Locals Strut Their Stuff for S.D. Music-Video Show

It used to be that budding rock stars knew they had it made when, as Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show pointed out in its big 1973 hit, they hit the cover of “Rolling Stone.”

But no longer. Since the advent of the Video Age in the early 1980s, getting on the cover of America’s leading rock rag has meant nothing compared to getting a No. 1 video on MTV, America’s leading cable music-video network. And, although the bottom rung used to be getting a write-up in the hometown newspaper, now it’s getting a video on hometown television.

So goodby, reader, and hello, “Music Underground”--a half-hour program that airs each Thursday at 8 p.m. on San Diego cable public-access stations Channel 24 (Cox), Channel 15 (Southwestern), and Channel 30 (Daniels). In Escondido, “Music Underground” can be seen Thursdays at 10:30 a.m. on Dimension’s Channel 2.

Each installment in the 2-month-old series, produced and directed by Linda Rhodes, opens with veejay Dale Lawrence saying, “You know we’re the show that plays the latest and greatest in San Diego-produced music videos.”

Five local clips are featured each night: new ones like Blindfold’s “Don’t Dance” and Bad Vinyl’s “Too Rough for Girls,” and old ones by past nightclub heroes Dirk Debonaire and Tweed Sneakers--it’s “Music Underground’s” answer to MTV’s “Closet Classics.”

Some are elaborate productions; others, like the Pump’s “Glamor Girl,” are $39.99 cheapies from Horton Plaza’s Super Star Recording Studio (with lip-sync audios and stock visuals).

“The local music scene has been so stale lately, and this is exactly the kind of spark it needs,” Lawrence said. “This is a way for original bands that can’t find nightclub work to showcase before the public.

“Some can’t find nightclub work because they don’t play the Top 40. Others, like Telex Cabaret, have huge teen followings, but don’t draw well in clubs because you have to be over 21 to get in. But, in any event, the bands we feature aren’t getting nearly as much exposure as they deserve.”

Lawrence said he would like to add band interviews to the program and move “Music Underground” to a commercial TV station with a potentially bigger audience than cable public-access.

“But for now,” he said, “we’re taking things one step at a time.”

Two pivotal figures in the history of rock ‘n’ roll, Leon Russell and Edgar Winter, will pair up for a Sunday night concert at the Bacchanal nightclub in Kearny Mesa.

Both are perhaps best known for the company they’ve kept. In the late 1950s, Russell, now 47, played trumpet with a Tulsa nightclub band that later evolved into the Band. After learning guitar from Elvis Presley sideman James Burton, he played on nearly all of the Phil Spector-produced hits of the early 1960s, as well as on Herb Alpert’s “A Taste of Honey” and the Byrds’ “Mr. Tambourine Man.”

Russell later led the backing band for Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour, played piano on Bob Dylan’s “Watching the River Flow,” and toured with the Rolling Stones. In 1976, George Benson’s interpretation of Russell’s “This Masquerade” won a Grammy.

Vocalist/keyboardist/saxophonist Winter, 42, is the younger brother of blues-rock guitarist Johnny Winter. His first chart appearance, 1973’s “Frankenstein,” showcased the guitar talents of Ronnie Montrose, subsequently replaced with Rick Derringer.

IT’S THE SAME OLD SONG: Well, not quite. The fey foursome of San Diego morning radio, the Rich Brothers, have recorded an album of song parodies they’ve introduced over the years on their weekday “B Morning Zoo” show on KFMB-FM (B-100).

Nearly half of the 22 ditties on the appropriately titled “Funny Song Album”’ find the Rich Brothers--deejays Bobby Rich, Scott Kenyon, Frank Anthony and Pat Gaffey--directing their collective lyrical wit toward life in their hometown. The pick of the litter is “Pump Station 64,” a take-off on the Clovers’ “Love Potion Number Nine”: We dump our sewage on the ocean floor/Then wonder why our water tastes so poor/When it comes to sewage we really know the score/We’ve got to pull the plug on Pump Station 64.

The money raised from album sales will be donated to the YMCA/Cara-Net Project, which operates a hot line provides services to families of missing and runaway children. The project was formed in September, 1987, by San Diego County Supervisor Susan Golding and the family of murder victim Cara Knott.

TIME PASSAGES: The Zendik Farm Arts Commune is a living monument to hippiedom. About 40 societal dropouts work and play together in the foothills of Boulevard under the spiritual guidance of Wolf Zendik, who founded the collective in 1969. It’s almost as though Woodstock never ended, and Altamont never happened.

Friday night, the Zendiks are putting on a benefit concert at the La Paloma Theater in Encinitas for their year-old political wing, the Zendik Action Party (ZAP). Performing will be seven San Diego bands: Hair Theatre, Crash Worship, Pitchfork, Night Soil Man, Daddy Longleggs, Maschil, and, of course, the Zendik Farm Eklectic Orgaztra.

The commune’s house band features 68-year-old Wolf Zendik on lead vocals and plays what one member describes as “experimental, psychedelic, gloom-doom rock.”

BITS AND PIECES: Yet another San Diego nightclub has bid adieu to live music. The former Mercedes Room at the Bahia Resort Hotel is now Club Mercedes, a high-tech discotheque. . . . North County oldies band the Mar Dels will celebrate its sixth birthday Monday night at the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach.