COMPACT DISC FIRM HAS SOME BIG PLANS FOR THE LITTLE GUY

Since compact discs were introduced in 1983, the tiny, shiny platters have become widely recognized as the biggest thing to hit the music industry since the long-playing album and stereo recording were introduced in the 1950s.

But it’s the little guys in the record industry who have had the biggest problem getting their music released in the new CD format, since the world’s dozen or so CD manufacturing plants are working at full capacity just to meet demand for hit albums by Bruce Springsteen, Dire Straits and other top-selling acts.

In Anaheim, however, officials at LaserVideo Inc. hope to help remedy that situation when they begin manufacturing CDs commercially later this year, becoming only the second CD plant in the United States (the other is the CBS/Sony jointly owned facility in Terre Haute, Ind.).

“To the six companies that control music in the world, if you don’t sell 100,000 LPs, you can’t get on CD,” LaserVideo Vice Chairman Wan Seegmiller said during a recent interview in his office at the company’s 16,000-square-foot headquarters. “But there is a lot of creativity at the small labels and we’d like to give some of those artists a chance.”

The difficulties for such artists are compounded because even when CD plants aren’t pressing current hit rock, jazz and classical titles, “the big companies are going back into their libraries and making CDs of albums that were hits in the past,” Seegmiller said. “They know people are willing to buy those albums again on CD, and they are exploiting that.

“It’s too bad because those old albums were recorded analog (on the conventional tape recorders used before digital recording was developed) and they aren’t a great way to show off the compact disc,” he said.

So although LaserVideo has received requests for large quantities of CDs from the major labels, Seegmiller said the company will divide its capacity among several labels.

“We like to have more customers,” he said, “to ensure that a variety of new things are coming into the market from smaller labels that would not otherwise be able to participate.”

Unlike other CD plants that are subsidiaries of record labels, such as CBS/Sony or PolyGram’s European facility, LaserVideo will be strictly a custom manufacturer that contracts its services to various outside record labels.

Among its clients will be Santa Ana-based Maranatha music, which will release CDs with Christian artists, Seegmiller’s own Happy Hour label, on which he plans to record a few local jazz performers, and En Pointe Records, a new CD-only label being formed by Jeffrey Weber, an independent record producer whose credits include albums for pop artists such as Toni Tenille and Tim Weisberg and jazz performers including Louie Bellson and Don Menza.

“We’re working with Maranatha Music,” he said, “not because it’s religious music, but because it’s free enterprise. We’d just like to see some the small labels in the industry be able to put some of their fantastic music on CD.”

LaserVideo, which was started in 1979 to make laser videodiscs, compact discs and optical memory discs in small quantities for industrial applications, is expected to reach its full production capability of 150,000 CDs per month by June, 1986, Seegmiller said.

(The CBS/Sony plant, in contrast, is currently producing about 1 million CDs per month toward a goal of double that figure, all of which is used by CBS-affiliated labels, said John Page, manager of production control and warehousing at the Indiana facility.)

“Realistically, I don’t think (CD manufacturers) will be able to catch up (with demand) for two to three years, maybe longer,” Seegmiller said. With that projection in mind, he said that while LaserVideo will continue working with industrial accounts, as far the market for CDs is concerned, “Right now it’s music and it’s hot.”

As a music lover, Seegmiller seemed proud of LaserVideo’s goal of helping lesser-known artists join in the most significant technological breakthrough in music in three decades. So even though making a profit to recoup the major financial investment in expensive manufacturing equipment and facilities is important to the corporation’s shareholders, Seegmiller made it clear that it’s not the sole priority at the company.

But as one who is also a technical engineer, Seegmiller is also clearly proud to be part of the CD revolution himself, and with an American firm that is attempting to prove that Japanese and European businesses are not the only ones capable of technical expertise.

Picking up one of LaserVideo’s CDs, Seegmiller searched for a particular bit of label information that, to his chagrin, wasn’t there. Shaking his head, he said with a smile: “On most of them we write, ‘Manufactured by LaserVideo Inc. in the U.S.A. ‘ I always get a kick when I see that.”

LIVE ACTION: Greg Kihn will play the Golden Bear in Huntington Beach on Oct. 26. . . . Jerry Jeff Walker will be at the Crazy Horse Steak House in Santa Ana on Nov. 4. . . . The Fibonaccis will play Safari Sam’s in Huntington Beach on Oct. 25. . . . The Dickies return to Spatz in Huntington Harbour on Oct. 26. . . . The Bob Cooper Sextet, featuring trumpeter Snookie Young, will give a concert to be recorded for a live album on Oct. 27 at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa. . . . Orange County jazz guitarist John Anello Jr. will give an in-store performance on Sunday at 1 p.m. at the Licorice Pizza store in Huntington Beach.