Hey, Kids - Want Some Ear-Candy? -- `All That' Musical Tour Promises To Be A Blowout For The Bubble-Gum Set

------------------------------- Concert preview

`All That Music & More Festival," featuring No Authority, EYC, Tatyana Ali, B # Witched, Monica and 98 Degrees. 4 p.m. at the Gorge Amphitheatre, George, Grant County; tickets are $42.80, $32.30 and $27.05 for adults and children; children under 5 in the general admission lawn area are free with an adult. 206-628-0888. -------------------------------

Candy is dandy. But if you really want to make your kids happy, give them pop - Nickelodeon style.

As in the "All That Music & More Festival," which screams into the Gorge Amphitheatre Sunday. The concert will bring a stable of sugary pop artists to satisfy the preteen musical sweet tooth: Tatyana Ali. Monica. EYC. The pure-of-heart boys of No Authority and the pure-of-voice boys of 98 Degrees. And B # Witched, a foursome from Dublin who are the hottest female pop band of the moment.

All that - and more, in the form of entertaining activity booths on the grounds between the first and second stages (see related story this page). This Lollipop-looza is designed to introduce preteens to the concert experience, easing them gently into one of adolescence's unofficial rites of passage.

Acknowledging the MTV generation's split-second attention span, each act has about 20 minutes to bounce, shake and croon (unofficial headliners Monica and 98 Degrees get about 45 minutes apiece). A second stage offers a little edgier kiddie pop, featuring among its offerings a 12-year-old Baby DC, one of veteran rapper Too $hort's hip-hop discoveries. Josh Server, Amanda Bynes and Kenan Thompson, cast members of Nickelodeon's hit TV show "All That," will keep things flowing smoothly with skits between musical performances.

Nick's first musical tour comes at an interesting time for traveling multi-bill shows. Most shed tours - Lollapalooza and its loud younger siblings - are dead or sitting out for the summer, having suffered in recent years from the waning interest of both fans and bands. Warped, Ozzfest and Lilith are pretty much what's left of the old guard, and of those three, only Warped is likely to return next summer.

Nickelodeon's "All That" tour is offering something a little different. Though pop-oriented, the lineup has a little variety going for it, from Monica and Ali's hip-hop flavored R&B, to 98 Degrees' heavy harmonies, from EYC's light hip-pop flavor to B # Witched's bright, happy dance music, flavored with Celtic tones. Gender-wise, it's a balanced lineup, appealing equally to girls and boys - though the girls will probably give their lungs more of a workout than the boys.

"Girls will scream after boys because they're good-looking, but boys won't scream after girls because they're kind of cool, you know? It's just not done," said B # Witched's Lindsay Armaou in a recent phone interview from the tour.

While rock music seems to be in a state of creative flux, bubble-gum pop has blown up to fill the void.

"Pop music is exactly what it says, it's popular music," Armaou said. "A lot of people like it. They think the artists are manufactured, they're overmarketed and they don't have any talent. But the reality of it is, we work really hard. And we have the talent and the brains, you know."

Some of B # Witched's success, and much of the pop-music revolution in general, is brought to you by the Spice Girls.

"They opened quite a big door, really, to female bands who were trying to make it," Armaou explained. "Before they came along, there was a boy-band craze. A lot of record companies were afraid to touch a girl band, because they were afraid that fans wouldn't go for a girl band. They proved that you could do it, and that you could do it really well."

Talent, brains and, for that matter, girl power are things B # Witched has in spades. Armaou met her cohorts, twins Keavy and Edele Lynch and Sinead O'Caroll, through a kickboxing class. Their mutual love of music led them to write songs and choreograph elaborate, athletic dance moves. Their tunes have been infectious enough to win them a following in a short amount of time. After breaking chart-topping records in England, the jiggy jigging quartet was formally introduced to America in one of Disney's all-powerful "In Concert" episodes this spring, which subsequently helped make their Celtic-spiced snap-crackle-pop songs "C'est La Vie" and "Rollercoaster" States-side hits.

B # Witched will certainly perform these songs Sunday, just as other musicians are sure to please the crowd with their chart-topping favorites. Monetarily speaking, the Disney- and Nick-watching crowd, consisting mainly of kids 12 years old and under, influences about $200 billion worth of spending each year, as parents planning to attend the concert know well enough by now. The "All That" artists know that, too, which means they'll be rolling out one crowd-pleaser after another to keep their young audience happy.

So dig in, boys and girls - hope you like ear-candy.