Saturday Night Fever, ‘90s-Style : Music: Club-hopping around the Valley produces a gamut of sounds.

Cowboys in Canoga Park.

Dancers in Studio City.

Rockers in North Hollywood.

And all that jazz.

Four distinct sounds of music squeezed into one fast trek across the San Fernando Valley on a Saturday night of club-hopping. Following is an account of the journey to check out the local music scene:

9:45 p.m.--Straight from the Valley into Texas, or the Longhorn Saloon, as they prefer to call it.

It’s this cozy little joint on Sherman Way in Canoga Park, where the men wear cowboy hats and fancy gold and silver belt buckles; the women, jeans and black boots, and everyone dances to the tunes of traditional country-Western music. The bartender, between mixing drinks, claps to the beat of tonight’s band, JoAnne Haynes & Those Truckin’ Cajuns. The flower girl sells roses to the men lounging by the bar. “There’s romance in the air,” she says. The men, including Jesse Galaviz, formerly of San Antonio, now of Tarzana, agree. “My wife and I have been coming here for years,” he says.

Two women at the end of the bar look out of place. Younger. Blond. Why are they here?

“We wanted to go to a bar where we could just sit and have a beer and not get hit upon,” says Fran Swift, 29, of Northridge. Swift grew up in Calgary, so country music is embedded in her roots. Her friend, Cathy Perow, 30, of Studio City, is a recent convert. “It’s so down-to-earth, so comfortable here. You don’t have to dress a certain way here or act a certain way. No pretensions. On the Strip, everybody does an act.” The week before, Perow had gone to a rodeo and had a blast. “I was surprised at how friendly people were. I didn’t feel like I was in L.A.”

Perow keeps talking, as the band starts singing something about Louisiana Saturday nights. The dance floor becomes real crowded, with everyone doing the Tush Push, swaying their hips in all directions, laughing the whole time. Galaviz immediately joins the pack, unashamed to stick his rear in anyone’s face. His wife, Toni, does the same. She just doesn’t want to talk about it.

“We go to a lot of places,” Galaviz says while shifting his body around, “but this is our favorite. This is home. We love dancing the two-step, too.” He uses the occasion to explain the difference between real country men and the phonies. “You know the belt buckles are rodeo prizes, but some people buy them at stores. They’re not real cowboys.”

Neither are we. So we leave Texas, and head for the Ventura Freeway.

11:12 p.m. We take in some jazz at the Baked Potato in Studio City. Just jazz. Hold the potato--although they are well-known for them.

The room is almost completely dark, and that’s what this club is--a room. A living room. A small, intimate spot where the only sounds come from the house band, Don Randi and Quest. No Coors beer signs here, or pool tables, or Tush Pushes. The atmosphere is respectful, somewhat detached. An audience, not a crowd. Often, when one band member completes a particularly impressive solo, the audience bursts into spontaneous applause. And, then, moments later, complete quiet again.

They call this progressive jazz, and the audience is young--late 20s, early 30s--and well dressed--suits, skirts. No jeans. No cowboy hats.

Cynthia Boyler, 25, says she doesn’t get out much in the Valley, but when she does, the Baked Potato is where she likes to go. “The music is great. It’s innovative and creative. I love all the different instruments. I don’t know anything about the clubs in L.A.” Plus, she needed somewhere, a common ground, that both she and her visiting grandmother from New Jersey could tolerate. “No generation gap,” her grandmother, Virginia Kehoe, interjected. “I’ve been a jazz fan for years, and this group is really good.”

We go searching for a faster tempo.

11:55 p.m. -- We arrive at Sasch in Studio City, a nightclub that specializes each weekend in the latest offerings of Top 40.

The packed dance floor moves to the sound of Faultline, which is a revamped version of Ecstasy, which played the club each weekend for eight years. Lead singer Debra Raye is still there, but the drummer and guitarist are new. They sound the same, blaring out one radio hit after another, trying to close the gap between the famous artists and themselves. The audience seems almost oblivious to the band, locked into the music and their dance partners.

Take Elisa Moultrie, 24, and Paul Bfeifle, 25. They dance in the middle of the floor, and stand out. Each blond, each dressed almost completely in white. Each unable to stop looking at the other. Hey, this is their spot. They met in April at Sasch. “She was dancing with her sister. She was gorgeous. I couldn’t pass her up,” Bfeifle says.

“I was here at a bachelorette party with 30 other girls,” Moultrie says. “He was nice.” Bfeifle was a bit suspicious at the start, though. He asked Moultrie to write down her phone number on each of his hands; he wanted to make sure she wasn’t shafting him. The numbers were right, and they’ve been dating ever since.

There’s a lot of room on the Sasch dance floor, and that’s what Moultrie likes. “It gives me a lot of space. There are places where I just can’t move.” When Faultline takes a break, the club doesn’t miss a beat, quickly raising a screen showing the latest hot dance videos; the band hasn’t even left the stage yet. The floor is almost completely crowded now, though Elisa finds a way to maneuver around.

It’s time to rock ‘n’ roll, and that can only mean one place.

12:56 a.m. -- We’re a long away from all our previous stops. We’re at FM Station in North Hollywood, where MX Machine has just finished its set, and the young crowd, many clad in leather or black T-shirts celebrating their favorite groups, await the next band--Psychotic Waltz.

Everything is black, and nobody is over 25. Booming sounds off the speakers make the earth shake, and the music never stops. Beer is a constant companion of all; bottles everywhere. Here comes Psychotic Waltz, a group from El Cajon. The crowd, at first, is curious, checking them out, seeing if they measure up to the standards of hard rock. They do. Their lyrics are inaudible, and their guitar riffs threaten to bring down the establishment. Nobody dances, of course. How can you dance to this music? You don’t know where it’s going.

Somehow, though, Stephen Holtrey, 23, finds a way. The guy is balding and chunky, not the long-haired, good-looking stud one might expect to find at a rock ‘n’ roll concert. Certainly that’s not on his mind as his body gyrates in one direction after the other to Psychotic Waltz. He dances alone, nobody within yards of him. Holtrey flew in from Las Vegas for this show, a Psychotic Die-Hard. The money doesn’t matter. “I’m in telemarketing, and I make $1,200 a week,” he yells proudly. Translation: I have the dough, and I know just how to spend it.

“They’re awesome. Their guitar player is incredible,” he continues without invitation. OK, what about their lyrics? “Awesome.” He says he’ll fly next week to hear them in Mexico.

Nearby, Keith Wilder, 23, of Pasadena, who belongs to his own rock band, takes a more analytical approach. “They’re different. They are more slow-paced, melodic.” (If they are slow paced and melodic, then . . . never mind.) “They have a definite sense of sorrow,” he says. Wilder goes on to praise the FM scene. “I just come here to relax. You don’t have the Hollywood scene here, where everybody’s in dark leather and has a biker attitude.”

Meanwhile, Holtrey sticks his ears into the huge speakers by the stage, discovering, if possible, even more intensity. The lead singer of the Psychotic Waltz, as if granting Holtrey’s deepest wish, screams into the microphone.

Nobody hears the words.

Nobody seems to care.