ON THE TOWN: We’ve seen pictures of...

ON THE TOWN: We’ve seen pictures of some pretty strange-looking rock groups on the wall outside Tower Records on the Sunset Strip. But if you want to see traffic screeching to a halt, just take a look at the collection of mugs that are on the Tower wall this week, sandwiched right between neon-flashing celebrity shots of Prince and Julian Lennon. Of course, this unlikely crew--billed as “the new stars on Geffen Records”--isn’t a hot band just signed to the label. It’s really a group photo of the new Geffen Records promotion team, which the label has ingeniously put on display at Tower to remind industry commuters of the label’s new promotional muscle.

“We did it to signal just how important the company thinks its new promotion staff is,” explained Al Coury, the label’s senior executive in charge of marketing and promotion. “We think this staff is just as important as a new Peter Gabriel or Don Henley record.” According to Coury, the label had signed the majority of its new 15-person promotion team before the current independent-promotion scandal broke. “We were already putting together a regional staff, and after we had to let go of the indies, we decided to go with a full staff,” Coury said. “So we got a lot of good people, because we got the jump on the other labels. Our timing just happened to be right.”