MCA PULLS TRADE-PAPER ADS IN FEUD

The heat is on--and not just on the street, where the thermometer has catapulted over the 100 mark most of the week. It’s really been sizzling at MCA Records and Radio & Records (R&R;), the influential music industry trade publication.

The two organizations, which once enjoyed a cozy relationship, have become embroiled in a blazing feud that has been marked by heated words and the abrupt pulling of MCA’s $200,000-per-year R&R; advertising budget.

The controversy was sparked by the trade paper’s excerpts from a story in The Times detailing MCA Records’ payments to Sal Pisello, a reputed organized crime figure who had been paid a percentage of net proceeds from a distribution deal MCA had made with New Jersey-based Sugar Hill Records. (MCA has said it had no knowledge of Pisello’s background until his conviction in April for income-tax evasion.)

However, the debate also involves MCA’s charges that R&R; has neglected its record industry constituency as well as encouraged the growth of expensive independent promotion expenses.

MCA President Irving Azoff insisted that he was not angered by the trade publication’s choice of excerpts. “Our problem wasn’t what they wrote, but that they were so arrogant that they didn’t allow us to comment on the charges. We weren’t able to defend ourselves.”

Azoff added that Radio & Records has been increasingly “insensitive” to the concerns of the record business, saying: “They might as well call themselves Radio & Radio. They just don’t give a fair share of coverage to the music business anymore.”

Azoff also criticized the publication for including some 20 new Top 40 stations in its radio charts, charging that the expansion “condones the independent promotion system--the more stations that report to R&R;, the more stations that can be under the sway of independent promotion, so the more money it costs record companies to break a new record.” Azoff said that since he pulled his label’s ads last month, he has not “heard a word” from any R&R; staffer, adding that MCA now mails radio station chart information directly to local program directors.

R&R; Editor Ken Barnes acknowledged that it was an “oversight” that the publication neglected to run a comment from MCA with its excerpts from The Times story. “We screwed up in the sense that it’s always been our policy to provide record labels with an opportunity to respond to any charges in the magazine.”

However, Barnes defended R&R;’s music industry coverage, saying, “We’re focusing on the record companies as much as we always have.” Barnes said that the addition of new Top 40 stations to its radio charts was part of a move to improve the publication’s accuracy.

Barnes added that since Azoff called up R&R; Publisher Dwight Case and “screamed at him” about R&R;’s excerpts, that the publication has had no communication with MCA. Barnes said he expected the impasse to continue “as long as MCA is in such a tizzy about this--but we’re always ready to talk.” However, he insisted that the loss of advertising revenue “hasn’t been a serious problem for us. We’ve more than made up the ad loss in commitments from other record labels.”

Columbia Records has also not run any ads in the publication for the past several weeks, but Barnes insisted that the ad losses were due to “budget considerations,” not to any feud with that major record label.

ON THE TOWN: It seems like everybody who is everybody in pop music has been down to see Chris Isaak, the young popster whose moody rockabilly rhythms have been on display for the past few weeks each Monday through Wednesday at the Anti-Club. When we were there the other night (on Isaak’s birthday), the packed house included Madonna (almost unrecognizable without her trademark bangles and beads), Rickie Lee Jones and several members of Los Lobos. Other visitors on hand have been John Fogerty, the Blasters’ Dave Alvin, Marshall Crenshaw, ex-Go-Go Kathy Valentine and Carlene Carter (who are writing songs together these days) and several members of Lone Justice. Isaak’s record label, Warner Bros., is already organizing a similar showcase for a series of shows in New York. (Maybe they can even find a way to lure Isaak’s idol--Robert Mitchum--to one of the shows). . . . And if you’re a hamburger heavyweight, don’t miss KCSN-FM’s “Late Night Burger Party” this Tuesday at 10:30 p.m. at Tommy’s World Famous Hamburgers (on Roscoe Boulevard). The highlight will be a burger-eating contest, whose first prize will be two tickets and a limo ride to see Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers at the Inglewood Forum. Participants must register in advance by calling KCSN-FM in Northridge.

AND FROM OUR DECLINE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION DEPT.: Is Motley Crue trying to clean up its image? You’d think so, especially with lead singer Vince Neil still awaiting a ruling in his celebrated court case, where he’s been charged with manslaughter and two counts of drunk driving in the aftermath of a car wreck last December that resulted in the death of Finnish rock drummer Razzle Dingley. Neil will not comment on the case until a decision is reached. However, the band’s new album, “Theatre of Pain” (just out last week), offers an inner-sleeve cautionary message to “all Crue fans.” Signed by the band (whose motto, according to bassist Nikki Sixx, is “Entertainment or Death!”), the warning reads: “If and/or when you drink--Don’t take the wheel. Live and learn--so we can all (expletive deleted) rock our asses off together for a long, long time to come.”

AND NOW HERE’S THE NEWS: Belinda Carlisle, ex-Go-Go’s lead singer, is scheduled to begin work this summer on her first solo album, which, among other delights, is currently scheduled to include a duet with the Al Jolson of rock ‘n’ roll, David Lee Roth. . . . Meanwhile, the Bangles, who begin work soon on a second album, have scored a coup already. One of the group’s biggest fans--Prince--has slipped them an unreleased song, which will most assuredly be on their upcoming album. . . . “Goodnight L.A.,” this town’s most adventuresome music-video outlet, will feature performances by local popster-poets Exene Cervenka, Wanda Coleman, Shredder, Drew Steele and Ivan E. Roth and Jill Fraser this Friday on Channel 7 at 12:30 a.m. . . . And who are the Coward Brothers, who’ve just released a single in England called “The People’s Limousine”? None other than Elvis Costello and T-Bone Burnett, who’ve been working on an album together, with Burnett at the production helm. Costello has been doing a little producing himself, with a young Irish folk band called the Pogues.

MOVING RIGHT ALONG: If you’ve been trying to hunt down those hard-to-find albums by the Lounge Lizards, the enigmatic masters of fake-jazz (whose sax master, John Lurie, was such an acting gem in last year’s “Stranger Than Paradise”), many of the band’s best live cuts are now available on a new Roir cassette, “Lounge Lizards: Live 79-81.” The compilation features such tracks as “Dutch Schultz (The Dancing Gangster),” “Thrown or Was Pushed,” “Juice of Peculiar” and “Stompin’ at the Corona.” The release also offers hepster liner notes from “Stranger Than Paradise” director Jim Jarmusch, who describes the Lizards’ “movie music of the future” as having the “cheap elegance of a .38 Special with a mother-of-pearl handle,” a combination of “Jimmy Piersall in bed with Dorothy Malone” and “a boxing match between Thelonious Monk and Cecil Taylor.” . . . And speaking of movie music--Oingo Boingo returns with the title song from John Hughes’ upcoming “Weird Science,” whose video, starring “Science” co-star Kelly Le Brock, is due out this week. The Boingo’s front man, Danny Elfman, is also at work on the score to “Pee Wee’s Big Adventure,” starring Pee Wee Herman, which is due out next month.

ON THE POP SHELF: No one has ever captured pop music’s intoxicating blend of erotic appeal and economic necessity better than Motown founder Berry Gordy, who once stood before a crowd of key songwriters and producers at his company’s weekly music meeting and asked, “Would you buy this record for a dollar or would you buy a sandwich?” You can find this delightful maxim, as well as other intriguing nuggets of pop lore, in “The Motown Story,” a new, unauthorized history of Motown Records penned by rock writer Don Waller, a founder of the fanzine Back Door Man and frequent contributor to Calendar. Unlike most weighty rock tomes these days, Waller’s book (Scribner’s: $12.95, softcover) is more anecdotal than academic, offering glimpses into the wonderful, if often strange realm of Hitsville, U.S.A. One of our favorite stories comes via Billie Jean Brown, who spent 19 years at Motown, largely heading up the label’s quality-control department. Divulging some of the secrets behind the unique Motown sound, Brown explained: “I played ashtray on a lotta records. I’d tap it with a drumstick. We used to take mallets like you play a vibraphone with and beat on the top of a grand piano because you’d get the sound of the piano strings vibrating along with the percussion. . . . You wouldn’t believe some of the sounds you can get shaking black-eyed peas in a jar.”