RASCALS’ CAVALIERE IS STILL GROOVIN’

Felix Cavaliere--wasn’t he that ‘60s guy from Mountain who died in 1983?

No, that was Felix Pappalardi.

Oh. Must have been Traffic. Yeah, that’s it. Cavaliere was in Traffic, right?

Sorry. That was Jim Capaldi.

Oh, now I remember--Cavaliere was in the Rascals.

Bingo.

One of the biggest problems ex-members of popular bands face in pursuing solo careers is that, with very few exceptions, most fans know the group but not the individuals.

So even though Felix Cavaliere, who will play the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano on Sunday, co-wrote and sang lead on more than a dozen Top 40 hits that the Rascals charted from 1966-69, the mention of his name 20 years later is more likely to draw looks of puzzlement than instant recognition.

“Sure, it’s a long haul to try to get out there and let people know who you are,” Cavaliere, 42, said this week in a phone interview from his home in Danbury, Conn.

Along with the Righteous Brothers and Mitch Ryder, Cavaliere and the Rascals were among the progenitors of blue-eyed soul through such No. 1 hits as “Good Lovin,’ ” Groovin’ ” and “People Got to Be Free.”

So even those who do remember Cavaliere’s name may not have heard the four solo albums he did after the Rascals disbanded in 1972.

“I feel akin to both (the Rascals and his solo work), and I’m proud of both,” he said, “but I’d rather people know me for who I am now, not what I was in the past.”

Yet Cavaliere’s past stays with with him, and he says the periodic shows he does nowadays--he avoids touring--usually wind up weighted about 75% toward Rascals oldies, with the balance from his solo albums and more recent songs.

“I came into this business from the viewpoint that it’s OK to have a good time but the audience has paid good money to see you and you’ve got to give people what they want, at least some of the time,” he said.

After an unsatisfactory experience making his last solo album in 1980, “Castles in the Air,” Cavaliere said: “I wanted to move into a different area of the business, so I tried some production. But I didn’t feel comfortable there.”

The urge to perform was reawakened when he participated in a rock nostalgia TV show, “Deja View,” about two years ago.

“That felt really good,” he said. “I thought that before I got too old and couldn’t do it anymore, I should try it again and see if any of the old spark was still there. It was. I can’t say that every (show) is fantastic, but there have been enough good ones to keep me up there.

“I think my singing is better than it was then. I’m certainly taking better care of myself now, working out and more aware that I’m finite, which a lot of people in their 20s don’t realize.”

Cavaliere is now backed by a six-member band, and he said he would like to work with an even larger group. But he acknowledged that the finances of such an undertaking will require waiting until he has record company backing again, and that doesn’t appear to be imminent.

“I’m really positive about everything except the brick walls I’ve run into,” Cavaliere said. “My head hurts from going up against those walls so many times. It’s murder, because it’s like 5,000 people are trying to go through a door and only one or two get through at a time. But I’m too stubborn to give up.”

“What’s scary to a creative person today is seeing how it’s possible to make a success out of nothing. I work hard to play better and sing better, but now they have machines to enhance people who can’t do either. Buddy Rich had a great comment about how the drummers of today are being taught how to play by Con Edison. I’ve kept up with all the latest technology, and some of it I like. But the stuff that makes you sound like a clock I hate.”

The increasing number of ‘60s rock band reunions hasn’t been lost on Cavaliere, but he has little interest in bringing the Rascals together again. The personality conflicts that originally caused the group’s breakup, he said, “are the same now as they were then. The only kind of reunion I could see would be maybe a one-night special for something like HBO. We would never make it through another tour.”

Cavaliere considers the interest in ‘60s music to be “the same thing our parents used to say. It’s just part of a cyclical past. When you start hitting your late 30s and 40s, you start remembering how great things were as a kid.

“But one thing that makes me think there was something special is that I was reading recently how some people working with troubled kids are using a lot of ‘60s music for therapy--to heal and cure them. There was such a thread of harmony and consciousness of love and peace going through the music.

“I don’t think many of the computer-generated Madonna hits will be going into the archives,” Cavaliere said. “The interesting thing about the shows I do now is that it’s not just parents who are coming, but younger kids. And they relate to it and really get into it. It’s funny because in the ‘60s, we were the juvenile delinquents. But I think the music was operating at a higher level than most of us really knew.”

BO DIDDLEY/THE HOP: To survive the changing whims of rock audiences for more than 30 years, Rock And Roll Hall of Fame member Bo Diddley has obviously had to play a few hundred too many lounge shows.

The man who invented one of rock’s most familiar and earthiest riffs marred his one-hour performance Wednesday at the Hop in Fountain Valley with silly facial expressions and corny gestures on songs that needed no such Las Vegas showroom antics. More frustrating for any purists in the crowd was his reliance on anachronistic guitar effects that could have been borrowed from any number of bad ‘70s hard rock guitar heroes.

Yet when this pioneer cut the clowing and got down to bid-ness his masterful blues and primal rocking were as powerful as ever, and much more satisfying than at some of the disjointed, inattentive performances Diddley has tossed off in recent years.

A Herculean version of “I’m a Man” segued into an ad lib rap he titled “Shut Up Woman” that spoke volumes about blues tradition. With a new song, “Do You Like My Stuff” that inverted the Bo Diddley riff into a contemporary funk setting, Diddley indicated he might even have another hit or two left up his considerable sleeve.

LIVE ACTION: The Kinks come to the Pacific Amphitheatre on May 15. Tickets go on sale Monday. . . . Tickets will go on sale Sunday for two Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre shows: Reba McEntire (May 10) and Deep Purple (May 22). . . . X will play the Pretty Vacant club in Orange on April 30. . . . Freddie Hubbard will appear in The Pub at Cal State Fullerton on April 24. . . . The Beat Farmers return to the Coach House on April 23. . . . Medicine Man will be at Big John’s in Anaheim on April 24.