Eggs These Turkeys Laid Certainly Weren’t Golden

With Thanksgiving a day away, we’re going to talk turkey with San Diego concert promoters about, well, their biggest turkeys of the year. So here they are, followed by the unfortunate promoter’s postulations as to why the public didn’t gobble up anywhere near as many tickets as expected:

Bill Silva has three:

Midge Ure, April 28 at Soma downtown; 1,500 tickets available, 336 sold. “The guy’s apparently got no identity outside of Ultravox,” Silva said. “He’s written a lot of nice songs and scored several big hits (with his former band), but people don’t know it’s him.”

Jody Watley, June 11 at Symphony Hall downtown; 2,100 tickets available, 997 sold. “This one befuddles me to this day,” Silva said. “We thought she was a big star, judging from all her hits, but somehow it just didn’t translate at the box office.”

Carole King, Aug. 19 at the Civic Theatre downtown; 3,000 tickets available, 1,184 sold: “I think her audience is an age group that’s difficult to reach,” Silva said. “As extensive a promotional job as we did, we talked to a lot of people after the show who hadn’t even heard she was in town.”

Kenny Weissberg, who promotes the annual Concerts by the Bay series at Humphrey’s on Shelter Island, said his biggest turkey of the year was the July 30 double-header by Little Anthony and Lesley Gore. Out of 2,000 available tickets, only 727 were sold.

“It was a good package of two marginal talents from the 1960s,” Weissberg said, “who were apparently too marginal for many people to care.”

Malcolm Falk, who promotes concerts at the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach, said his least successful show of the year was the March 16 Albert King concert. The club’s capacity is 560; the total ticket count was 100.

“Albert has a history of doing bad shows and being an ornery guy,” Falk said, “and while I had hoped that he would be able to shake his past, he obviously hasn’t. People have long memories.”

And Jeff Gaulton, co-owner of the Bacchanal in Kearny Mesa, said the April 3 and 4 Randy Newman engagement was a major disappointment, with only 502 out of 1,000 available tickets being sold. He blames himself.

“There were a lot of events going on outside of concerts, most notably opening weekend for the Padres,” Gaulton said. “When I booked the shows, it was back in February and I wasn’t thinking baseball, but then closer to the date, all of a sudden I realized why we weren’t doing that well.”

Friday night, discriminating San Diego rock fans will be faced with a tough choice: whether to see the Buzzcocks at the Bacchanal or the Bonedaddys at the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach.

Either way, you won’t go wrong.

The Buzzcocks were part of the first generation of British punk-rock bands. They got together in 1975--the same year as the Sex Pistols and a year before the Clash--and began a highly successful run on the U.K. pop charts, thanks to the songwriting prowess of singer Pete Shelley.

After repeated failures to crack the American charts, the Buzzcocks broke up in 1980. This year, one of their early singles suddenly resurfaced on British radio, prompting the group to reunite and undertake an exploratory tour of both Britain and the United States.

The Bonedaddys are one of the most critically acclaimed “world beat” groups in the country and, for the past four years, a consistent top-drawing club act in Los Angeles.

Their eclectic blend of musical Esperanto--combining elements of African Afro-beat, Caribbean calypso, American rock ‘n’ roll, and New Orleans zydeco--is simply irresistible. As Billboard notes, “It’s habit-forming party music (that) moves in a steady groove.”

LINER NOTES: Musicians Who Care, the San Diego-based association of do-good musicians, is sponsoring a benefit concert for Amnesty International tonight at the Firehouse Teen-Senior Center in La Jolla. Performing at the “Human Rights Now!” concert will be local rock bands Club of Rome, Bad Radio and Burning Bridges. Proceeds will go to the international human-rights organization’s high school outreach program. . . .

Stephen Bishop’s return to the charts appears imminent, judging from a recent review in Billboard of “Bowling in Paris,” the expatriate San Diego singer-songwriter’s first album in nine years. The music-biz weekly says the album is “absolutely great,” and predicts that “Walking on Air,” the debut single, should explode on adult-contemporary radio and could make serious inroads in Top 40 as well. . . .

Poor ticket sales prompted the last-minute cancellation of Spirit’s Nov. 10 concert at Winston’s Beach Club in Ocean Beach. The rock ‘n’ roll dinosaurs will try again Dec. 1. . . . Tickets go on sale Friday at 3 p.m. for the Psychedelic Furs’ Jan. 3 concert at Symphony Hall downtown. . . .

Best concert bets for the coming week: Stevie Salas Color Code, tonight at the Bacchanal; Pat Travers, Saturday at the Bacchanal; War, also Saturday, at Rio’s in Loma Portal.