NIGHT LIFE: THE CLUB SCENE : A Mighty Penn : Michael Penn proves his refreshing combination of style and substance is ‘No Myth.’

Along with Lenny Kravitz, Michael Penn (no relation to Sir William Penn but definitely a brother of Sean) produced one of the most ingratiating and innovative debut discs of 1989 with his “March.” A singer/songwriter/guitarist, Penn is a heartbeat away from nirvana in alchemy, a gold record. He’ll be playing selections from the album, plus a few new ones plus some covers when he plays the Ventura Theatre Sunday. Missing “The Simpsons,” “Married With Children” and “In Living Color” is indeed serious business, but that’s why Mom bought you that VCR.

The Ventura gig will be the next to last for the performer, who has been on the road since February. “I’m going to take a couple of months off, do some writing, maybe go to the beach. Then, in a couple of months my keyboard player, Patrick Warren, and myself will do an acoustic tour. Right now, there’s five members in the band. We’ve been all over on the tour--Texas, New York, New England, Colorado, Seattle, all over. In fact, our very first gig on this tour was in Santa Barbara at The Carnaval Club back in February.”

Unlike most people who put off the inevitable “So what do you want to be?” question indefinitely, Penn knew he wanted to be a musician when he was young. “I just got into music very heavily as a kid and I pretty much knew I wanted to be a musician. I liked The Band, Van Morrison, Neil Young, Costello, The Clash, Tom Waits and thousands of others.”

Penn was in a lot of different bands in junior high and high school-- he went to Santa Monica High School. His first professional band was The Doll Congress. “We made an attempt to not sound like any other band in L.A., and I think we succeeded at that. We put out on independent label EP, but the band broke up in 1987.”

Maybe J. Geils was right--maybe love does stink. One thing’s certain, though, bad love can make for good songs. In rock ‘n’ roll, there’s been a million of them. And Penn, as a writer, is considerably more clever than most when it comes to lamenting love lousy. From “Brave New World,” a sample line:

“Baby’s busy hiding in the bassinet

wonderin’ if the third world war started yet.

I told her I was pulling up and heading west

she said she would have come but she was overdressed.

So I sent her a postcard of a Midwest bank.

She wrote me she showed it to her new friend Frank ...”

Other songs deal with saying goodby, saying hello, saying nothing, saying too much and being “Invisible” to the waitress of your dreams. Maybe Penn does need some time on the beach.

“People should come to see us because we’ll be giving away free money.”