FUNK-RAP BAND TURNS ITS BACK ON SAFE-SEX BONANZA

It’s tempting to think that Orange County funk-rap band Doggy Style is jumping on the “safe sex” bandwagon only for the quick publicity the group knew it would generate by putting condoms in copies of its new album, “The Last Laugh.”

Yet just as media attention about the condom campaign is giving Doggy Style name recognition far beyond the Southland where it has been performing regularly for the past three years, the group is turning its collective back on that publicity by changing its name to Double Freak.

Not exactly a publicity agent’s dream.

In fact, the owner of National Trust Records, which released the Doggy Style album two weeks ago, said, “We’re not happy about (the name change) at all. We’ve put a lot of time and money into developing a band named Doggy Style, not some other name,” Ron Jaycocks said.

Because newspaper, radio and television reporters jumped on the story immediately, publicity over the condoms helped the Doggy Style album chalk up the fastest sales in National Trust’s 10-year history, Jaycocks said. But for the same reason, group founder and lead singer Brad X. balked when the idea first came up.

“My only hesitation about the condom, besides offending people, was that people would think we were using a gimmick to cover up for the record,” he said in a recent interview at National Trust’s Laguna Hills headquarters. “Louis and I feel this is the best thing we’ve ever done and that the record can stand on its own with or without the condom.

Doggy Style isn’t the first rock group to use condoms as an attention-grabber--English group Frankie Goes To Hollywood used a similar approach in an ad placed in Melody Maker in February.

Of the stunt, Brad X. admits, “In some sense it is a gimmick. But it’s a sincere gimmick.

“It wasn’t done to offend anybody and it wasn’t done to be obscene,” said Brad X., who founded the band with drummer Louis Gaez in 1984. “It was done to make people more aware about teen-age pregnancy, venereal disease. By the way, the name Doggy Style and the condoms have nothing to do with homosexuality. But the group that’s going to be hardest hit by AIDS next is teen-agers. That’s our generation.”

The group will make its formal debut as Double Freak in what will be billed as a “Safe Sex Show” May 9 at the Performance Club in the Variety Arts Center in Los Angeles, Gaez said. The band also is scheduled to play Night Moves in Huntington Beach on May 22 and Big John’s in Fullerton on May 30.

The new name, Brad X. explained, reflects a major revamping of the band’s lineup and a shift in musical direction away from punk toward funk and rap. It also resolves a longstanding dispute with another band also calling itself Doggy Style, formed by ex-members of the original band, he said.

Brad X. and Gaez, the only two remaining original members, are now joined by lead guitarist Warren Fitzgerald, rhythm guitarist Arab and bassist Danny (who use no surnames), keyboardist Rick Tacky and backup vocalists Scott Jensen and Kevin O’Shea. With half its members from Huntington Beach and the other half from Fullerton, the reconstituted Doggy Style/Double Freak bridges two Orange County pop music factions that were once bitter rivals.

For a while, Brad X.’s group used the name Doggy Rock. But the move to Double Freak was made to better represent “fresh members and a fresh concept. It was ridiculous having two bands with the same name. We didn’t want our fans confused about about who they were going to see. It became obvious they weren’t going to budge, so we did,” Brad X. said.

“It was something we had to do, but the timing is bad,” Arab said.

“With the name Doggy Style and the condom, we’ve already got two strikes against us,” Brad X. said. “But the actual material on the record is not offensive, it’s not obscene, there’s nothing pornographic in it.”

What is in “The Last Laugh”--besides the condom--is upbeat, aggressive but cohesive white funk and rap that retains some of the slashing guitars and frenetic energy of the band members’ punk origins.

While that may make the group sound like a West Coast version of the Beastie Boys, the lyrics of some songs on “The Last Laugh” read almost like a reaction against the Beasties’ motto “fight for your right to party.”

In “Justice for Mary” the band sings about a young woman stuck in a dead-end life of drug addiction and welfare dependence, while “Boy” paints the picture of a narcissistic youth whose only concern is himself.

How does those messages go over with punk fans whose 10-year-old credo is “anarchy”?

“From the beginning we’ve always tried to do something different, something creative, which a lot of times the punk community doesn’t accept right away,” Brad X. said. “So far we’re getting a pretty good response.”

Said Gaez: “We’re going in a new musical direction, but we haven’t sacrificed the energy. That’s the name of the game.

“What we want to do,” Gaez added, “is to become an alternative to an alternative music scene.”

FAIR GAME: Billy Vera & the Beaters will lend a contemporary note to an otherwise nostalgic roster of rock and country performers appearing in July at the 95th Orange County Fair in Costa Mesa.

The Righteous Brothers will perform July 9 on opening night of the fair’s 11-day run. The headline entertainment continues with Jan & Dean on July 10, Gary Puckett & the Union Gap (July 11) and Christian rock band Petra (July 12).

Billy Vera & the Beaters, who recently scored a No. 1 hit with “At This Moment,” will appear on July 13, followed by Larry Gatlin & the Gatlin Brothers (July 14), Captain & Tennille (July 15), the Jets (July 16), Freddy Cannon, the Coasters and the Shirelles (July 17), Asleep at the Wheel (July 18) and Firefall (July 19).

All concerts are free with admission to the fair and will be at 7 and 9 p.m. in the 5,000-seat Arlington Theater. Fair admission is $4 general, $2 for children 6 through 12 and free for children under 6. Because this year’s fair opens on a Thursday, admission and parking will be half price on opening day.

LIVE ACTION: Tickets go on sale Monday for several Pacific Amphitheatre shows: The Bangles and the Untouchables (July 4), Al Jarreau and Chaka Khan (July 11), Emmylou Harris (July 24), Spyro Gyra and Lee Ritenour (Aug. 13), Pat Metheny (Aug. 27) and the Moody Blues (Aug. 28). . . . Firehose will play Night Moves in Huntington Beach on May 8, followed by Agent Orange on May 9. . . . Hiroshima will perform in Crawford Hall at UC Irvine on May 9. . . . The Gregg Allman Band will appear at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano on May 19-20.