‘Bubble Gum Brigade’ Turns Out at SPAC to Hear Bobby Sherman

by Marilyn Nason, The Post-Star, September 8, 1970

The season may have been nearing its end but Saratoga Performing Arts Center chalked up yet another “first” Saturday night. And it was a strange one, too.

For the appearance of singer Bobby Sherman, SPAC drew nearly 8,000, more than 95 percent of whom were well under 18-year-old girls. Never has any SPAC regular witnessed such a sight. Thousands of “bubble gum brigade” (as a backstage staffer dubbed them) squealing, squirming, waving posters of their idol and taking pictures like mad.

When Sherman finally did arrive on stage, the screaming and shrieking started in a deafening roar, never to stop again. These diminutive, petite little girls, all dressed as cute as a page from Seventeen Magazine, never kept quiet a minute and rarely sat down.

Scream Approval

They stood on the seats, rushed down to the stage, kept waving their hands with the V-sign and certainly heard nary a word Sherman said or sang. When he did finish a number, they screamed their approval, never once resorting to applause, since their hands were too busy waving.

In talking with his manager backstage, such young-girl audience response is typical everywhere for Sherman and the only thing it can be likened to is the old days of the New York City Paramount Theatre when Frank Sinatra appeared and the girls swooned in droves.

They’re a far hardier group of adoring girls today, however. They don’t swoon but they do create the greatest din imaginable. Not only was the nearly-all-girl audience a first for SPAC but the sheer sound of high-pitched screaming continuously was also a first-timer.

Sherman, it must be said, did not help matters any in creating this havoc. He had brought along, as stage equipment, three sets of portable white steps, placed equally across the front of the stage and he’d race from one to another, a la a king on a pedestal bathed in a multi-colored floodlight, to sing and wave. This really flipped the gals and created the frenzy which brought them to the edge of the stage, where he’d keep shaking hands, kissing them and accepting a mound of hankies, beads, scarves, étc., which he would immediately drop in a pile behind one of the portable step units.

Boom Boom Brannigan, area disc jockey serving as m.c., had to come out repeatedly to tell the the girls to go back to their seats or the show would not continue. They’d obey but, once Sherman would reappear and start singing and moving across the stage, the surge to the stage would be repeated. He was not oblivious to this so one assumes it was done deliberately.

The girls were sorely disappointed when the show started promptly at 7:30 not with Sherman but a three-piece rock
group called Therapy and they made no bones about their displeasure as the group played song after song. Then came an intermission but Brannigan suggested everyone go up on the lawn and buy Bobby Sherman posters, which they dutifully did.

Driven to Theatre

When the intermission was over, Shermän’s back-up musical group of five appeared, playing until 9, when Sherman
was literally driven to the theatre with police escort, stepped out of the car, onto the stage and the din started.

He performed 45 minutes, midst the repeated interruptions while the girls were ordered back to their seats, then left in the middle of a song to escape via the same police escort while the girls still expected him to return onstage. It was a clean get-away.

His songs ranged from “Aquarius,” “Little Woman,” “La, La, La” to “Julie,” “Easy Come, Easy Go” and “What Did I Say?”. When he was audible, this handsome, long-haired, medium-built young man with a devastating smile has a good voice. His gyrations in skin-tight pale blue outfit were reminiscent of the man who started it all, Elvis Presley, and the use of these three portable stairways with roving spotlights is sheer theatrical genius.

Just having the flashbulb concession on Saturday night would have been instant financial success, as the picture-taking never ceased. If the continued waving of arms with the peace sign from both Sherman and all the audience could have achieved it, the war would have ended immediately Saturday night with enough peace signs left over for the next conflagration.

If anyone can say, after this, that SPAC administration has not carried out its promise to bring “some of everything in entertainment for everyone” to SPAC, it certainly won’t be the teeny and micro-boppers. They had their night Saturday. Despite their constant shrieking, they were a good audience and it was interesting to see that such hero-worship was never stronger