REGGAE BEAT JOINS ANTI-FAMINE CHORUS

Superstars of every musical stripe may be relieving African famine these days, but there’s no relief in sight for radio listeners trying to tune out the pop-country-bop-blues-jazz-rock onslaught of anti-famine broadcasts.

With “We Are the World” by the USA for Africa coalition of pop musicians rising to No. 2 this week on the Billboard magazine record sales charts, news that Canadian, Latino and country music stars are all releasing their own charity records to aid starving Africans must come as no surprise to radio audiences.

But, now, a reggae superstar record for Ethiopia too?

As it turns out, a Rastafarian version of “We Are the World” has been available for several weeks in Caribbean record stores, according to Roger Steffens, host of KCRW-FM’s (89.9) “Reggae Beat.” And, this week, the 12-inch 45 rpm extended-play recording of “Land of Africa”--featuring more than a dozen reggae recording stars--will be on the shelves of U.S. record stores.

“It’s on RAS Records, out of Washington, D.C.,” said Steffens. “That’s an acronym for Real Authentic Sound.”

Steffens and co-host Hank Holmes have spent their Sunday afternoons at the KCRW studios for 5 1/2 years, playing more reggae than most people want to hear. But Steffens, who syndicates the weekly four-hour show to 36 different U.S. radio stations, says there is a devoted if narrow audience for the show. He has even begun publishing a semimonthly magazine on reggae releases and artists.

Take reggae singing star Freddie McGregor. He’s not exactly the household name that a Prince or a Madonna has become, thanks to the electronic magic of TV, radio and saturation publicity campaigns.

But McGregor--a “Land of Africa” contributor who guested on Steffens’ show last weekend--is every bit as big a Jamaican star as the late Bob Marley. During “Reggae Beat,” McGregor did an a cappella rendition of “Land of Africa” and the response from Steffens’ regular listeners was warm and immediate.

Steffens’ WASP stockbroker appearance is a far cry from that of an authentic dreadlocks-wearing Rastafarian. But he says his three-piece polyester wardrobe is strictly “protective coloring.”

“If I walked in for an acting job looking like how I felt in my head, nobody’d ever hire me,” the 42-year-old actor/writer said. “In my heart, I’m still a hippie.”

Steffens, who hosts his four-hour Sunday radio show for free, first discovered reggae 12 years ago. That’s when he first heard the Jamaican music of African repatriation gently rocking from a Berkeley specialty record store.

“I heard Marley’s first album, ‘Catch a Fire,’ in the summer of 1973 when I was still living up in Berkeley,” Steffens said. “That’s when I was hooked.”

“Land of Africa,” produced at Tuff Gong Studios in Kingston, features Marley’s widow, Rita, among the performers. The lyrics dwell on three recurring Rastafarian themes, Steffens said.

“It’s a triple threat. It’s about famine, it’s about repatriation and it’s about peace in Soweto, the biggest slum in Johannesburg,” Steffens said.

As Ed McMahon might say be tween manicures, the Jamaican reggae record that Steffens debuted for American audiences has to be the penultimate Ethiopian relief effort.

Wrong.

Tune in to KKHR-FM (93.1) at noon on April 21 and get the full three-hour audio version of “USA for Africa.” Produced by the Westwood One Network, the special includes performances and interviews with virtually every pop star who guests on the top-selling “We Are the World” single. Co-hosts Scott Shannon of WHTZ-FM in New York and Mary Turner of the syndicated weekly “Off the Record” rock interview program will also be playing music from the just-released “USA for Africa” LP album.

Westwood One and all the U.S. stations carrying the broadcast, including KKHR, have agreed to contribute all their ad revenue from spot commercials that run during the program to the African relief campaign.

And, for those who can’t wait that long, there is the Good Friday international broadcast-in-unison of “We Are the World.”

At exactly 7:50 a.m. PST, every station in the United States--and now the world--is being asked to play the 6-minute, 22-second version of the “USA for Africa” single. What began three weeks ago as a solo effort by a Salt Lake City country station to get all the stations in Utah to play the song at one time is now being picked up internationally, according to one of the organizers.

According to Bob Wolfe, program director of a station in Rome, Ga., that began backing the effort late last month, British, Canadian, French, German and Austrian radio networks have all now committed to play the song at the same time this Friday.

PUBLIC REVIVAL: “Friday the 13th” movie fans may believe Jason is the only one who keeps coming back from the dead, but they’re wrong.

Yes, like Bela Lugosi and bad pennies, the issue of public tax money for public broadcasting is turning up again in Sacramento. Gov. George Deukmejian slashed, eviscerated and buried the monstrous issue two years ago by gutting public broadcasting from the state budget.

But public broadcasters began an effort last week to take their cry for public dollars to the people. They want one tenth of one percent of the state budget, or about $25 million, and they are prepared to go to the voters to get it.

Their plan this time takes the form of neither a werewolf nor a bat but, rather, an initiative. The state’s 40 public TV and radio stations hope to create a statute that Deukmejian cannot exterminate with a ball point pen. If all goes as planned, the issue won’t be on next November’s ballot, but it will be on the June, 1986, state ballot.

“This decision directly results from the history of the California voters’ willingness to approve spending initiatives in June but not in November,” public television’s Sacramento lobbyist David Nagler said in a March 11 letter he sent to public broadcasters.

Nagler got $17,000 from the state’s 13 public TV stations and asked the 27 California public radio stations to chip in the remaining $3,000 necessary to finance a $20,000 poll to see whether California voters would approve of such an initiative.

Nagler and several broadcasters met with pollster Mervyn Field last Thursday to detail how the poll will be conducted.

Field’s poll will have to be done pretty quickly, though. The state attorney general’s deadline for submission of a draft initiative to be placed on the June, 1986, ballot is May 17.

APRIL FOOL: Unbelieving sports fans who heard Noah Adams interview George Plimpton over “All Things Considered” Friday afternoon were right, according to ATC producer Ted Clark: They should not have believed what they heard.

In a segment heard in Los Angeles over KCRW, KUSC-FM (91.5), KCSN-FM (88.5), KPCC (89.3) and KLON-FM (88.1), Plimpton discussed an article he wrote for this week’s edition of Sports Illustrated in which he described a young French horn player named Sidd Finch. Sidd, it seemed, was being kept under wraps in a Florida motel room by the New York Mets because Sidd throws a baseball at 169 m.p.h. Intrepid Plimpton, however, got to him. Or so he said.

Because Adams conducted the interview so seriously and Plimpton deadpanned his replies flawlessly, Clark told The Times, the ATC switchboard was flooded following the show . . . even though Adams pointed out that the article was appearing in the April 1 issue of Sports Illustrated.

“They said, ‘Boy, you guys really goofed!’ ” Clark said.

He said he had no regrets about airing the spoof, but he does plan to air some of the listener letters on the shaggy Sidd story during the regular Thursday-afternoon letters-to-the-editor segment of the National Public Radio afternoon newsmagazine.

Clark said they may even try to get Plimpton on the air again to defend both Sidd’s (short for Siddhartha) earned run average and his reputation as a musician.

EASTER PROGRAM NOTES: Fun-loving KIIS-FM (102.7) and AM (1150) morning man Rick Dees hosts an hourlong TV special, “Walt Disney World’s Happy Easter Parade” airing Sunday over KABC-TV Channel 7, from 4 to 5 p.m. The wholesome and irrepressible Dees will act as emcee to Mickey Mouse, 50 live bunnies in Easter bonnets and the world’s largest Easter egg . . . KCRW’s loony low-camp program, “The Cool and the Crazy,” begins a questionable trip down memory lane Easter Sunday with a special two-hour tribute to “cool” television shows, including “Leave It To Beaver,” “77 Sunset Strip” and “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.” The 10 p.m. program’s hosts, Art Fraud and Vic Tripp, promise airchecks of Buddy Holly’s first appearance on the “Ed Sullivan Show” and rare recordings by Jerry (The Beav) Mathers . . . Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich has joined the growing ranks of talk show hosts with his own call-in program, broadcast Saturdays, from 4:05 to 5 p.m., over KIEV-AM (870).

OFF THE AIR: “KRZY,” a radio program that can be heard over absolutely no station at all, can be both seen and heard at Second Stage, 6500 Santa Monica Blvd., in West Hollywood, beginning Friday. The premise of writer-director Bruce Reisman’s stage play brings a fictional pop psychologist face-to-face with his anonymous radio call-in patients during a mountain retreat.