The Ringlings: ‘Punk Rock With a Smile’

Hollywood do-it-yourself rock is back in the big time.

The Ringling Sisters, which includes former members of the Bangles and the Screaming Sirens--two key female groups of L.A.’s early-’80s grass-roots movement--has released “60 Watt Reality.”

The album, on Ode Records through A&M;, is the first big-label release from a representative of that milieu in ages. But though the faces may be familiar, the attitudes and sounds--a mix of semi-folky-rock and spoken-word pieces--may not.

“People will come up to me and say, ‘I can’t believe you’re into this coffeehouse thing,’ ” said Pleasant Gehman, one of the female rocker-poets who founded the Ringlings in 1987. “They say, ‘I remember when you used to be vomiting in the clubs all night.’ ”

Still, Gehman, who just recently broke up the Screaming Sirens to devote more time to the Ringling Sisters, says that the methodology is drawn directly from the old days.

“It’s like punk rock,” she said.

“Punk rock with a smile,” added Gary Eaton, one of the group’s two male guitarists, sitting with Gehman and the other Sisters after a recent acoustic performance at the funky Melrose store Y-Que.

The group was founded as an informal, spoken-word enterprise by several L.A. rock women in need of creative alternatives to their regular bands. Among the original Sisters were Johnette Napolitano of Concrete Blonde, Texacala Jones of Tex & the Horseheads and Iris Berry of the Lame Flames. The point was to be able to write and perform without the encumberances and responsibilities of the full-time bands.

“With the Ringling Sisters we escaped from rock ‘n’ roll hell,” Gehman said.

Eventually, the group itself became a real band, though retaining the do-it-yourself ethos, even now with its own major-label connection.

“We’re not waiting for A&M; to do promotional displays in record stores,” said Debbie Patino, a former member of Raszebrae and current lead singer of Mercury’s Flowers, as well as a Ringling. “We’re doing it ourselves.”

And all the Ringlings remain active in other bands or otherwise involved with the local club scene. Annette Zilinskas was an original member of both the Bangles and Blood on the Saddle and currently leads Weatherbell. Debbie Dexter, Eaton and Dave Catching are all in the Devil Squares. And Patino, in addition to being in two bands, manages two others: Carnival Art and Everything.

At the center of the group’s grass-roots activities has always been its semi-annual benefit “Fun-Raisers” for a Hollywood home for orphaned and abused children.

With all that, the Ringlings are something of the hub of a new L.A. grass-roots movement, though the group members, having survived the old grass-roots scene, are wary of such talk.

“I don’t know if we’re in any ‘scene,’ ” said Dexter.

“Maybe we’re forming our own state,” added Eaton. “We seceded from the Union.”