll learn about IP addresses.

After the jump, more annotated pictures.

Continue reading "In event of Rapture, Clique Girlz will now be only 2/3 missing" »

1:49 AM :: Comments (5)

Clique Girlz third wheel Ariel Moore says her farewell in a YouTube video that is a sheer delight for fans of Lie to Me, the entertaining new TV show based on the work of behavioral scientist Paul Ekman, who has trained himself, as Malcolm Gladwell explained a few years back, to read people's minds based on fleeting "microexpressions" in their faces.

Here are a few freeze frames of expressions I probably wouldn't have registered before I started watching Lie to Me. Bearing in mind that I've never actually tried this before and that I'm not a hundred percent convinced it isn't all a load of hokum, I'm seeing... sadness tinged with disgust when she talks about her former bandmates and flashes of anger when she talks about her fans and her future.

And while we're studying Miss Moore's face, I feel compelled to revise my previous remarks about her physical attractiveness. Freed from the Clique Girlz heavy-handed stylists she's actually quite decent looking.

By the way, do you think it's really hard to be a guest actor on Lie to Me? If the whole premise is that your expressions give away your lies, how can they not give away your, you know, acting?

6:40 PM :: Comments (14)

In response to my post today about the Clique Girlz' candy-fueled comeback, Cr4Bdbgs' Dave Moore informs me that in the last few days there's been some trouble in the Clique clique. Specifically, "best friend" Ariel Moore is leaving the group. How did the Times miss this? Damn you, Judy Miller!

The fan buzz (yes, there is fan buzz) is that the sisters have been hogging the proverbial microphones, along with the actual ones, and that little mermaid "hasn't been happy for a long time and that there has been a lot of hatred, dishonesty, pain, suffering and emotional and physical and mental abuse from the manager of the group Lenore." And by manager, she means Destineeeee and Paris' mom. (Legal note: I can not personally vouch for this anonymous web gossip, and am in fact deeply, deeply troubled by it.)

It would take a truly despicable person to point out that at the precise moment when their career most needs a jump start, the Clique Girlz have managed to shed their, um, least conventionally attractive member. When I find that person, I will berate him for saying such obnoxious things about an ordinary teenage girl who just happens to want to be a pop star for a living.

Anyway, Ariel's fans are absolutely convinced that she'll have a monster solo career, so we've got that to look forward to.

If anyone happens to go to the casting call on Saturday, please report back. Gee, I had no idea you could "cast" a new best friend. I hope they get a blonde!

8:59 PM :: Comments (24)

It's been nearly two years since I declared the Clique Girlz — then simply Clique — to be the next Huckapoo. Which I suspect you took to mean that you'd never have to hear about them again except in my fevered rantappreciations. So how did "the youngest pop group in the history of music" go from being a bad joke on an obscure blog (and vice versa) to the front page of the New York Times arts section? To answer that, we must travel back, back, back to the primordial era before the birth of rock 'n' roll.

It is the most famous legend in American musical history. Bluesman Robert Johnson was at a crossroad in his career, as well as an actual crossroad on a road, and he saw his musical future slipping away from him. In this moment of weakness, Johnson sold his soul to the devil. In exchange, Satan made Johnson the greatest guitar player who ever lived.

Cut to the present day.

In their drive to become the Next Big Thing in teenage entertainment, the Clique Girlz have had more opportunities than most.

The youthful trio, backed by Interscope Records and the powerful Creative Artists Agency, have opened for the Jonas Brothers and appeared on “Today,” where Al Roker called them “Hannah Montana times three.” They sang in last year’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and Interscope has flooded YouTube with over 30 videos.

None of those sparks have started a fire. Instead, the Clique Girlz — Destinee Monroe, 14; her sister, Paris, 12; and their best friend, Ariel Moore, 14 — are in danger of washing out of the entertainment industry before their first full CD comes to market. So far, at least, digital downloads have been anemic, and play on Radio Disney, where programming is based on listener requests, has been modest at best.

But the Clique Girlz, who hail from Egg Harbor Township, N.J., have been thrown what could turn out to be a lifeline — and from no lesser a judge of talent than Michael D. Eisner, the former chief executive of the Walt Disney Company.

What did this shadowy "Michael D. Eisner" offer Destinie, Paris and Jasmine? Great talent? Please. This isn't the 1930s. No, in exchange for their immortal souls, the Clique Girlz got something far more valuable to today's aspiring pop tarts: an endorsement deal for Baby Bottle Pop, the candy treat that saved the Jonas Brothers at a similar low point. Yes, soon it will be preteen London and barely teens Destaney and Aurora who are singing that immortal jingle, "You can lick it, shake it and dunk it." Can you ever!

Continue reading "Hey little girlz, want some candy?" »

9:55 AM :: Comments (9)

Interscope: You want the Pussycat Dolls on your show? You're gonna have to take the Clique Girlz too.

Nashville Star: You know what? Nah.

1:55 PM :: Comments (4)

Hey, Washington Post, those aren't just any anonymous babes!

Here's the CG's recent network TV debut -- an off-key rendition of generic faux-humble contemporary Christian schlock. There are days when I'm genuinely depressed at having jokingly anointed the Clique Girlz as the successors to Huckapoo. What was supposed to be a throwaway joke about my failure as a prophet of pop is now haunting me, as the CGs actually do achieve the megastardom that is rightly Huckapoo's. Where is the justice?!

12:06 PM :: Comments (5)

Idolator discovers the Clique Girlz. You may have read about them here a few times in the past year.

6:12 PM :: Comments (6)

From late 2004 until at least a few months ago, doing a Google search for Huckapoo would return a link to my exhaustive (and exhausting!) coverage of that band somewhere in the top five results (the exact position alternating with the band's official site, its MySpace page, Wikipedia entry and my New York magazine feature).

Today I discovered that my Huckapoo coverage has been demoted to result number 603. That's right: there are 602 better sources of information about Huckapoo on the internets than Radosh.net, including Les artistes dont la premiere lettre est H.

Now, the upside of scrolling through seven pages of Huckapoo results is that I discovered the previously hidden photographic gem above (see two more from the set here). But the downside is, what the fuck happened over at Google?

Seriously, someone with some tech savvy needs to explain to me why or how my site has been blacklisted as a source for Huckapoo information — which surely someone other than me still looks for now and then.

Clues to this mystery after the jump.

Continue reading "It's a Huckanspiracy!" »

1:37 PM :: Comments (15)

I guess this means I know my stuff. Back when I first introduced Clique — now Clique Girlz — I wrote that I was getting a Christian vibe from them. And it's not like they were doing anything obvious like selling all their possessions and giving the money to the poor.

Well, looky who's performing this Thursday on Praise the Lord, the flagship program of the Trinity Broadcasting Company. Watch yer backs, Jump5!

9:30 AM :: Comments (2)

Remember Prussian Blue, the White Power Pop duo you first read about here and who later went on to become a media, if not musical, phenomenon? Back when, several commenters noted that when they hit their teens, there'd be, in Vance's words, "a teen rebellion phase so intense as to... blast the swastika off the proverbial horse."

Get ready. Jezebel has a clip from a new British documentary in which Lamb and Lynx, now 15, begin distancing themselves from all that racism stuff, to the horror of their shrewish, batshit crazy mom — who at one point calls Lynx a "cunt." Isn't British TV awesome?

The longer excerpts on YouTube temper Jezebel's optimism a bit. From the few minutes I watched, it seems that the girls have some way to go before they can officially be considered redeemed. It's possible mom's vision for the band will ultimately win out. Do the girls even have enough talent to draw an audience not based on ideology? Previously I would have said no way, but more recent recordings suggest that they could cultivate a lo-fi key of Z approach that might draw in the WFMU crowd.

Here's my promise, girls: repent publicly, dig up something to send mommy to prison (fake it if you must), and I'll be the first in line to download a pirated copy of your next CD.

[Hat tip: Abby]

9:06 AM :: Comments (6)

Remember Clique, the girl band that I promised was going to be the next big thing and that several of you pleaded with me to stop blogging about because it was creeping you out? Well they're now called Clique Girlz, they've been signed to Interscope and they have a track on the Bratz soundtrack.

I give them a year till rehab.

4:52 PM :: Comments (34)