Tomorrow’s Stars May Be All in Eyes of Talent Scouts

“‘They don’t have anything like this in New York or Philadel phia or Atlantic City,” said Richard Grasso, who had flown in from the East Coast to scout talent in Burbank.

Grasso was at the Castaway, listening to bands with such memorable but unfamiliar names as White Bread, Whole Wheat, Urge, Mischief and Funky Punch.

Forty bands were scheduled to audition Tuesday and Wednesday for about 70 “talent buyers,” including the people who book bands for such dissimilar institutions as Knott’s Berry Farm and San Fernando High School.

The event, billed as the Sixth Annual Buyers Convention Showcase, was organized by Stan Scott, a Burbank talent agent.

The buyers came, not for the free chips and tuna dip or open bar, but for the opportunity to hear one group of professional unknowns after another without having to leave their seats or move their cars.

All Scott got out of it, he said, was the standard 10% booking fee from gigs the bands landed as a result of the mass audition.

“It saves a lot of traveling,” said Grasso, who said he represented several East Coast talent agencies. “Usually you have to go to one club to see one or two performers, unless you’re going to a Monday or Tuesday night showcase in Greenwich Village or something. Here you get to see a lot of people, a variety of acts.”

“Some of these kids are so talented,” said Ace (“like the card”) Lundon of Glendale, a friend of Scott’s who helped man the registration table. “Who knows who tomorrow’s stars are going to be?”

Lundon had his own moment in the spotlight, he revealed. As a child performer in the 1940s, he was billed as “the little boy with the big voice”--until the summer between 9th and 10th grade.

Soprano to Bass

“I dropped from the highest boy soprano to the lowest bass imaginable. I thought I’d never sing again. All I could do was croon ,” Lundon recalled with a shudder.

For Jimmy O, of Jimmy O and the Plus, and other unpaid performers on Tuesday’s program, opportunity was compensation enough.

“The big E--exposure,” said O, a 32-year-old rocker in black leather, when asked what he hoped to get out of the audition.

“I’ve done showcases like this for just one agent or one club,” said Mike Tucker, who plays bass with Clear Sky, a group that smoothly recycled vintage Beatles and current Springsteen.

Clear Sky, which has graduated from playing dumps to the occasional Caribbean booking, no longer jumps at every chance to perform.

“When you first start out, you’ll do anything,” said Dean Babcock, Clear Sky’s leader, male vocalist and guitarist. But he and his three colleagues have learned to distinguish between opportunity and exploitation, he said.

Limits on Showcases

“We don’t ever do showcases if it looks like they’re using it as a way of not paying their regular talent,” Babcock said.

“They’re worse about that in Los Angeles than they are anyplace else in the world because there are so many musicians here,” Babcock said. He cited an example of a Valley club that doesn’t pay showcased talent but requires the bands to guarantee a certain number of paying customers before they are allowed to go on stage.

The members of Clear Sky make their livings as performers, but none is content with their success so far.

Asked what they wanted, Babcock answered: “More.” But not just more club dates, even in classier clubs. “You just meet a better class of drunks,” Tucker said.

“Recording and concerts is where you go after doing clubs for umpteen numbers of years,” Babcock explained.

“Do you want to hear about our drug habits and how we mutilate small animals in our spare time?” Tucker asked, unable to resist playing the incorrigible rock star, if only for a moment.

Something Special

Like the other buyers, Grasso was looking for something special, including a group that could fill the Rendezvous Lounge of the Sands Hotel in Atlantic City.

Such a booking, he acknowledged, would place the chosen talent in the outermost circle of the big time, where nobody pays to hear the band play but people do ante up a two-drink minimum.

Grasso looked at Clear Sky and was well-pleased.

“They’re very professional. They look nice.” The woman in the group, Jeri Meers, who is married to Babcock, “is an excellent singer,” he said. “All of them are better than the average band. It puts them in the category of being able to play in a casino,” Grasso said.

Babcock and Meers, who met at what she described as a “full-moon meditation jam session in Malibu,” were packing for the trip home to Culver City when Grasso approached them.

“Who’s the leader of your group?” Grasso asked. “Is there a number where I can call you?”