NEW MUSIC SEMINAR IS NON-STOP AND GO

Like the city itself, the New Music Seminar never sleeps.

Billed as the largest annual music industry gathering in the country, the five-day event here this week was a virtual non-stop series of workshops, panel discussions and concerts.

Well before noon on Tuesday, for instance, more than 500 of the 6,500 seminar participants took notes intently in a carpeted, chandelier-lit ballroom of the headquarters Manhattan hotel as music-biz attorneys and record executives tried to outmaneuver each other as they debated a mock contract for a new band.

An even larger crowd gathered in the same room at 12:45 p.m. to hear singer-songwriter Peter Gabriel and Jack Healey, executive director of the U.S. section of Amnesty International, discuss the relationship between pop music and social issues. Other afternoon panel topics ranged from the future of music video and radio’s attitude about crossover pop to the state of heavy-metal music around the world.

As the day’s final sessions were ending about 7 p.m., some delegates were already on their way, via cabs or the subway, to the 18 clubs or stages where more than 75 singers or bands would be performing that night.

More than 1,000 seminar members ended up at the Cat Club, a no-frills in-spot on East 13th Street north of Washington Square, for the especially appealing line-up of Texas’ Steve Earle, Canada’s K.D. Lang and Los Angeles’ Dave Alvin.

The bill (which offered the bonus appearance of Mark Brine, a promising Baltimore-based songwriter whose last name isn’t the only thing reminiscent of John Prine) was supposed to start at 10 with the last act (Alvin) going on at a civilized 1 a.m.

Lang--whose blend of Western-swing bounce, bluesy Patsy Cline soulfulness and wry ‘80s sensibilities proved even more invigorating live than on her debut album this year--got started shortly after 10, but Earle--who encored with a classy, slowed rendition of the Stones’ “Dead Flowers”--didn’t get off the stage until after 1 a.m.

This forced Alvin’s band--the Allnighters-- to live up to its name. It was 4 a.m. before Alvin, whose first solo album is due late this month from Epic Records, brought the evening’s music to a close with a dynamic set that showcased his ability both as a country-accented balladeer and a raucous, good-time rocker.

For some in the crowd, however, the night still wasn’t over. These delegates headed to all-night diners and, presumably, more talk about the music business. By the time they were ready to head back to the hotel, workmen there were already setting up the conference rooms for the day’s panels.

This tireless, marathon spirit has been a hallmark of the New Music Seminar since it was begun eight years ago as an alternative to conventional record-biz meetings which catered to the major record companies and established stars.

Mark Josephson, a co-founder of the seminar, describes the first gathering--held in a rehearsal studio and attended by no more than 200 people--as a “new wave and radical dance music lovefest . . . kind of like the Little Rascals Give a Convention.”

Punk-inspired new wave and disco-spawned dance music were strange bedfellows, cuddling together at the seminar because they both felt frozen out of the mainstream of the record business. As those forms grew in commercial clout, the seminar’s reputation, too, expanded.

Despite the inevitable complaints that it, too, has now grown “corporate,” the seminar remains a stimulating five-day event that by day, in the words of co-director Tom Silverman, “pits the most radical, new, young business people we can find on a panel with established heavies” and by night showcases hundreds of bands.

The original new wave/dance emphasis has been broadened to include rap, funk, reggae, heavy metal, folk and, even, new age music. The link, however, is the bands. Like most of the delegates, they are outsiders, seeking a larger piece of the action. Among the acts that have been showcased at the seminar and gone on to commercial and/or critical success: the Replacements, R.E.M., the Beastie Boys and Madonna.

“The aim, musically, is not to focus on a style of music, such as new wave or rap, but to pick up on whatever is struggling to come up . . . minority music, if you will,” explained Josephson. “This is our way of making sure we are obsolescence proof.”

This maverick emphasis fuels the seminar with a surprising sense of restless intensity. Lively debates are common during panel sessions, and bands, eager for that extra edge, even resort to setting up their equipment and playing a set in the hotel lobby. During a competition in the main ballroom Wednesday afternoon which pitted rappers and club disc jockeys against each other, a boisterous audience cheered strong performances and hooted poor ones with the aggressiveness of a boxing crowd.

Because the seminar attracts a mostly young crowd that works with independent labels or adventurous bands, the lobby of the plush Marriott Marquis Hotel, where the event was headquartered, was colorful indeed--a few Mohawk hair styles or pink hair here, some outlandish T-shirts and striking mini-skirts there.

Despite the seminar’s own growth, directors Josephson, Silverman and Joel Webber suggest that much of the progress of new music in recent years is “illusory.” Conditions, in fact, may be getting tougher--not better--for aspiring new artists, they agreed.

“I’d say that little bands have a harder time now than any time in years,” said Josephson. “It’s harder on every level to move ahead. The death of nightclubs in the United Sates is not a myth. That means fewer places to play.”

All three men suggested major record labels have become caught up in finding “formula records” that will get radio airplay rather than looking for original or adventurous artists who set new musical trends.

“In some ways, I think the record companies have gone back to the Brill Building philosophy (of the ‘50s and early ‘60s) of artists and songs that are synthetic,” said Josephson. “That’s because they are into making records that radio will play, even though the demographics of a lot of those stations (aren’t) the same demographics that buys records.”

LIVE ACTION: Tickets go on sale Monday for Crowded House’s Sept. 4 show at the Pacific Amphitheatre and Sept. 5 at the Wiltern Theatre. . . . Tickets also go on sale Monday for the return of the Monkees (Sept. 20 at Pacific) and Y&T; on Aug. 22 at the Wiltern. . . . Tickets will be available Sunday for two Universal Amphitheatre shows: for Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam on Aug. 23 and Jose Luis Rodriguez on Aug. 28. . .X will be at th Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre on Aug. 15 with Social Distortion. . . Divine Horsemen will join Concrete Blonde on Aug. 14 at the Palace. . . Mason Ruffner is due Aug 8 at the Coach House, while Albert Lee checks into the Palomino on July30.