Shoutback
A
true WO fan’s dream – an hour long TV show about Wild
Orchid!
I
literally cannot find any information about Shoutback; I guess it was just a
short series. They had a few other
episodes with Mandy Moore and other groups. The WO episode was annoyingly sponsored
by Neutrogena (3 commercials of theirs in each break!) and aired at least 4
times on the cable channel Much Music USA. Sadly, that channel has morphed into
Fuse, and they don’t rerun MMUSA stuff.
For
a short time, the website was showing deleted scenes from the show, including
the old “WO story” about how they met, the girls discussing what they looked for
in a guy (Stefanie was engaged at that point), and little teaser clips. You can hear segments of these clips
being voiced-over during the actual show.
This
was one of the only places to officially hear songs from Fire since the ill-fated album never
came out. What really killed me was
they were literally giving away tickets to this thing when it was being
filmed!!! I would have DIED to be
there!
The
show is hosted by actress/potential PopStars contestant Camille Guaty (watch her
face when Renee mentions Eden’s Crush, the group that came out of that reality
show). I don’t know if she hosted
any other episodes. She introduces
WO and their first song is “It’s All Your Fault”. This is the song that very, very briefly
is heard in a scene from What Women Want.
The girls have these biker-style shirts on, and Stefanie has purple
streaks in her hair (she’s now officially straight-haired; nothing after this is
curly). Poor Stacy has this…cocker
spaniel poofy hair, it’s a bit weird.
Not as weird, however, as the dancers they suddenly have. The white guy was going for a bandanna
look, but instead he appears to have suffered a massive head wound.
Right away you’ll notice this is an edgier look than most of WO’s previous themes. The dancing has changed as well. Nowhere is this more evident than in the next song, “Simon Sez”. This song later ends up on the duo-album Hypnotic, where it made more sense in context. It’s only got brief snatches of Stacy in it. For some reason, Renee’s mic hardly picks her up in this song. Either that or the music drowns her out. I’ve never particularly liked this song, but…I’ve already spoken at length about that. Anyway, the next song is the requested “Come As You Are”.
During the cuts to commercial, we have brief scenes of WO running around NYC. This first one is WO buying hot dogs.
When
we come back, the girls are sitting in chairs. If you’re any kind of WO fan, by now
you’re starting to wonder if these “requests” aren’t live…but first, audience
members are brought forward to ask questions. This is a pretty cute section; Renee is
especially endearing here. It looks
as if this is where additional questions were cut and just used for
voiceover. We find out what artists
WO likes, and how perverse some fans can be (bus licking?!?!?!? Man, I’m pretty
intense, but even I wouldn’t lick a damn bus!). Stacy also takes another opportunity to
point out that she’s not dating.
Whoever this guy is, man, he gets slammed on Great Pretenders, too! They do their trademark a cappella bit
and Stacy flubs a line.
Whoops! I guess she was
still thinking about her ex.
Commercial
break #2: goofing off on a bridge somewhere. 
Then the moment we all saw coming a mile away finally arrives: a fan requests “At Night I Pray” (hence the chairs). For concerts, this is the “remix” version where they steal a guy from the audience and uh, give him other ideas for what to do at night besides praying. Poor guy.
After this, some giggly girls ask WO
about *NSYNC. Now, I mentioned in
my Fire review that JC Chasez wrote a
total of 4 songs for them, with one only appearing as a B-side to
“Stuttering”. The song the girls
choose to do is “Just Another Girl”.
Personally…I would have liked to see them go with anything else. The song is mostly clichéd phrases and
they wear coats strangely similar to Madonna, Debi Mazar and co in her “Music”
video. I don’t
know…
Commercial
break #3: The girls are watching
street performers. What you can’t
see is that one of them is balancing on the shoulders of the other one (which is
why Renee exclaims, “Oh my God.”).
We
come back to find that some lucky audience members are chatting with WO after
their wardrobe change. Now they
have black tops and camo pants.
Everyone loves New York, and we get a video of WO playing around the city
with voiceovers. They go to an
orchid show (ha ha, how funny), shop, hug a street performer? (Apparently, she
really was concerned for his
welfare)
Now
we are back to the show, and the sad part:
The girls are excitedly talking about Fire. It was going to come out later that year
(this is 2001), but all we got was one single, and we were lucky to get
that. Speaking of “Stuttering”,
Camille herself requests it, saying she’s heard it “all over the radio”. Perhaps that’s true in New York or
California…but I only heard it twice, on a North Carolina radio station – at 3
am! Smartasses. But this is a good song, a fun
performance to watch, and it’s funny to see how long it took the audience to get
“kiss my a-a-a-a-...”. By the way, this is the album cut with an additional
Stacy bridge.
The
next song is one of the main reasons I would have strongly recommended people
buy Fire. “It’s Only Your Love” could have been on
some soundtrack – and I don’t mean shoehorned into a dance scene, either! It would have made a great single. It’s the prettiest WO song yet.
Last
commercial break: the girls cooing
over some guy’s bulldog named Duchess.
This apparently has given Stacy an idea…
Now
for the bit you might have seen in the commercial for this show (I have it, and
as soon as I find it, I’ll see if I can show you). WO whipped up a little ditty during the
commercial break that nicely sums up what Shoutback was trying to accomplish
here. The last “request” is of
course “Talk to Me”. Last chance
for each girl to do their own trademark stuff the fans love them for – except
Stacy flubs another line! Oh, and the dancers are back. I forgot to mention that they
disappeared after “Simon Sez”.
The show is now over, but before we can go out and by some Neutrogena products, we have to teach Camille the “Talk to Me” dance! At least we have something cute to watch while the credits roll.
Overall,
this is one of if not the best WO TV appearances. Since it is also one of the last Stacy
ones, I would definitely use it for introducing newbies to the group.