A TOY DOLL GETS MAD, GETS EVEN

Michael Algar, leader of England’s pop-punk trio Toy Dolls, is the personification of the 90-pound weakling. The singer puts so much energy into the group’s shows that he often has to rest for an hour afterwards, suffering from asthmatic attacks.

As you might expect of such a slight-looking fellow, Algar’s childhood memories are filled with stories of being bullied about.

Speaking from a hotel room in Japan, where the Dolls were on tour before flying here for their shows at the Hollywood Palladium tonight and at Fender’s Jan. 25, the diminutive guitarist/singer sounded sad as he recalled his school days in Newcastle.

“It was terrible,” he said with a sigh. “I used to get picked on all the time. They used to throw stones at me to make me dance. They would take pocket money off me. I went through hell for 15 years of school. Music was my way of getting recognition for myself, instead of waiting to get picked on all the time.”

Algar’s music therapy worked. Since picking up a guitar at age 10, he not only wound up getting the girl (he was as anxious to talk about his Dutch girlfriend as he was about music), but also a thriving, if unlikely, career. The Toy Dolls may not have an American record contract, but the band often plays larger halls in the United States, Europe and Japan (where it was recently voted best British band in several music magazines) than it does at home.

Locally, Toy Dolls records like “Nelly the Elephant,” “We Are Mad” and the group’s frantic reworking of “Blue Suede Shoes” have become staples on KROQ-FM. Since the band’s ’83 album, “Dig That Groove Baby,” alerted L.A. music fans to the Dolls’ mixture of music-hall goofiness, nursery-rhyme pop, rockabilly rhythms and punk energy, the group’s L.A. following has grown large enough for the band to headline venues like the Olympic Auditorium and the 5,000-capacity Palladium.

But even though Algar--who uses the stage name Olga--and his latest lineup (Teddy Toy Doll on drums and Dean James on bass) are often associated with the British punk scene that grew out of the skinhead “Oi” movement, Algar resists pigeonholing.

“We’re not really 100% punk. If you have to put us in a bracket that’s been invented by the music press, then our music is punk, but we just regard it as Toy Dolls music. We try to be as individualistic as possible. I mean, I like the old punk bands like Sham 69 and Stiff Little Fingers, but I like ABBA as well.”

When the Toy Dolls first released “Nelly the Elephant” in 1980, it sold a scant 3,000 copies. The single was re-released last year, went to No. 4 in the British music charts and sold an impressive half-million copies. Yet, lgar has ambivalent feelings about the record’s success.

“We lost credibility with that,” he explained. “Before, we were getting good press, but we got a lot of young kids--4, 5 years old--buying that single and the press slagged us off for it.”

But the Toy Dolls’ youthful fans created another career for Algar. As a result of several appearances on English television, he was commissioned to write theme music for two TV programs. “That’s where most of the money comes from to keep the Toy Dolls thing going,” he said.

Though a few major U.S. record companies have expressed token interest in the Dolls, Algar claims the offers haven’t been good enough and doesn’t believe that the group could survive on an American independent. But he’s not particularly worried about the situation.

“It took the Toy Dolls four years to get a deal in England,” he said. “I went around to all the record companies with the ‘Nelly the Elephant’ thing years ago and they all said, ‘No, no, no.’ We just had to keep going. As long as there’s an audience there, it doesn’t matter.”

In keeping with the Dolls’ benevolent tone, Algar has a message of detente for the group’s diverse audience.

“Don’t have any special limits, wear any clothes you like to wear, no special fashions. I’d like everybody to work together, enjoy the show together, like us together--rockabillys, punks, anybody. We don’t want everybody to be separate. We’re not bothered who comes--as long as there’s no disco people.”