Copyright (c) 1996

                      YA GOTTA GIVE 'EM A SHOW
                           by Colin Dale

     To a roar of approval from the capacity Madison Square Garden
crowd, a blond, teenaged girl, gripped with the excitement of the
occasion, bounded her way onto the stage to join Les Gars, France's
answer to the New Kids On The Block.  The six members of Les Gars,
pausing long enough in their wildly gyrating dance routines to
exchange worried glances, looked at the newcomer with mixed
apprehension and appreciation.
     On the one hand, there was no telling what this crazy American
girl was up to, or even if she was sober and not on drugs, which
seemed at least doubtful considering the strength she had displayed
in shoving her way past four security guards.   On the other hand,
being both French and nearly as young as they looked, Les Gars knew
a bimbo when they saw one.  They were seeing one now.  The girl had
done a delightfully poor job of dressing, assuming that she had
even intended to cover the tanned, curvaceous flesh whose abundance
seemed directly proportional to her lack of brains, as attested to
by her apparent inability to decide what to do now that she had
actually achieved the stage.
     Deciding as one, Les Gars cut short their dance and shimmied
their way forward to surround the girl in a loose semicircle. 
Francois, the 'romantic' one, put his arm around the new arrival,
to the crowd's vociferous delight.
     "It appears we are having the guest," he said suavely.  Like
the rest of Les Gars, Francois could speak perfect, unaccented
English, but was forbidden to do so by their manager, who said it
would harm their image.  Francois didn't particularly mind.  "And,
mon Dieu, but how she is pretty!  What is your name, Mademoiselle?"
     The girl replied immediately, with the consequence that no one
heard her.  Francois held his microphone up to her face and
encouraged her to try again.
     "Bambi," boomed the sound system.
     "Bambi," repeated Rene, the 'laid back' one, as he sidled
forward to take Francois' place, the latter giving way only
reluctantly.  "Such a beautiful name for such a beautiful girl,
n'est-ce pas?"  He gestured appealingly to the crowd, who cheered
lustily.
     "Our friends would appear to agree," Rene went on.  "Tell me,
Ma Cherie, are you enjoying the concert?"  He pronounced the last
word 'concair'.
     Bambi appeared to have finally fully grasped her situation,
and was lapsing into rapid-fire giggles.  "Oh, yeah, I am!" she
said between bursts.  "I'm your number one fan!  I can't believe
I'm really on stage with Less Garse, I can't, I can't, I can't!"
     Her voice rose dramatically in pitch and she began bouncing up
and down, to wild and excited shouts from the minority male section
of the audience.  Photographers directly in front of the stage were
beginning to snap away at the scene, and instinctively Les Gars
crowded close around Bambi to get in the shot.  Recently there had
been rumours of friction among the six members, but there was no
evidence of it as they all posed smilingly together.
     "Voyons," began Luc, the 'shy' one, "since this beautiful girl
has gone to all this trouble to be meeting us, perhaps we should...
but no, it is crazy."
     He stumbled to a halt and dropped his eyes to the stage. 
Taking his cue, Gilles, the 'young' one, breathed a resigned sigh,
counted to three and then said in his falsetto, "But non, Luc!  It
is never crazy to say a girl is beautiful!  We all wish to hear
your idea, do we not?"  He held up his hand and the crowd duly
screamed an affirmative.
     Luc, in his turn, counted to three and said, "It only seemed
to me that we must sing Bambi a song, c'est tout."
     The crowd erupted into frantic cheering, and Bambi clapped her
hands as she jumped up and down with glee.  None of Les Gars was
too surprised to see her throw a few cheerleader leaps into the
mix.
     "And so, ma chere Bambi," said Alain, the 'one with the
ponytail', "what song shall we sing pour vous?"
     "'You make me want to cry'," said Bambi.
     Alain, knowing as well as everyone in the arena that they had
sung that song not ten minutes ago, said smoothly, "A fine song,
oui, but not, I think, the right song for you.  A girl such as you
makes one want, not to cry, but to smile, non?  Surely another song
would be better, oui?  Perhaps 'La Belle Coquette'?"
     The crowd, blissfully unaware that 'La Belle Coquette' was
next on the play list, noisily congratulated Alain on his excellent
taste, and Les Gars lined up in their standard line-abreast singing
formation.
     "Come, my dear Bambi," said Rene, whose turn it was to be near
the center of the line, "stand here between Didier and me, so that
everyone may see you."
     Bambi stayed put, looking around uncertainly.  After a moment,
Didier, the 'strong, silent' one, stepped out of the line, took
Bambi by the hand and led her back to stand between himself and
Rene.  Before letting go of her hand Didier brought it to his lips
and kissed it, provoking wild cheers from the crowd, giggles and
bounces from Bambi and unmistakably envious looks from Francois and
Alain, whom fate and the schedule had placed at the ends of the
line for this song.
     Returning to his mark, Didier shouted, "Musique!" and the
sound system roared to life.
     'La Belle Coquette' was, like all the group's pre-fab songs, a
fast-paced dance number, heavy on bass.  Les Gars were soon
leaping, whirling and throwing their arms and legs wildly in every
direction, all in perfect unison.  Their singing suffered as a
result, but none of their fans had ever minded before, and
certainly none were minding now, as the frenzied screams of the
teenage girls in the crowd threatened to overwhelm the sound
system.  Bambi, too, was carried away by the excitement of it all,
and she squealed in delight as she matched, and then surpassed, Les
Gars' dance movements with her school's cheers.  Les Gars cast
surreptitious glances at her between moves, and also began to watch
each other watching her.  Bambi bounced, shimmied, jiggled,
clapped, did splits and cartwheels and finally leapt into Didier's
arms.  Didier, taken by surprise, only managed to avoid dropping
her by grabbing hold of the nearest curve.  This had the
unfortunate effect of pushing Bambi past the point of restraint,
and she clamped her mouth firmly over Didier's and attempted to
suck out his tonsils.  Didier was equal to the challenge, and the
resulting French kiss triggered an audience reaction so loud that
it completely drowned out the strains of 'La Belle Coquette', which
no one was listening to anyway.
     The kiss went on and on, and when it began to seem as if Bambi
and Didier might die of asphyxia in each other's arms, Gilles
stopped singing, left his place in the line and came up behind
Didier.  Luc, Alain, Francois and Rene continued dancing and
singing, but began to fall out of sync as they watched the
unfolding drama at center stage.
     Gilles tapped Didier lightly on the shoulder with his
microphone.  "Eh, bien, Didier," he said, "I think you will have to
come up for air soon, oui?"
     Didier pulled away from Bambi with difficulty, gulped in a
deep breath and resumed kissing.
     "That is not what I meant, Didier," said Gilles, clearly
piqued.  "I think that now is the time for the singing and the
dancing, not the kissing.  That is what the dressing room is for,
n'est-ce pas?"
     Didier looked up from Bambi and said something to Gilles. 
Gilles's microphone didn't catch all of it, but the first part was,
"Why don't you just kiss..."  Judging from the way Gilles suddenly
turned beet red it seemed doubtful that the last word was 'Bambi'.
     Gilles, however, chose to interpret it that way.  Dropping his
microphone to the stage in a horrible burst of feedback, Gilles
stomped hard on Didier's right foot.  Didier howled in pain and
Bambi slipped from his grip.  Gilles scooped her up before she hit
the ground and held her to him.  As Didier hopped away holding his
foot, Bambi, either not noticing the switch or not caring, began
kissing Gilles with the same passion she had exhibited towards
Didier.
     Didier finally stopped hopping around the stage and gingerly
put his foot down.  He advanced on Bambi and Gilles, a look of
murder on his face.  Francois stepped in front of him.
     "Didier, what is it you think you are doing?"
     "What does it look like I'm doin'?" growled Didier in a
distinctly un-French accent.  "I'm gonna rip off that pipsqueak's
pretty little face and stick it up his tight little butt!"
     "Shut up, Didier!" hissed Francois in an urgent whisper that
the sound system carried to everyone in the arena, his own voice
suddenly not sounding very French.  "The mikes are still..."
     Didier, seemingly in no mood to discuss the preservation of
Les Gars' image, grabbed Francois' shoulders and head-butted him
squarely above the left eyebrow.  Francois reeled backwards, and in
a news photo published the next day his body described a perfect
midair 'C' before he collapsed in a tangled heap on the stage.
     "Frank!" shouted Luc, and then he, too, dropped his microphone
and launched himself at Didier.  He hit him flush in the chest, and
the two young men went down in a mass of kicking, tearing limbs.
     Alain, taking advantage of the confusion, made his way to
Gilles and punched him in the stomach.  Gilles doubled over,
gasping for breath, and Alain grabbed Bambi and made a break for
the backstage exit.  Rene, who had still been gamely singing 'La
Belle Coquette', now gave up the ghost, seized the retreating Alain
by his ponytail and jerked his head almost completely around. 
Alain lost his grip on Bambi, who flew out of his arms, bounced
twice and skidded to a stop on the stage.  Alain whirled around and
planted his fist on Rene's jaw, sending him staggering back into
Gilles.  Rene's momentum sent Gilles into Didier and Luc, who put
aside their differences long enough to hurl Gilles bodily out of
their way.  Gilles landed on Francois, who, still groggy from
Didier's head-butt, began swinging blindly at him.  Gilles
retaliated, and not far away Alain and Rene were also squaring off. 
Instantly the stage erupted in pugilistic chaos.
     The audience, meanwhile, had fallen silent, unsure of how to
react to the spectacle of their favourite teenage role-models
suddenly confirming every rumour of mutual ill-will and displaying
every intention of beating each other's brains out.  There were a
few scattered shouts of encouragement to the various Gars, and a
collective grunt of sympathetic pain when Luc connected with a knee
to Didier's groin, but for the most part the reaction in the Garden
was one of embarrassed silence.  It also didn't help that the
snippets of snarled threats that made it to a microphone and out
over the sound system showed no sign whatever of being French, or
even French-accented English.  On the contrary, Les Gars' speaking
voices suddenly sounded far too familiar.
     "I'm gonna pull yer ponytail out one hair at a time, pretty
boy," said Rene to Alain.
     "Kind of a breach of character for the 'laid-back' one,"
commented Alain, dodging a kick and returning an elbow.
     Nearby, Gilles spun Francois around and applied a choke-hold. 
"It's not fair!" he could be heard to say through clenched teeth. 
"I'm twice as romantic as you, and they made me the 'young' one
because I'm short!  I'll bet you wouldn't get all those extra girls
if they knew how short you..."
     At this point Francois, whose eyes had been progressively
bulging out of his head, dropped to one knee, reached back to grab
a fistful of Gilles' shirt and flipped the other head over heels
into a nearby speaker.  Gilles bounced back to his feet
immediately, but then thought better of it and lay down on the
stage for a short nap.  Francois moved off to help Luc, whose head
Didier was attempting to twist off with a classic side headlock. 
Francois flipped his wrists and Didier went sailing across the
stage into Rene and Alain.  All three went down in a heap, and Luc
and Francois exchanged a high five before diving on top of it.
     The spectators had by this time gotten over their initial
chagrin and were now starting to cheer on their favourite Gars and
applaud their acrobatic, and undeniably entertaining, manoeuvres. 
They roared with approval when Francois swung a microphone stand
and Didier hopped nimbly over it.  He followed up by sweeping
Francois' legs out with a spinning dance move from 'The Road Back
to Paris' and the crowd roared even louder.  Rene was only slightly
less impressive in taking out Luc with the back-flip from 'Please,
Ma Cherie'.  With each thrust and parry the crowd's excitement
mounted, and when Bambi picked up a microphone and began leading
them in school cheers they leapt to their feet and exploded in an
orgy of clapping, stomping and screaming that went on, and on, and
on...
     The mayhem on stage, far from winding down as it went on, only
seemed to gather momentum.  The pace raced faster and faster as
attacks and counterattacks swept back and forth.  Alliances formed
and dissolved from moment to moment, as first Gilles and Francois
teamed up to bodyslam Luc to the stage, then Alain and Gilles
combined to flip Francois into Didier, then Alain and Rene joined
forces to kick Gilles in both knees at once, all to wild cheers
from the crowd.  Thanks to the stamina Les Gars had built up in the
course of their dance rehearsals the bedlam showed no sign of
abating, but when Bambi, unable to contain herself any longer,
began ripping off her clothes the Garden security force decided it
had seen enough and charged the stage.  Les Gars quickly formed a
six-man united front, and it took ten minutes and twenty security
guards to finally subdue them all.  Luc was the last to succumb,
and he shouted "Vive la France!  Vive la France!" as four security
guards dragged him off the stage.  The crowd stood and shrieked
"Encore!" for twenty solid minutes, but to no avail.  Les Gars were
in jail, and the concert was over.

                              *   *   *

     Subsequent events were easy to predict, if difficult to
believe.  Les Gars emerged from jail to a blaze of publicity and a
heroes' welcome from their ballooning legions of fans.  The slight
scandal of their turning out to be Americans was completely
swallowed up in the media circus that quickly surrounded the first
singing group to literally go to war on stage.  Bambi joined the
group as a cheerleader, and together she and Les Gars toured the
talk-show circuit and sold out the rest of their "Coming to
America" tour in twelve days flat.  At each of these shows Les Gars
would sooner or later come to blows, and it was this that brought
the fans out in droves.  Eventually Les Gars abandoned even the
pretence of being a singing group and simply came out swinging. 
Their CD profits predictably declined, but their 'concert' video
revenues more than made up the difference.  Two months after their
fistfight at Madison Square Garden, Les Gars, the 'French' group
who had never even been to France, was the number one musical act
in the country without singing a note.
     That proved something, but no one seemed to know what.

                                 END