POP MUSIC : S.D. Group Finding Its Niche With Surf Videos

Three years ago this month, Island Records released the debut album by Robert Vaughn and the Shadows. Despite great reviews in Billboard and other prominent national music magazines, “Love and War” was a commercial dud, a fate singer-guitarist Vaughn attributes to a lack of promotion on Island’s part.

Less than a year later, the Point Loma rock ‘n’ rollers had severed ties with Island and were once again free agents. Since then, they’ve been cutting demonstration tapes at The Studio in Kearny Mesa and sending them out to various other major labels in the hopes of landing a new record deal.

Between sessions, the band has had a lot of free time on its hands, and for the last few months, Vaughn has been putting this time to good use.

He produced a surf video, “Locals One: Psychedelic Surf Collage.” The 61-minute video is currently being distributed nationally by the Surf Video Network, which services nearly 2,000 video stores throughout the country.

Vaughn shot most of the scenes himself at two popular local surfing spots, Sunset Cliffs and Big Rock (off La Jolla). The sound track consists of unreleased Shadows material, and the project was personally financed by Vaughn, to the tune of $20,000.

“I’ve been a closet filmmaker for years--I’ve got more than 150 hours of video tape, just of our band--but this is the first time anything I’ve shot has been released,” Vaughn said. “A while back, Clarke Poling used some Shadows songs from our Island album for the sound track to a new surf movie he’s got coming out.

“I showed him some of my video stuff, and he encouraged me to put out my own tape. He said: ‘You’ve already got the music, so why don’t you do your own surf video, and I’ll help you out.’ ”

Poling helped out by supplying additional surf footage filmed in Hawaii, and then putting Vaughn in touch with the Surf Video Network. “Locals One” hit the streets three weeks ago, and initial retail response was so good that Vaughn is already planning a follow-up.

That’s not all. The band just got back from Los Angeles, where they spent three weeks at Abracadabra studios, recording seven songs for Windswept Pacific, a music publishing house that also produces motion-picture sound tracks for Warner Brothers and Paramount Pictures.

“If they place one of our songs with a major movie, maybe we’ll get a hit off the sound track and things will come through that way,” Vaughn said. “It could lead to a recording contract with Warner Brothers Records, which like Windswept is a subsidiary of Warner Communications.

“In any event, I’m confident we’ll have another album out before the year is over. We’ve already gotten plenty of offers from other labels, but they’ve all been Island-type offers--do an album, put it out, and see what happens.

“I’m holding out for the right deal, a deal where the label promises to not just put out our album, but really promote it, really push it, so that the public can respond. What good would it do me to do a record and then sit at home? I’ve already been down that road.”

Is the Children’s Hospital and Health Center having some trouble getting its second annual Christmas benefit album on track?

A few weeks ago, a press conference at the Beverly Hills home of producer Michael Lloyd, who volunteered to produce “The Christmas Album . . . A Gift of Love,” was abruptly canceled the day before it was to take place. At the press conference, Lloyd was supposed to announce the acts that would be contributing a tune each to the album.

And while Steve Vaus, who produced last year’s album, has all but wrapped up “The Stars Come Out for Christmas 1990,” which this year benefits the local chapter of the American Cancer Society, Lloyd has yet to even set foot in the recording studio.

But in a phone call Monday, Children’s Hospital media relations coordinator Mark Morelli said everything is all right.

The press conference was canceled, he said, “because Michael had to go to Hawaii, where he was going to play basketball with the Lakers, so we decided to delay it.” So far, however, no new date has been set.

As for recording, Morelli said: “Michael tells me he’s going to begin this week. I don’t know who’s up first, but he should have that information for me when he gets into town on Thursday.”

Morelli does have a list of potential contributors, but final selection will not be made until October. Willing candidates “on the shopping list Michael gave me,” Morelli said, include Barry Manilow, Dionne Warwick, Andy Williams, Dan Fogelberg, Dolly Parton, Rod Stewart and Elton John.

LINER NOTES: Marc Berman, who in the late 1970s and early ‘80s was San Diego’s leading concert promoter, has been named senior vice president of Spectator Corp., with headquarters in La Jolla. The company, headed by onetime San Diego Sports Arena executive Hal Coker, plans to build more than a dozen 20,000-seat-plus amphitheaters around the country, including one in North County. . . .

The North County chapter of NOW is sponsoring a “Celebration of Choice” concert Aug. 26 at the Casbah in Middletown in honor of Women’s Equality Day. Performing will be more than a dozen musicians, most of them locals, including country singer Candye Kane, instrumental surf-rock band the Mind Readers and various members of San Diego Folk Heritage. Out-of-town performers include Pleasant Gehman of the Screamin’ Sirens and Joyce Woodson, winner of the 1990 Napa Valley Songwriting Festival. . . .

Depeche Mode concerts July 28 and 29 at the Sports Arena are both sold out, and a third show may be added for July 31. The British techno-poppers’ first show sold out 55 minutes after tickets went on sale. . . .

This week’s best concert bets: Michael Penn with Lloyd Cole and Victoria Williams, tonight at San Diego State University’s Montezuma Hall; the Bonedaddys, Thursday at the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach; the Pandoras, Saturday at the Spirit in Bay Park; Soul II Soul, Sunday at SDSU’s Open Air Theater; John Hammond, Sunday at the Belly Up Tavern, and Garrison Keillor and Chet Atkins, Tuesday at Humphrey’s on Shelter Island.