Donna Lewis loves 'Blue Planet' always forever

(Sept. 20, 1998)

Even today, Donna Lewis still is trying to shake the specter of the fatuous "Macarena."

The Welsh-born singer-songwriter nearly set the record for the longest run at No. 2 on Billboard's pop singles chart in 1996. Her catchy "I Love You Always Forever" spent nine weeks as an also-ran to Los Del Rio's dance craze, a feat topped only by Foreigner's "Waiting For a Girl Like You," whose Achilles' heel for 10 weeks in 1981 was Olivia Newton-John's "Physical."

With her second Atlantic Records album, "Blue Planet" (released Aug. 18), Lewis is doing everything in her power to avoid that killer phrase "one-hit wonder."

"Oh god, I hate that term," Lewis said recently. "I mean, I know I've said it when I've seen artists and I say 'Oh, they'll be a one-hit wonder,' and then you never hear from them again, but it's a horrible expression. People ask me if I'm under any pressure with this new record, and I say 'No, because the making of this whole record has been really enjoyable. I've loved writing the songs.'

"I never think about 'I Love You Always Forever.' It's there, it's gone, but I wanted to dispel the tag of one-hit wonder, and unfortunately when you have a big song like that, it's really hard because people are saying, 'Well, is this as good as that song?' and 'Is she going to have another hit?' I see myself as this serious singer-songwriter, I am, and if people get into my music, they'll see that, but I'm still known as the girl who sang 'I Love You Always Forever.' It's something I would love to get rid of."

Maybe her wishes won't come true, but it wouldn't be for a lack of trying. "Blue Planet" is far more diverse-sounding and confident than Lewis' gold-selling debut album, "Now In a Minute," taking listeners on an atmospheric pop journey. And there's no shortage of potential hits, such as "I Could Be the One," "Love Him" and the heavenly title track.

"Blue Planet" is all Lewis, who produced and arranged the entire album at her home studio north of Dublin, Ireland.

"I wanted to be in control this time," she said. "I had nobody else standing with me saying 'I think this would be better this way.' It was my own responsibility at the end of the day to make a record that I felt I could make. I had definite ideas on how I wanted to do it. I wanted to go back to the home recording thing, and I wanted to make it a lot more sparse than the first record. I wanted to try different things.

"I was quite lucky, (Atlantic) left me alone, but I know my managers went in and had a talk with them and said, 'Look, she wants to do it this way.' They said it in a way 'Let her go and write the songs first,' knowing exactly the way how I was going to do it, 'and then we'll review it.' Jennifer Stark, my A&R girl, was very supportive, and I know a couple of people said, 'Don't you think it would be a lot easier just to go into the studio and we'll get somebody to work with Donna?' Jennifer said, 'No, let her go and do this, because I have total trust in her. I know her, I know what she's going to do.'

"Before Christmas, she came over to hear some stuff and was blown away and she took it back to Atlantic, and for them, I think they only need to hear one song. They heard 'I Could Be the One,' and said, 'Yep, that's a hit, carry on!' "

The album's ethereal mood is a reflection of Lewis' carefree lifestyle in the Irish countryside.

"Where I am in Ireland, it's a beautiful, picturesque location," she said. "The whole island has a mystical sort of element to it. It's very special. Tracks like 'Heaven Sent You' and 'Blue Planet' and 'Beauty and Wonder,' that inspired those songs. But it's more of how I feel inside. I always work much better when I'm at peace with myself. I'm really happy and I feel at home in an area where I can live my life but do my music at the same time. I write my best work that way."

"I Could Be the One" has fared well in Europe, boosting Lewis' spirits.

"I was doing this interview the other day over the phone with this guy from Austria," she said, "and he says to me, 'You're in the Top 10 with 'I Could Be the One,' and it's doing really well in Europe.' And I'm thinking, 'Oh, thank god, I'm not a one-hit wonder in Europe anymore.' I could be a two-hit wonder, but it's better than being a one-hit.

"In Europe, it's doing fantastic, which is great. Atlantic changed the single (in the United States); it started out being 'I Could Be the One,' and two weeks later they flipped it to 'Love Him,' so it's been a bit scary for me. It's had a weird start. I just hope it does well. I think I just need to have this first single take off somehow, because I have to have that, then the album stands a good chance. I just need to get over this 'one-hit wonder' thing here."

Through it all, Lewis maintains a sense of humor, particularly about "Macarena," laughing as she recounts being coerced into doing the incessant dance at its peak during a radio station appearance in Orlando. But the insanity of the situation truly hit home while listening to a radio station in England.

"I had heard that someone took the 'Macarena' instrumental and put 'I Love You Always Forever' over the top with this girl singing the whole of my song, the melody," Lewis said. "I finally got to hear it, and it was the most bizarre thing I had ever heard in my life. My first thought was, 'Who's got the permission to do that?,' but it was some sort of pirate radio station. You just have to laugh about it. What else can you do?"

BWF (before we forget): For more on Donna Lewis on the Web, visit www.atlantic-records.com.

DONNA LEWIS, ALWAYS FOREVER (June 27, 1996): It must be nice to feel wanted. Just ask British singer-songwriter Donna Lewis.

After honing her craft at the Welsh College of Music and Drama, she played in several cover bands before setting up a home studio to record her own songs.

That's not all that unusual. Artists have been doing the same thing since the advent of rock 'n' roll.

Now, here is where Lewis' story takes an odd turn:

She first tested her songs in clubs in Birmingham, England, then with a demo tape in hand, she packed up her dreams and flew stateside in search of a recording contract.

"When I first came over here," Lewis said recently, "people that I came over with had a few contacts with various labels and I didn't get a deal from anyone, but we had a very positive reaction, so we decided to come back later."

In a visit with friends in Woodstock, N.Y., Lewis came across Robbie Dupree, who in 1980 had a pair of Top 20 pop hits ("Steal Away" and "Hot Rod Hearts"). He heard Lewis' demo and offered to get it into the right hands.

"Through the people he knew, Jerry Marotta heard my music and stole the tape from Robbie," Lewis said. "And he sent it to Atlantic and later they contacted me.

"Robbie was trying to get some budget together to record the album, because he's very friendly with Tony Lavin and David Sanchez, that group of well-known session musicians. Robbie was mad because Jerry picked up the tape and took it."

Atlantic wanted to sign Lewis, but first they had to find her. Marotta, informed that he wasn't the label's choice to produce her, nonetheless gave them a phone number in England that might help.

"The funny thing was," Lewis said, "when I was in England, I got a call from the manager of the Fine Young Cannibals, called John Mostin. He rang me up and said, 'I don't know what's going on, but my phone's been going all day from this American record company wanting to track you down. Do you know anything about it?' He said, 'I'm calling you to see if it's okay if I give them your number.' "

Had they not found her, Atlantic officials were prepared to hire a private detective to do their work for them.

Why all the fuss?

Just listen to "I Love You Always Forever," the first single off Lewis' debut album, "Now In a Minute." Atlantic knew they had a smash when they heard Lewis' sultry, Kate Bush-like vocals, the whimsical, Cyndi Lauperish qualities and lush, soaring harmonies.

And they were right: "I Love You Always Forever" debuted at No. 95 on Billboard's pop chart last week and jumped 30 notches to No. 65 this week.

Lewis is stunned by the turn of events.

"It's happening so fast," she said. "Although I thought it was a good song and a potential hit song, I'm still shocked by how it's been received, because it's one of my simple little songs that I've written.

"I've been writing for a long time, but if I had a goal, it's to have a successful album that appeals to the public and sells a lot of records and reaches all those people. I still can't believe that it's just starting."

BWF (before we forget): The gold-selling "I Love You Always Forever" peaked at No. 2, denied the top spot by "Macarena," and spent 41 weeks on Billboard's pop chart. ... Lewis returned to the charts in November 1997 with "At the Beginning," a duet with Richard Marx, from the film "Anastasia."

The pleasure principles of Libido

(April 19, 1998)

Think of Norwegian pop music, and the most likely image would be of a-ha, the cheesy '80s synthesizer trio, with swoonful lead singer Morten Harket jumping in and out of a semi-animated video for their worldwide No. 1 hit, "Take On Me."

A-ha came, they conquered (briefly) and they vanished.

Thirteen years later, Norway is back on the Rand McNally pop map, with recent releases by The Tuesdays (on Arista) and Libido (on Fire/Velvel). The Tuesdays are an admirable chip off the Bangles block, while Libido is tougher to categorize. That's just the way frontman Even Johansen likes it.

"It's a soulful exercise in the outskirts of pop music," Johansen said recently of the group's sharp debut album, "Killing Some Dead Time" (released in January). "What's funny is, most people think we're from Britain; we live in London now, but we make sure to tell people that we're not from there."

Libido, sort of a melodic cross between The La's and Nirvana, is light years away from the Bubbleyum of a-ha.

"The people who go out now to clubs, the ones who are 18, don't even know who a-ha was," Johansen said. "That's almost 15 years ago, only we oldies know who they are."

Johansen and band mates Cato Eikeland (bass) and Jorgen Landhaug (drums) hooked up at The Garage, the pub of youthful choice in tiny Bergen, Norway. When they weren't sharing drinks and conversation, they were holing up in a nearby studio, where Johansen worked as a sound engineer.

"We started working on songs together, and after about a week, we decided that we had a band," Johansen said, "and after a couple of months, we had half of an album, then we got signed. It sort of fell into place, more than anything else. It all happened fairly quickly."

Velvel was sold on Johansen's searing vocals and surging guitar and Libido's batch of unpretentious tracks, such as "In My Shadow" and the first single, "Supersonic Daydream," all recorded in Bergen. More than a year ago, they made the big leap, moving to London.

"If you want to make a splash, Bergen isn't the place," Johansen said. "We just wanted to get away. It wasn't some kind of master plan and decide to go to Britain and become huge pop stars. It was more of doing something a bit differently."

The album's most curious cut is "Strange News." It tells of a flower-power city in another world "where everyone is gay. ... If only we could all be there or maybe it could be moved to here, so we can be in this world, where everyone is gay."

"We deliberately wrote it the way we wrote it, trying to get people to misunderstand it," Johansen said, "and that has happened more or less everywhere. They think we're singing about some homosexual utopia, but it's really about being happy. It's also about tolerance and acceptance. It really tickles people's brains, and some of the reviewers think we're probably gay and on drugs."

Libido played last month at South By Southwest in Austin, Texas, and is making its way across the states.

"Americans seem to appreciate good music," Johansen said, "and obviously we think we do good music, so hopefully the album will do well. It's a matter of touring and getting around."

BWF (before we forget): Fans can satisfy their Libido jones on the Web @ www.velvel.com.

Life of Agony's not in anguish

(Aug. 14, 1997)

It's too late to turn back now, Life of Agony is keeping its name, even though the veteran Brooklyn, N.Y., rockers are brimming with optimism.

With their third Roadrunner album, "Soul Searching Sun" (out Sept. 9), singer Keith Caputo, guitarist Joey Z, bassist Alan Robert and drummer Dan Richardson are looking on the bright side of life.

"We tried not to concentrate on the dark side of everything, and find the positive side of the band and explore that for a while," Joey Z said. "Our first record, it dealt a lot with suicide. It wasn't telling people to do it; it's just that we knew a lot of people who had terrible lives.

"All of us come from broken homes. That's where we got the name Life of Agony. That's what we chose to sing about, our lives. With this new record, I think the idea was to bring some hope to the situation. Some of the songs on the album show struggle but trying to reach for a greater cause."

Not that the group, formed in 1989, hasn't lost the razor-sharp edge that shaped its 1993 debut, "River Runs Red," and the follow-up, "Ugly" (1995). They just have tempered it with a more melodic twist.

"With this record, now we have a good mixture of everything, of the aggressive side of us, the melodic side," Joey Z said. "There's a lot of different flavors. It's like a big tub of ice cream. It started out as a tub of vanilla, but now it's a tub of rainbow sherbet."

Joey Z's not worried if any hard-core fans have been lost along the way.

"True Life of Agony fans know, no matter what, we're a band that plays realistic music," he said. "We don't sit and say, 'Oh, we think the next record's going to go this way or that way.' It just happened naturally. A lot of people who loved the first record liked the second record too, and if they liked the second record, they're definitely going to like this one."

BWF (before we forget): Just as the single, "Weeds," was climbing Billboard's album rock tracks chart in December, Caputo abruptly left the group and was replaced by former Ugly Kid Joe frontman Whitfield Crane. ... Check out Life of Agony on the Web @ www.roadrunnerrecords.com.

Limp Bizkit cashes in

(Oct. 16, 1997)

Incessant touring and word of mouth have gone a long way for the multigenre quintet Limp Bizkit.

Despite virtually no radio and video airplay, the Jacksonville, Fla.-based group has sold more than 50,000 copies of its debut Flip/Interscope album, "THREE DOLLAR BILL, Y'ALL$," since its July release.

"And thank god for the Internet," guitarist Wes Borland said recently. "We didn't care about it at first, but all of a sudden all these Web sites from these kids who are computer geniuses started popping up. You can read about our shows 30 minutes after they've happened, that's how dedicated they are."

Limp Bizkit fans can't get enough of what Borland terms "a crossover style. It's hip-hop, hard rock, metal, jazz, gothic, electronica. You name it, it's in there."

Add a wicked sense of humor to the mix. One of the album's highlights is a crunching metal version of George Michael's "Faith."

"We've always been into doing cheesy '80s pop covers," Borland said. "The '80s was pop music; it's all so good. And it's good not to take it so seriously; we love it and have fun with it. We do 'Straight Up' by Paula Abdul at shows; we were doing 'Faith' for a long time, and it ended up on the record. Right now, we're talking about doing 'Father Figure.' "

Limp Bizkit - Borland, singer Fred Durst, drummer John Otto, DJ Lethal (formerly of House of Pain) and bassist Sam Rivers - opens a monthlong tour with Primus on Oct. 23 in Burlington, Vt.

BWF (before we forget): "THREE DOLLAR BILL, Y'ALL$" entered Billboard's pop albums chart in April 1998 and cracked the Top 100 on May 2.

Litany lives in a 'Peculiar World'

(May 24, 1998)

Nothing against girl power, but members of Australian rock group Litany are determined to be the alternative to the Spice Girls for 13 year old girls living in the suburbs.

"I find the Spice Girls particularly frustrating," drummer Stephanie Bourke said recently, "because there are so many little girls out there, 12 and 13 years old, that are about to pick up on something, that there's some sort of independence they should be striving for, but then the Spice Girls give them no direction."

Bourke and singer-guitarist Fran Evans and guitarist Melanie Schmidt do their part to make sense of it all with their debut Time Bomb Recordings album, "Peculiar World" (released May 19). Assertive tracks such as the first single, "By Myself," encourage women to stand up and change their fate - "It's a peculiar world where to be a girl/ You have to be sexy and thin/ And with money we use/ When we don't buy food/ We spend millions to care for our skin."

"By Myself," in particular, showcases Litany's skilled musicianship and diverse tastes. It stops and starts throughout, one minute providing rapid-fire rants, the next emitting sweet harmonies slowly punctuated by grinding guitars.

"I wanted people to hear the content, that it's not just a tennis match - this chord, this chord, this chord, this chord," Bourke said, "and realize there's arrangements and harmonies. We want people to say, 'I like that chord progression,' not 'Gee, aren't those girls really cute?' and 'Girl power!' "

Litany goes one step further by teaching at Rock 'n Roll High School, a Melbourne-based nonprofit music school founded by Bourke.

"I was teaching classical piano," Bourke said, "and the kids would ask to play the Pixies or 'Can I play AC/DC?' So we decided, my friends and I in bands, that we would lend our equipment to these girls, and they just wanted to keep doing it, so after about a year, we had 70 girls playing and using our gear. I applied for a government grant and moved to a bigger building and got more stuff.

"As the years progressed, we took them into recording studios, and now there's 200 of them. It's been a real interesting experiment because we've had 17 year old girls and 17 year old boys and watched how they work together, how they perceive themselves."

Litany has the musical training to back it up. Each member began taking classical lessons when they were 3.

"Anyone who does classical music," Bourke said, "you're supposed to show that you can play as many styles as possible in order to get anywhere in the classical world. You're not going to play Mozart and Mozart only. When we started picking up our rock instruments, it never occurred to us that we should be this kind of band or that kind of band.

"We wouldn't have been able to play the instruments as well as we do if we hadn't done all the other stuff. I played piano for 20 years before I swapped it for a drum kit. Other people we know in bands pick up the guitar when they're 12 and play it in front of the mirror, the usual play-in-your-bedroom, jump-around stuff. We didn't do that, so we're lucky that we had at least some musical background."

BWF (before we forget): For more on Litany, stop by www.msopr.com.

For Mark Lindsay, 'Nuggets' box set is a gem

(Sept. 13, 1998)

Rhino Records revisits the garage/psychedelic rock era with its first-rate "Nuggets" box set, released Sept. 15. Former Raiders lead singer Mark Lindsay and Dick Dodd of the Standells relive it every day.

Subtitled "Original Artyfacts of the First Psychedelic Era, 1965-1968," the four-CD collection mines the best of garage rock and flower-power anthems. Among the 118 tracks are the Count Five's "Psychotic Reaction," The Seeds' "Pushin' Too Hard," the Knickerbockers' "Lies" and Strawberry Alarm Clock's "Incense and Peppermints."

Then there's Paul Revere and the Raiders' "Steppin' Out" and "Just Like Me" and the Standells' "Dirty Water" and "Sometimes Good Guys Don't Wear White."

The "Nuggets" box set, originally issued on vinyl by Elektra in 1972, is a boon for avid collectors, but it's a great source for Green Day/Offspring fans looking to dig deep into the roots of punk rock.

"Ten years ago, I wasn't as aware of our impact," Dodd said recently from his home in Redondo Beach, Calif., "but then we'd do gigs and I'd say, 'Here's a song I did a long time ago,' and the band makes fun of me, saying something like 'Yeah, that's back when they had 45s,' and someone in the audience says 'What's a 45?' We go out and do 'Dirty Water,' and then I'll meet someone after the show and they'll go 'You were the drummer for the Standells?! 'Dirty Water' was the first song I ever learned on the guitar.' I'm like, 'That's not a hard one, it's a pretty easy one to learn.' That's a great song for every guitar player to start out on.

"I've also done record shows and I've seen albums that I never knew we had out. European albums, pictures. I'm at this one booth signing autographs and there's this big long line of people that knows everything about what the Standells did. It's great. I think all that old stuff will be new stuff to the newer kids. I think they'll really enjoy it."

For Lindsay, it's an honor to be in the box set alongside the Leaves, Mouse & the Traps, the Music Machine, Love and the Electric Prunes.

"It makes me flash back to when I was 17," he said from his home on the Hawaiian island of Maui. "Back then, there was nothing else but music and I knew that if I kept doing music, no matter how many times I got slapped down or didn't make it, if I just got up again and started again one more time, it would happen. That's an incredibly Pollyanna attitude in today's world.

"Music was my life, and you can hear in all these records, the single thread through them is balls to the walls all the time, there is no tomorrow, and that's what's so great about these records, it was like 'What if the studio burns down tomorrow, let's get it out now.' There was a certain urgency."

That urgency was justified. Many of the "Nuggets" groups were one-hit wonders, and even for those who were trailblazers, like the Standells, success was fleeting.

"Things didn't change till we did 'Try It,' " Dodd said. "I think that album was one of our best albums, but it didn't seem to get accepted. When we tried to change our sound and grow up a little bit, it was good, but it wasn't what the public wanted. They wanted more 'Dirty Waters' and 'Good Guys,' but we're going, 'Well, we're not as bad as we used to be and we've calmed down, nobody's protesting like they used to, Sunset Boulevard isn't wall-to-wall people on the weekends anymore.' It just seemed to be mellowing and so did we. I wanted to do more soul and blues.

"Our production company kept getting bigger and they got rid of our original manager, then gee, things started disappearing ... the royalties weren't as often and 'Where'd that royalty go?' We've been fighting that for a long time. We finally got some back."

Dodd still performs, mostly in Southern California with the Righteous Brothers' backing band. These days, he's just thankful to be alive.

"I was in an accident last year and almost ate it," he said. "This guy ran a red light and hit me right at the door. I was driving a truck for a friend of mine's company, working in the day, doing anything to survive, really. I was just going back to the warehouse after making a delivery and this guy hits me.

"He hit me so hard, all the windows in the truck blew out, they had to pick me up through a window. I was unconscious. I broke my ribs, my knee, I had a concussion, a tore rotator cuff. I was a mess."

The Raiders' story has several chapters. They began as an instrumental rock band in the Pacific Northwest, then did covers of R&B classics, such as Richard Berry's "Louie Louie." Columbia Records signed them, made the photogenic Lindsay the new focal point, gave them a steady gig on TV's "Where the Action Is" and enlisted top songwriters, such as Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, to provide AM-friendly hits such as "Just Like Me," "Hungry," "Good Thing" and pop's first anti-drug song, "Kicks."

"We didn't take ourselves very seriously," Lindsay said. "In the studio, I took the music very seriously, but when we were out there performing, there wasn't anything I thought that would be too irreverent or crazy to do. Most of it was just off the top of our heads.

"It's very hard to take seriously anyone who's wearing white tights and lace dickeys. We picked good material and gave it our little twist and we had fun."

As the Vietnam War protests intensified in the late 1960s, the Raiders' frivolity wore thin. It wasn't until they did a cover of Don Fardon's "Indian Reservation" in 1971 that the band's image was restored, but even that was deceptive.

"Jack Gold said he had the follow-up to 'Arizona,' " said Lindsay, who had a solo career on the side, "and he played Don Fardon's 'Indian Reservation.' He said 'It's really big in England and 'Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee' is No. 1 on the best-seller's list and you're part Cherokee, I think you can sing this song with conviction so let's do it as a Mark Lindsay single.' We did. We cut it with all studio musicians, I produced it.

"When I got through with it, I loved it, but I was so close to it, I couldn't call it. My feeling was it was going to be either the biggest record we ever had or the biggest stiff. The Raiders needed a single, so I told CBS, 'I've cut 'Indian Reservation.' If you want to put it out as the Raiders, be my guest.' If it had been a flop, it wouldn't weigh so heavily on me. Since it was going to be a Mark Lindsay song, I was going to take all the heat or the glory. It turned out to be the biggest selling single the Raiders never played on and was the biggest selling record for Columbia Records up to that point."

Today, Lindsay commutes to the mainland for weekend gigs and sees an awful lot of second-generation fans in the audience.

"My theory is whatever was in the grooves that appealed to a 13, 14 or 15 year old then," he said, "it's the same for them today. We all have to grow up and go through that period, we think we know more than anybody else. There's a lot of angst in the stuff ... 'I want to express myself and I want to do it my way.' Every teenager can identify with that.

"I hear a lot of '60s in the '90s, so I think if this 'Nuggets' package is exposed right, it should appeal to any crazy 17 year old driving his car too fast down a too-narrow road with a girl too young."

BWF (before we forget): For a bigger chunk of "Nuggets" on the Web, visit www.rhino.com, and Lindsay fans can get their kicks @ www.marklindsay.com.

'Live From Neon Park,' it's Little Feat

(July 11, 1996)

When it comes to live albums, few can top Little Feat's 1978 milestone "Waiting For Columbus."

Bill Payne, the Los Angeles seminal rock band's original keyboardist, says there are safer things in life to attempt than trying to outdo "Waiting For Columbus." But blowing caution to the wind, they do their best with their new two-CD set "Live From Neon Park" (Zoo Entertainment).

"This band has lived and died over 26 years on a performance of music," Payne said during a recent tour stop in Iowa. "I thought it was a good bet that we'd make a decent record. I think the general acceptance of this record has really been interesting to me because I thought we would get a little more flak just on general principles.

"I didn't think people would necessarily listen to it because they would be offended by the very idea that we would put something out there in what they thought would be an offhand manner. Just judging from comments over the Internet and from a few articles here and there, people have listened to it. They walk away from it thinking, 'Wow, this really works.' "

It especially works on a rousing version of "Oh Atlanta," which Payne wrote nearly 20 years ago on a dare with the late Lowell George, the band's hallowed lead singer in the 1970s.

"We kind of had a contest," Payne recalls. "We were arguing one afternoon in a somewhat playfully about the fact that neither one of us could write a hit song. Our idea of a hit song back then was something with a chorus 45 seconds into the song. I said, 'I could do it,' and he said, 'No, you can't, can't, can't.' And I wrote it, and it hasn't been a hit, so in that sense he was right, but it has withstood the test of time."

Indeed. "Oh Atlanta," one of the venerable group's signature songs, has seen a lot of mileage before the upcoming Olympic Games in the Georgia capital.

"The first time I ever heard it at a sporting event, I was in Norman, Okla.," Payne said, "and I don't remember the year, but it was back in the '70s and the Atlanta Falcons were in playoff contention and they went to a station break and they played 'Oh Atlanta' and I nearly fell off the bed. Now it's being used in the seventh-inning stretch for the Braves. And I would wager that most people have heard it, whether they know who plays it or not."

Little Feat will play for the athletes at the AT&T tent in the Olympic village on Aug. 3, the last day of competition.

"Live From Neon Park" is a truly a testament of Little Feat's popularity and longevity. Fans showed up for a soldout show at Roseland in Portland, Ore., for one of the live sessions, amid hurricane-force winds.

"On the news that afternoon, they were saying 'Don't go anywhere tonight,' and I'm going, 'Damnit, leave them alone,' " Payne said. "Here we are, we're supposed to make this record and it's going to wind up canceled at least in this city.

"We went down there for sound check anyway and, lo and behold, we show up for the gig and everybody that was supposed to show up was there. It was wild, and they saw a good one."

BWF (before we forget): The Little Feat album discography - "Little Feat" (1971, Warner); "Sailin' Shoes" (1972); "Dixie Chicken" (1973); "Feats Don't Fail Me Now" (1974); "The Last Record Album" (1975); "Time Loves a Hero" (1977); "Waiting For Columbus" (1978); "Down on the Farm" (1979); "Hoy-Hoy!" (1981); "Let It Roll" (1988); "Representing the Mambo" (1990); "Shake Me Up" (1991, Morgan Creek); "Ain't Had Enough Fun" (1995, Zoo); "Live From Neon Park" (1996).

Live lives on the edge

(June 2, 1994)

It's a safe bet members of the rock quartet Live won't be getting keys to the city in their hometown.

York, Pa., is up in arms over the track, "Shit Towne," off Live's second Radioactive/MCA album, "Throwing Copper." To many residents, it hits too close to home, way below the belt strapped around their civic pride.

Doing the opposite of what John Mellencamp did in "Small Town," Live slams the banality and staleness of small-town ways.

It's enough to make singer-songwriter Ed Kowalczyk move away - to nearby Lancaster.

"They're pissed," Kowalczyk said recently of the hometown folks. "Our mayor is pissed. They're all riled up. They didn't even listen to the song. They just drew their own conclusions. The people of York have no idea what we're about.

"They say stuff like, 'Why don't you leave if you don't like it here?' What I was trying to say in that song is, look at the routine small towns are stuck in. Look how satisfied everybody is with one movie theater and one supermarket."

In particular, Kowalczyk laments the deterioration of York's downtown area.

"It's like a ghost town, like a lot of small towns," he said. "And then you have these expansive suburbs with 30 strip malls. There's a strip mall for every family, it seems.

"What happens then is, the mass transit system can't handle it. Because of the friggin' bad planning and bad zoning and bad management, anybody can build anywhere in the county, so buses can't take people where they need to go. It's sad. That's the whole tragedy about it; you don't realize all these things until you leave."

Live didn't exactly leave - guitarist Chad Taylor, drummer Chad Gracey and bassist Patrick Dahlheimer still live in York - but it did find its ticket to the outside world in early '92 with its Jerry Harrison-produced debut album, "Mental Jewelry."

The hard-edged "Throwing Copper" takes the young band (the average age is 22) down a more introspective path, tackling alienation, the price of success and other dark themes.

"I would say some of our songs were molded and shaped by some of our experiences with the first record," Kowalczyk said. "It was four guys who had only made music for themselves for years and all of a sudden made it for thousands of people. Personally, I learned, and I'm still learning, about how to communicate what I feel, my ideas. It's a growing process."

Are Live members sad, brooding and dissatisfied? Kowalczyk said fans have an accurate impression of the band.

"If I was happy all the time," he said, "I probably wouldn't make music. Loud guitars and Chad Gracey playing drums doesn't make me want to grow daisies. It makes me want to scream and run around. That's what we do, that's our style."

BWF (before we forget): "Throwing Cooper" topped Billboard's pop chart for one week in May 1995 and went on to sell more than 6 million copies. The follow-up album, "Secret Samadhi," also peaked at No. 1 in 1997. ... Live it up on the Web @ www.radioactive.net.