‘Cabarock’ Resounds With Echoes of Africa, Folk and Rock

It took Philip Littell a while to find his medium.

An actor who’s appeared in plays at Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum, LaMama Hollywood, Powerhouse Theater and Court Theater, Littell also has done performance art pieces in small venues. He has written poetry, and for a while in the early 1980s he was involved in what he calls “deep-down underground rock-and-roll cabaret” at places like the Anticlub and the Lhasa Club.

But two years ago, after a friend was diagnosed as having AIDS, Littell said, he was forced to re-evaluate his life. Composer Jerry Frankel’s illness and death “brought it home to all of us how important it was to make our time count.” After much soul-searching, Littell knew he wanted to be a singer.

Today he fronts a pop band called Philip Littell and the Society Boys, which will perform at Reseda’s Bebop Records and Art this Friday, at At My Place in Santa Monica Aug. 18, and at the Gardenia Room in Hollywood Aug. 24.

The band’s songs are fast-paced and witty. “I wanted to see how many words people can absorb at once, I wanted it to be quite dense,” Littell said. He sings about “aging, and the human comedy, and a very great desire to dance. The more dancing I do, the better.”

His on-stage presence seems to match his music: Littell dances like a crazed--but friendly--leprechaun, wearing a mischievous smile and sometimes bounding into the audience. The band’s music blends African rhythms, folk music and American rock ‘n’ roll into something Littell calls “Cabarock.” Sting and The Talking Heads have influenced the Society Boys’ music.

Littell’s lyrics are “absolutely gorgeous,” said Roxanne Rogers, artistic director of the recent Padua Hills Playwrights’ Festival, where the Society Boys performed as part of a play. Littell is “very sexy and exciting to watch, and there’s a sort of danger. You never know where he’ll go next.”

At 38, Littell is tall and lean, with intense blue eyes and brown hair that’s graying lightly at the temples. At the large home in Los Angeles he shares with two roommates, the songwriter--dressed in a T-shirt, black-and-white pantaloons and black running shoes--seems as outgoing as when he’s under a spotlight.

“I write the lyrics” and the band members write the music, “and we have a rather jolly collective,” Littell said. “It’s gotten to the point where I don’t feel the lyric writing is separate from the music” writing.

The band includes six men and one woman: bass player Paul Brown, guitarist/violinist Paul Castellanos, trumpeter Aaron Feldstein, drummer Richie Fultineer, cellist James Hoskins, keyboardist Jill Meschke and saxophone-player Danny Moynahan.

The group’s name--Society Boys--came from Littell’s background: “I’m kind of upper-class for an American, and that’s always been a source for my clowning,” he said. “I thought ‘Society Boys’ would be a funny little commentary on that persona.”

Littell comes from a wealthy New York-based family of “journalists since the War of 1812.” His father, Blaine Littell, was a newscaster who worked for CBS. For many years, Philip “really resisted” the notion of writing. “I realize now I always wrote, but I never paid attention to it,” he said.

He started to write poetry in 1980. “After a while you realize you’re not going to be this generation’s Hamlet. I’m not going to be Dylan Thomas, nor am I going to be Michael Jackson.” But, he added, “there’s plenty of work for me to do” through writing his own kind of popular songs.

“I don’t think people have been talked to too directly in popular music,” Littell said. “There’s been a lot of posing.” He looks to his own life for inspiration in writing songs such as “Home:”

“I don’t believe I live anywhere/I’m the mess in your address book/ . . . I’ll never own a house, I’ll always rent/Show me a home and I’ll show you a tent where the mail is sent/Soon I’ll be gone, address unknown . . . “

That song, his “most autobiographical,” Littell said, “hurt to write.” But the first time he presented the lyrics to his musicians, “there were like these yelps of pain from the rest of the band as they recognized themselves in the song.”

The Society Boys are always experimenting with new material. Recently the group provided music for David Schweizer’s play, “The Ballad of the Sleepy Heart,” at the Padua Festival.

The play, a parable about AIDS, drew mixed reviews. The band’s music was not completely integrated into the play, Littell said, and “I’m quite prepared to face the fact that it’s less successful as an evening than what the band does” on its own. But the group’s “success is always founded in the previous failures. Out of the mistakes, the wrong notes, come the good notes.”

Littell is handling all the bookings for his band. But lately “there’s a lot of entertainment lawyers hanging around all the time,” he said. “There’s a lot of the ‘deal’ talk” as the lawyers try to make connections for the group with recording studios. The band will make a demo tape of their work in September, and Littell hopes the Society Boys will start touring soon.

But none of the band members are giving up their day jobs, and some of them work with other bands. Littell has continued acting, with leading roles in two summer Theatricum Botanicum plays (“Cymbeline” and “The Heir Transparent”) and a role in a new play, “Kingfish,” which opens at the Los Angeles Theatre Center next month.

“Everybody’s got their fingers in other pies,” Littell said. “But we’re all rather eager” for the Society Boys to be the boat that sails them off to fame and fortune.