TEEN POLITICAL AWARENESS URGED : BLOW MONKEYS: DON’T PIN PINUP TAG ON THEM

With his youthful good looks and his band’s sweeping neo-soul sound, the Blow Monkeys’ Robert Howard appears primed and ready for pinup status in America.

With the Monkeys’ second LP, “Animal Magic,” and the Culture Club-style single “Digging Your Scene” racing up the charts, Howard--or Dr. Robert, as he’s known professionally--may very well be this year’s George Michael.

But don’t label the 25-year-old singer a bubble-headed teen dream. While the more personal songs on “Animal Magic” hardly suggest a writer with a social conscience, Howard speaks passionately about the need for political awareness among young people.

In England, the disparity between what Howard espouses socially and what he presents lyrically and musically has resulted in a skepticism that clearly irritates the Blow Monkeys’ singer-songwriter.

“Just because you pursue some area of glamour doesn’t mean you’re some sort of hedonistic animal that doesn’t have any thoughts of anything else,” Howard complained during a recent phone interview from a tour stop in Utah. (The Monkeys play the Palace on Wednesday and Magic Mountain Friday.)

“I think people thought it was unusual when ‘Digging Your Scene’ was a hit in England and I was getting my picture on the front of magazines. I think they found it was a bit unusual that we would suddenly turn up at Red Wedge (a London concert held to raise political awareness among teen-agers). But I think people are getting used to it now.”

Apartheid is an issue that particularly rankles Howard. Though the Blow Monkeys missed an opportunity to perform at a big anti-apartheid rally in London three weeks ago, the quartet made its political statement at London’s Wembley Stadium a week later when it opened for Rod Stewart.

“We asked (the concert organizers) if we could put up an Artists Against Apartheid banner,” Howard recalled. “But they wouldn’t agree because Rod Stewart has made lots of money in Sun City (the South African resort that’s become a focus of the anti-apartheid movement).

“At the end of our set we did a version of (Stewart’s) ‘Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?’ where I changed the lyrics to something like ‘I don’t care where I made my money if you think I’m sexy.’ ”

(A spokesman for the United Nations Centre Against Apartheid said that though Stewart has performed in South Africa, he has been removed from the organization’s registry of offending artists because he has pledged not to appear there again.

The Blow Monkeys (British slang for saxophone players) started out as a jazz-based pop group in the early ‘80s. Recently, the group’s been lumped in with Style Council, Culture Club and Simply Red as part of an English soul-band movement. Howard doesn’t buy that.

“I don’t think there’s a movement of English soul bands,” he said. “It’s just another convenient label for the press. If you listen to these bands, they all have something different to offer.

“We’re a pop group. To me soul has always been the singer, and I don’t think I’m a soul singer. It would be an insult for me to try to mimic Marvin Gaye or Al Green.”

Howard, who spent most of his teen-age years in Australia before returning to his native Britain in 1980, admits that American soul music has been his greatest musical influence. But he also says he owes a debt to Elvis Presley, Marc Bolan and--surprisingly--Tom Jones.

Howard, wary of growing stale, expects the Blow Monkeys’ next album to end the Style Council comparisons for good. He’s also trying his hand at writing a few politically oriented songs. But don’t expect any pointed political rhetoric from the Blow Monkeys.

“I don’t want to write too specifically because there is nothing worse than great lyrics and no songs,” he said.

“I’m just trying to raise awareness. I’m not a politician, I’m a musician. When I do interviews it gives me a chance to say what I believe. But there’s no point in me putting out a bad record.”