GIUFFRIA: AN EX-ANGEL’S BAND ON A RAPID ASCENT

Giuffria, the Los Angeles-based band that’s tearing up the charts with its melodic rock tune “Call to the Heart,” features an ex-Giant and an ex-Angel. The ex-Giant is lead singer David Glen Eisley, who once pitched in the San Francisco Giants’ farm system, while keyboardist Gregg Giuffria played with the theatrical heavy-metal rock group Angel.

“I was playing music at night and baseball during the day, and sometimes showing up at training camp with the wrong uniform on,” Eisley said during a recent interview at MCA Records’ Universal City headquarters. After not seeing eye to eye with various pitching coaches, Eisley gave up the sport for music.

Giuffria, who was looking to start a band after the breakup of Angel in 1981, had several false starts with lineups that he felt weren’t up to par. “I knew exactly what I was looking for in a singer,” said Giuffria, who began auditions with an ominous tryout list of 116 singers. Eisley, he recalls, was “number 40 or 50.”

Giuffria spotted guitarist Craig Goldy when his group Rough Cutt opened a Night Ranger concert. “I asked him (to join) right there on the spot, and he packed up his guitar and came with me that night,” Giuffria said. “That’s where it helped being in Angel: I had some credentials, some credibility.” Bassist Chuck Wright and drummer Alan Krigger complete the lineup.

The band’s appearances Friday and Saturday as the opening act for Deep Purple at the Long Beach Arena culminate a rapid ascent.

Recounts Giuffria: “We put the group together last January, did the demo in March, signed (with MCA-distributed Camel Records) in May and recorded the album during the summer. We did the video, released the album in November and I was going to retire in December.”

In establishing itself, the group played no live shows, avoiding the infamous L.A. club circuit that’s launched such acts as the Go-Go’s and Van Halen. “The local scene can help as well as choke,” Giuffria observes. “There’s an onslaught of signings, but only so many can emerge out of the heap.”

Instead, the demo was the key to the band’s record deal. Giuffria took the tape first to Camel Records President Bruce Bird, who knew the keyboardist from Angel’s association with his prior label, Casablanca. Giuffria was nervous. “I’d turned in two other projects to Bruce and he’d thrown the cassettes back at me,” he recalls. “So, he stopped the tape after the second song and I went, ‘Oh no,’ and he said, ‘You got a deal.’ ”

Angel, noted more for its groomed long hair and fog-filled stages than its music, released six albums in six years, was featured in the movie “Foxes” and toured with a show that, Giuffria says, took “six semis to move and had 35 people on the crew. We didn’t concentrate on the music. I do thank that whole thing for making me see that it all starts in the groove--it’s got to be in the record. That helped me to formulate my attitude on putting this band together: The music had to come first.”

Giuffria, who cites progressive keyboardist Keith Emerson as his “ultimate influence,” describes the group’s music as “cinema rock--orchestrated heavy rock ‘n’ roll.” With Eisley’s Steve Perry-ish vocals and a slick, commercial blend of keyboards and guitars, the band’s self-titled debut album covers no new ground but fits snugly into the anonymous, highly popular melodic hard-rock genre.

Although the group carries his Italian surname, Giuffria stresses that “it is a band .” But, he adds, “I speak up a lot, but it’s not egotistical--I want good music no matter what I have to do to make the music right. I play 11 keyboards, I sing backup, I produce the band and I write most of the songs with Dave, so if I had to sing, I’d shoot myself.”