Was (Not Was) Certainly Is . . . Melissa Etheridge Is So Blue . . . John Kilzer Uses His Head : Multiple Personalities

“We’re the Sybil of the record business,” suggests David Was, not without some pride, of the utterly unpeggable band he and partner Don Was lead: Was (Not Was)--the first rock band of any note ever to have a set of parentheses in its name, and the first to completely baffle so many music-biz executives.

He ponders this, then comes up with a better comparison. “The analog for our experience has been Faye Dunaway in ‘Chinatown’--when (Jack) Nicholson’s slapping her and she’s saying ‘I’m her sister, I’m her mother, I’m her sister, I’m her mother.’ ” He starts slapping himself silly. “We’re a pop act, we’re a black act, we’re middle-of-the-road, we’re jazz.”

Don’t forget avant-garde, David. Still, the multiple-personality gambit may be lessened a bit by the band’s third album, “What Up, Dog?,” a less schizoid effort made up mostly of irresistible, polished rhythm & blues. (The group will be at the Coach House on Thursday, the Ventura Theatre on Saturday and the Roxy on Nov. 21.)

Were you to use a programmable compact disc player to leave off just a few of the album’s 16 tracks, what you’d have is a classic--if lyrically askew-- soul album. The first single, “Spy in the House of Love,” is the No. 1 record on Billboard’s dance club play chart this week and is zooming up the Top 40 as well. And there’s no shortage of funky follow-up single possibilities sung by the group’s two black lead vocalists, Harry Bowens (formerly of the O’Jays) and Sweet Pea Atkinson.

But if you don’t program out those few oddball tracks, what you have is a very unusual album indeed--complete with guest crooner Frank Sinatra Jr. singing the very “white” ballad “Wedding Vows in Vegas,” and several tracks like “Earth to Doris” and “Dad, I’m in Jail” that combine spoken-word, stand-up Dada with grating jazz. If it seems like Frank Zappa meets the Temptations, it’s no coincidence.

“When Don came home from a trip to L.A. when he was 13, clutching ‘Freakout’ by (Zappa’s band) the Mothers, well, this was the first record to punch a whole through the fourth wall of record-making,” says David Was (known in real life as David Weiss, a former Herald Examiner jazz critic). “And I’d say it’s probably, along with a couple other records, the definitive experience for us--a guy who’d parody cocktail jazz and introduce free jazz and do everything against the rules of record-making. But it’s sort of what makes the medium interesting, that you can sit and rabbit-punch somebody after massaging them.”

“I think you’ve got to give people a little more credit,” adds Don Was (known to some as Donald Fagenson). “The problem we always had with record companies was that they felt you had to give ‘em a single and then give ‘em nine more songs that were like the single. I don’t recall being too confused by the Beatles’ ‘White Album,’ which was about as great a mishmash as you could hope to achieve.”