Celebrity Skin Sheds Bad Reputation

A year ago, Celebrity Skin was an L.A. rock joke--a band garbed in thrift-store drag (with thrift-store musical skills?).

Now, it seems, a lot of people are getting the joke. In recent months, the band’s shows at local clubs have drawn overflow crowds, and an informal survey of major record-label talent scouts and local club bookers suggested that the band hasn’t gotten just popular, but good. Reviewers who just a year ago called them useless are now singing their praises.

What happened?

“Voodoo,” said bass player Tim Ferris, who co-founded the band in 1985. “It’s like magic is happening. Our shows are just getting bigger. People are just coming to check us out.”

Dayle Gloria, who runs the Club With No Name, said the change has been remarkable. “In the beginning they were such pains in the ass,” she said. “But within a year and a half they’ve done really good. But they’re still funny.”

Consequently, Celebrity Skin has canceled plans to go to Europe to record an album for a German label. Instead, the band will remain here and see if the interest builds. As of now, no L.A. shows are planned before a Club With No Name appearance in July, but the Skins will work on building their reputation by doing shows elsewhere in the West.

“We wanted to go to Germany because that would be our first opportunity to get an international following,” Ferris said. “ ‘Yahoo! A German vacation!’ But there seems to be more than enough label interest in us here now.”

HOME ON THE RANGE: Remember Range War, the lauded country band fronted by former Fear leader Lee Ving? The band’s been off the local club circuit since Ving had a motorcycle accident last year.

Now, what Ving immodestly calls “the best damn country band around” is back in action. Ving and crew are in the studio putting together some songs for a combination demo and self-released record. And when that’s done, Ving says he plans to “get a hillbilly bus and take the band around the country.”

Meanwhile, the gregarious Ving is continuing with his acting career. He’s just started work on a horror movie called “Grave Secrets.”

“I play a nasty redneck named Zack,” he said, laughing menacingly. “It’ll be all too easy.”

LONESOME NO MORE: The run on L.A. country acts predicted when Dwight Yoakam broke through into the country mainstream a couple years ago never really materialized. But the Lonesome Strangers--who open for Foster & Lloyd at the Roxy on Tuesday--could be on their way to following Yoakam up the country ladder: The band’s version of Johnny Horton’s old jukebox jumper “Hello Lonesome, Goodby Baby Doll” has cracked the country Top 40--a double rarity in that the group’s “Lonesome Strangers” album was released by the independent Hightone label, and indie hits are rare in country radio.

But Jeff Rymes, whose high, lonesome, nasal duet singing with Randy Weeks characterizes the Strangers’ sound, says that it probably hasn’t hurt in country circles that few people seem to realize this is an L.A.-based act.

“A lot of people will ask where we’re from,” he said, his rural Southern accent likely to throw anyone off the trail. “They think we’re from Texas or Bakersfield or something. They don’t expect our kind of thing to be from L.A. But then we don’t really represent the L.A. environment. We’re just four guys who wandered to L.A.”

In fact, when the band has gotten criticism from country radio people, it’s not for being cosmopolitan, but for maybe being too hard-core, honky-tonk traditional.

Said Rymes: “There was one guy back East who said, ‘Are you gonna remix the single? The guitar’s too tinny.’ But he played it anyway.”

BUZZWORDS: Over the past year, the Breakaway Restaurant in Venice has become one of L.A.’s top acoustic music showplaces. That role is being celebrated with “Breakaway, the First Year ‘88”--a tape recorded at the restaurant in November and featuring many of the people who have played at the club, including such local new folk leaders as Milo Binder, Show of Hands, Lowen & Navarro and Darius. A party and concert marking its release will be held at the Breakaway on April 20.

Looks like the Club With No Name is going to stay that way. Club maven Dayle Gloria reports that not many people seem to have taken the new-name contest very seriously, and the temporary nameless name for what used to be the Scream has started to stick.