Music Center Gala Electrifying : Yuppies Join the Establishment to Kick Off New Era

At the once-staid Music Center the tunes they are a-changin’.

The New Year, and maybe a new era at the Bunker Hill performing arts complex, got off to an electrifying start Monday night when 250 or so members of the Establishment met hundreds of Yuppies for an abbreviated concert of Herbie Hancock’s futuristic electro-funk music.

“We’re going to welcome in the New Year in a way that will make New York shudder,” Hancock, bathed in magenta and turquoise lights, vowed to the crowd of about 1,000 in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion at the first ever New Year’s Eve gala there.

As the midnight hour approached, Hancock--the classical pianist and jazz musician whose innovative hit “Rockit” won five MTV rock video awards--filled the Pavilion with electronic music, including turning records backward on a turntable to generate weird scratching sounds. As 1985 neared, the crowd counted down the seconds on a clock on stage that looked like the Incredible 50 Foot Tall Man’s pocket watch.

The fireworks on stage fizzled. But the partygoers seemed not to notice and as the music resumed the audience stayed on its feet, clapping and dancing in the aisles. And when a trio of talents--Humphrey Bond, 20, Carl Banks, 17, and 6-year-old Malik Francis--came on stage break dancing and popping to Hancock’s music the crowd went wild.

Only a few people, including Channel 2’s Melody Rogers who had just done a live broadcast of the countdown, quickly left the Pavilion. “That was short and sweet,” Rogers said as an escort slipped a wrap around her lacy black evening gown and they disappeared into the night just seconds after she went off the air.

Music Center fund-raisers, who seek $8.5 million in tax deductible donations this year to subsidize traditional Music Center performances by the Joffrey Ballet and four other organizations, hope to make the Pavilion the place to be on New Year’s Eve in Los Angeles. And in a way, this first New Year’s Eve gala succeeded far beyond their wildest expectations.

Last-minute ticket buyers filled the Grand Hall, where the jazz, swing and jukebox music plus strolling entertainment and buffet dinner cost $100. But the long lines waiting for their barons of beef stretched far longer than the food and about 250 people went hungry.

The buffet dinner party was intended to attract young urban professionals with lots of discretionary income. The Performing Arts Council, the Music Center’s umbrella fund-raising organization, hopes to get more Yuppies to attend Music Center performances and dreams that their future wealth will one day become a source of major donations. Or as Gala chairperson Barbro Taper put it: “The Music Center had been something that was thought of as being for the Establishment--the old and stuffy group--and it isn’t. It’s for everyone and that’s why we worked so hard to get the younger people here.”

Carol Goodson, an apparel buyer who brought New York attorney Tom Bailey to sample the fare and got none, was mortified when the food ran out. “I am so embarrassed,” she said, her date adding that “we’re dying.”

Peter Jonason, KHJ radio’s midday deejay who said he decided to come after repeatedly reading a public service announcement for the gala over the air, wasn’t among those who waited and wanted. He said he took one look at the long lines and the short food supply and “I decided not to pursue it.”

Others, like Cathy Yee, a 27-year-old financial analyst from Los Feliz, looked at the start-up problems and shrugged. “I think it will go better next year,” Yee said. “I would consider coming back next year.”

The Grand Hall party attracted a broad range of Angelenos, from tire retailer Mark C. Bloome and Lea Romonek to Ken Murphy of Long Beach, who sands floors. It was young and old; white, black, yellow and brown; professional and blue collar. The Establishment party backstage was nearly all white and mostly middle-aged or older.

Both parties were delighted by Casanova, a robot who takes Polaroid pictures, and New Wave vocalist Pamela Stonebrook Rage, who appears in the January issue of Playboy wearing even less than she did when she sang for the partygoers.

Michael Newton, the Performing Arts Council president, literally sparkled as he greeted guests, his face and tuxedo showered with glitter fallen from a party hat. “I thought it was dandruff,” Newton quipped, not bothering to brush the stuff off.

Backstage--where the Establishment dined on pumpkin curry soup, split Maine lobsters laced with a spicy Pernod sauce and radicchio and watercress salad with chevre cheese--everyone got fed. But then the first ever sit-down dinner on the Pavilion backstage cost $350 each.