Beat Farmers Are in a Spin Over Surprise New Album

Earlier this year, local roots-rockers the Beat Farmers publicly blasted their record company, Curb Records. The group accused the label of failing to properly promote its last three albums, and the band made it perfectly clear that it was looking around for a new deal.

In late April, the Beat Farmers took off on a five-week tour of Europe, hoping that by the time members returned, their attorneys would have gotten them off Curb and onto another label.

It didn’t happen. Not only did Curb refuse to give the band its walking papers, the label went ahead and released the Beat Farmers’ next album--already in the can, having been recorded, live, at the Bacchanal last New Year’s Eve--without giving band members advance warning.

“We ended our tour in Amsterdam about two weeks ago, and as soon as I got back home, I went to Tower Records to pick up the new John Doe and Concrete Blonde albums and found ours sitting right next to them, in the new release section,” said Country Dick Montana, the Beat Farmers’ drummer and sometimes lead singer.

“I was stunned,” he said. “They hadn’t even bothered to tell us it was out.”

Adding to his anger, Montana said, is the fact that the album, “Loud and Plowed and . . . LIVE!!” has a different cover than the one the band had approved.

“It’s not designed at all like the cover we signed off,” he said. “The cover we saw had the same picture, but without these bar lines going through it. And it was supposed to be a blue tint, instead of this green, this puke, don’t-buy-me green, that they used.

“Ah man, you just can’t trust anyone in Hollywood.”

To top it off, Montana said, Curb has yet to send the band the customary shipment of promotional copies.

“I figured somebody would come down to the Coach House (in Orange County, where the Beat Farmers played their first U.S. show since returning from Europe) with some copies, but no one did,” Montana said. “I checked the mail each day after that, but still nothing came.”

So a few days ago, he bought a copy of “Loud and Plowed and . . . LIVE!!” himself.

“This just ain’t right,” he said.

When it comes to recording, the Eclipse is certainly one of San Diego’s more prolific original-music bands. Since its inception in December, 1988, the quartet, whose members range in age from 16 to 18, has cut no less than three demonstration tapes.

The last two tapes are being sold in local record stores and they’re both a good buy. The group’s hypnotic mood-rock is laced with jazz and Latin overtones and is elevated from time to time by the delicate, Santana-ish guitar licks of Jonny Eads.

In March, the Eclipse won two first-place performance awards in the fourth annual North Coast Songwriters Competition and Video Awards concert at MiraCosta College.

This summer the band will return to the studio to record a fourth demo tape, and possibly an EP for local release.

Your TOT money at work: Kiliwa, a band that uses more than 30 Latin American folk instruments, will continue to introduce its blend of ancient folk rhythms and rock ‘n’ roll to schoolchildren, this time at Memorial Junior High on Monday.

The five Tijuana-based musicians will give three performances during the school day, playing strings, winds and percussion instruments. The group uses modern instruments, including electric bass, and folk instruments, such as the kena, a bamboo flute from the Andes region, to weave contemporary and folk themes in original compositions.

The performances are made possible by a San Diego city grant drawn from hotel guest tax revenues and Caridad Internacional, a women’s philanthropic organization that works to foster better cultural understanding between Tijuana and San Diego.

The group’s appearances were arranged by Young Audiences of San Diego, an nonprofit group now in its 30th year of providing programs to supplement the fine-arts curriculum in San Diego-area school districts.

LINER NOTES: The 1990 Del Mar Fair opens Friday for a 20-day run, and, once again, the fair’s 15,000-seat grandstand will host a series of concerts by nearly two dozen big-name pop acts. On tap for the coming week: the Little River Band, Friday; Tom Jones, Saturday; the Charlie Daniels Band, Sunday; Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam, Monday; and the Robert Cray Band, Tuesday. All concerts start at 7:30 p.m. Admission is free to anyone who buys a $6 ticket to the fair. . . .

Also opening Friday is the ninth annual Concerts by the Bay series at Humphrey’s on Shelter Island. Hiroshima will play two shows, at 7 and 9 p.m., in the 1,000-seat outdoor venue, which was recently remodeled at a cost of nearly $1 million. The series was originally scheduled to start last Sunday with a pair of shows by B.B. King, but King’s date was postponed to Aug. 30. . . .

A pox on the folks at Invader Cruises for hiring a Neil Diamond impersonator, Tom Bongiorno, to headline its newly launched summer floating concert series aboard the Entertainer. In his “Like a Diamond” show, fresh from (where else but?) Las Vegas, Bongiorno, backed by local oldies group the Ravells, will mimic the pretentious crooner’s shtick every Friday and Saturday night, through Labor Day weekend, as the 600-passenger motor yacht cruises about San Diego Harbor. I’ve learned to accept all those Elvis, Beatles, Doors and Jimi Hendrix imitators, who pay tribute to exalted pop heroes who are no longer with us. But a Neil Diamond impersonator? Good grief. . . .

Tickets go on sale Saturday at 10 a.m. for the Judds’ July 27 appearance at San Diego Sports Arena. Opening the show will be Lionel Cartwright. . . .

This week’s concerts: Don Henley with the Innocence Mission, tonight at San Diego State University’s Open Air Theatre; Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Thursday at the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach; Orquesta Saraguey with Afro Rumba, Saturday at the Bacchanal; Diblo with Loketo, Saturday at the African Village Marketplace in Southeast San Diego; Barrence Whitfield and the Savages, Saturday at the Belly Up Tavern; Erasure with Wire, Saturday and Sunday at the Open Air Theatre; House of Love, Sunday at the Bacchanal; Ravi Shankar with Shubho Shankar, Kumar Bose and Abhiman Kaushal, Sunday at the Marriott Hotel’s Rio Vista Grand Ballroom in Mission Valley; Loudon Wainwright III, Sunday at the Belly Up Tavern; Lene Lovich, Monday at the Bacchanal; Jimmy Buffett with the Coral Reefer Band, Monday and Tuesday at the Open Air Theatre.