Pop goes Scene 23
Beating all odds, Red Bank Regional grad
chosen for ‘Pop Stars 2’
Laurie Gidosh
She is, almost certainly, the least likely of pop stars. Laurie Gidosh, 20, who lives with her family in Hazlet, was not a precocious child always jumping up to perform whenever she got the chance.
Far from it. The first time she had to sing alone in public she couldn’t even look up to see the audience.
There were 10 classmates and her teacher in her freshman voice class at Red Bank Regional High School in Little Silver.
"It took forever for me to get up and sing in front of people," Gidosh said. "Even my classmates and my teacher, Mr. Sommerville.
"He waited to the last minute that he could to make me get up in front of the class and sing because he knew I was so shy and I didn’t want to do it all," she said.
With plenty of encouragement from her classmates she finally did, albeit with her head down and her arms stiff at her sides for the entire song.
Things got a little easier in front of the class after that, but the prospect of singing in front of others was still daunting.
Eventually her voice teacher coaxed Gidosh into performing at a small school recital.
Laurie Gidosh (center) is ready to make her mark in the music world along with Monika Christian, Josh Henderson, Dorothy Szamborska and Donovan Green, members of the band Scene 23.
"I looked stupid the whole time because I still had my head down, and I didn’t have any expression or anything," Gidosh recalled. "But the response was so nice when I finished. It was so nice to feel that way that I knew I had to do this."
And do it she has. Against ridiculous odds and through unlikely circumstances, Gidosh beat out thousands of other hopefuls to win a spot, first on the WB Network’s show Pop Stars 2, and ultimately a place in the band created by the show, Scene 23.
Her unlikely journey to becoming a member of the band started in June on the sidewalks of New York, outside the Sheraton Hotel in Manhattan.
"The audition was scheduled for 7 a.m., and I got there at 1 p.m. the day before," Gidosh said. "They were only supposed to let in the first 400 people, so I knew that this was going to be a huge audition after what happened with Eden’s Crush [the first band assembled by the show’s producers]."
Gidosh, as far as she could tell, was first on the scene, so she registered and got a room.
"It cost like $200, and I was in there for about two hours, maybe," she said. "When I went downstairs, there were five people on line.
"I said to myself, ‘I’ve got to get on line now,’ so I went back up to the room and got all my stuff and went on the street."
It was not long before the anticipated huge crowd sprung up behind her. Before the 7 a.m. audition arrived, there were more than 1,000 people hoping to catch their big break.
Gidosh said that audition was the most nerve-wracking part of the entire experience.
"You only get, like, 10 seconds to sing your song — maybe 10 words," Gidosh said. "You have to show them your voice and personality all in that 10 seconds.
"I was so nervous because the first few groups that I watched audition, they went up in groups of five, and they’d say, ‘Well, thank you, guys, unfortunately we’re not going to have anyone back.’ I thought they were going to at least pick one person from each group."
Of all those who tried out in New York, only seven or eight were called back for further auditions.
In her 10 seconds Gidosh was sure she blew it.
"I messed up the words, and there were actually some other people in my group that were good, so I was thinking, ‘I’m definitely not getting called back.’ So when they said, ‘We’re going to have one person back, and it’s going to be number two,’ I didn’t even know it was me until I looked down and saw I was standing on number two."
That surprise at getting a callback lasted right up until she was made a part of the group.
After that initial audition, Gidosh was one of 26 hopefuls from around the country to be taken to Los Angeles for a longer look and a difficult winnowing process.
"I didn’t think I was going to make any of the callbacks," Gidosh said. "Every day they would tell me, ‘Tomorrow, come back with some confidence. We need you to show your star presence. In order to be a pop star, you have to act like a pop star.’ "
Even when she was among the final 10 performers from which the band would be drawn, Gidosh did not see herself being selected for the group.
That aspect of her personality has won her a special set of fans.
"A lot of the girls have come up to me and said they identify with me because in the show I have zero confidence," Gidosh said. "Confidence is a major, major issue. A lot of girls go through [a stage of] obsessing over looks and makeup and hair. I was one of those girls; I never thought I was pretty. But I get a lot of letters from girls who say that I really inspire them."
And, of course, she is not the only member of the group to have fans. The band has been drawing large numbers to record signings based on what people have seen on the show, because their first record has only been out for a couple of weeks, and their first video has yet to hit the air.
But before making any of those appearances, the members of Scene 23 weren’t even sure if anyone knew they existed.
Before their first public appearance as a band, they collectively thought people might not be interested.
"The day that our CD came out, we did a signing at a mall in L.A.," Gidosh said. "We were sitting around cracking jokes on our own group, saying no one would show up.
"Then they said, ‘We’re going to bring the security guards to come get you guys out of the van in a minute, so just stay here.’
"We were saying, ‘What do we need security guards for; there’s going to be one little girl here,’ and Donovan said, ‘Laurie will defend us; she’ll keep the little girl away.’
"When they brought us in, we could hear it. There were thousands of kids screaming and yelling, and we started screaming and yelling in the van. They’re screaming and yelling at us, and we’re screaming back because we were so excited."
The reason the band had no idea what awaited them was that they were kept in virtual seclusion during the first weeks the show aired.
Because of the terms of their contracts with the show, they could not tell anyone that they had been selected for the band.
To keep anyone from finding out, they were put up in a house in Los Angeles and weren’t allowed to leave until the show in which their selections were revealed aired, a period of six weeks.
The isolation did not extend to their families whom they could talk to, but the silence did, so Laurie’s sisters, Lindsay, 17, and Luanne, 16, both students at RBR could not tell their friends that their sister made it.
She did.
The last episode of Pop Stars 2 is scheduled to air Jan. 3 at 8 p.m. After that, Gidosh said she is not sure what will happen, but she is hoping to get back together with her band mates and tour in support of their Atlantic Records debut release.