Bob Forrest Not Out of the Woods Yet : The sometimes singer of Thelonious Monster, picked up by a major label, feels vindicated--but he also feels the pressure to perform.

The passage from underground rock cult figure to big-time contender is reputed to be something like puberty. It’s a change that can be fraught with previously unimagined pressures and unpredictable mood swings, as an erstwhile champion of the underground’s art-for-art’s-sake ethic adjusts to the single imperative of pop’s major leagues: sell a bundle of records, or else.

Bob Forrest, sometimes singer of the Los Angeles alternative rock band Thelonious Monster, is going through that transition these days as he finishes work on an album of his own that will be his first for a major label (RCA Records).

“They’re trying to make me into some commercially viable human commodity,” Forrest said over the phone recently from his home in Los Angeles. The words could be those of a leery new arrival in the majors who is beginning to have second thoughts about being turned into a widget for the marketing department. But Forrest’s puckish, self-mocking tone suggests that he is actually looking forward to being a commercially viable human commodity.

In fact, said Forrest, who will front Thelonious Monster tonight at Peppers Golden Bear in Huntington Beach, the knowledge that major labels weren’t inclined to see much commercial potential in Thelonious Monster used to irk him greatly a few years ago. Forrest said his anger at being overlooked fueled a good deal of the erratic on-stage behavior and biting sense of humor that became hallmarks of his performances with Thelonious Monster in those days.

“That’s what I would drink behind for a long time: ‘Who are these A&R; people (major label talent scouts), and why can’t they understand that we’re good songwriters?’ All we ever wanted was respect from major record labels. But the truth is, you need a salable commodity, and a bunch of drunks is not a salable commodity.

Thelonious Monster fell apart late in ‘89, but Forrest himself emerged with a recording deal. At least one other Monster member probably would have liked to kill him for feathering his own nest while the rest of the band fell out of the tree, Forrest said.

“I signed a deal by myself out of a combination of greed and thinking I’m the greatest thing in the world,” said the singer, a man uncommonly willing to turn a barbed verbal salvo on himself.

Reconciliation came last summer, when Forrest and the other band members reunited to play in a memorial concert for Rob Graves, the Thelonious Monster bassist who had died of a drug overdose. Forrest, who will turn 30 next week, said he had quit drinking and come to the realization that “they’re my best friends, no matter what.”

Forrest had Thelonious Monster back him on three tracks he was cutting for his album, which he plans to call “Lucky, I Guess.” For the most part, though, Forrest said, “it’s two different things. Thelonious Monster couldn’t play the music I’m playing on my album--not that they should.” Forrest’s record will have some ready-for-radio polish: “It sounds like Sinead O’Connor and Tom Petty.”

Thelonious Monster is made of rawer stuff--a tough, loosely played amalgam that applies a punk approach to blues, country and garage-band influences. With Thelonious Monster, Forrest said, “it’s more just ‘Don’t worry about it, and rock out.’ You don’t finish the edges.”

Forrest said he’ll put together a band of his own for touring after his album comes out. “But on the back burner is always going to be Thelonious Monster. Either way, if I bomb or if I succeed, I’ll make another record with Thelonious Monster.”

As a singer and songwriter, Forrest resembles Paul Westerberg of the Replacements. His nasal, pinched voice is rough-hewn, even ungainly, but it comes across on record with uncommon immediacy. Forrest, like Westerberg, is willing to tap a vein and enact some personal pain; in that setting, his roughness becomes a virtue--it enables him to make his anguish come alive without affectation or unseemly self-pity.

“He’s like my idol,” Forrest said of Westerberg. “To me, there hasn’t been a better songwriter to come along (in a long time).”

Forrest’s songs, like Westerberg’s, often reflect the emotional anguish that comes with growing up. In Forrest’s case, life presented a good deal of raw material for his art. He was born to a teen-age mother who turned him over to her parents to raise. Until his teens, he was led to believe that his mother was his sister and his grandparents were his parents.

Forrest said that by his high school years in the late ‘70s, which he spent at Marina High School in Huntington Beach, he was living on his own. He summed up the mood of those years in the Thelonious Monster song “Sammy Hagar Weekend,” a chronicle of aimless kids whose activities include getting loaded in the parking lot of Anaheim Stadium before a big heavy metal show.

Rejection and sundered relationships figure into his songs. But on such Monster songs as “Hang Tough” and “Lena Horne Still Sings Stormy Weather,” Forrest holds out embattled hopes of things somehow working out for the better.

Forrest’s own album will continue drawing on personal experience. He said one song, “A Little Bit Nervous,” is about the difficulties of adjusting to an existence without drugs and alcohol, while another rose from haunting memories of his dead friend Graves.

“The major theme,” he summed up, “is ‘Life sucks, but if you have friends you’re doing all right.”’

Life as a major label artist has offered some new amenities. “I have car insurance now,” Forrest said with a characteristic wheezy chuckle. He was also able to buy a used personal computer for his girlfriend, who is studying for her master’s degree in English. And yes, he is getting to spend obscene amounts of money on his album, which is the major label way of doing things.

“It’s astronomical. The food bill on my album is more than it cost to make (the first two Thelonious Monster) albums put together. Stan Lynch (who plays guitar for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers) said: ‘They’ll either be giving Bob Forrest the money, or they’ll be giving more money to Richard Marx. Which way would you rather have it?’ I’d rather have the money coming to people like me and Paul Westerberg instead of Richard Marx and Michael Bolton.”

Forrest is one former underground denizen who doesn’t hesitate to declare money an acceptable motivation for a musician. Maybe that’s because the songs he writes don’t leave his authenticity in question.

“My goal was to get on a major label and get the dough,” Forrest said. “That dream took for granted that I would write good songs and make good records the rest of my life.”

Those things, he now realizes, can’t be taken for granted. “It sort of scares you. I feel the pressure. As long as (executives at RCA) keep thinking I’m the next big thing, everything’s cool,” he said, that persistent jesting tone back in his voice. “If I prove that wrong, I dare say what’ll happen.”

* Thelonious Monster, Big Drill Car and Cadillac Tramps play tonight at 9 p.m. at Peppers Golden Bear in the Pierside Pavilion, 300 Pacific Coast Highway, Huntington Beach. Tickets: $12. Information: (714) 374-2327.

PUNKS OUT, HARD ROCKERS IN: Crawford’s, a Lakewood restaurant and bar that began booking alternative rock bands last month, is already switching formats and promoters.

Owner Jim Crawford says that rowdy behavior by bands and fans at recent shows contributed to his decision to end his booking agreement with local rock promoter Ed Christensen. Christensen could not be reached. A new promoter, who goes by the single name Erlene, said she will switch from the punk-influenced bands Christensen was booking to a new format calling for the KNAC-style hard rockers she previously had booked at Goodies in Fullerton. The new format kicks in Feb. 15.

Crawford’s, at 11529 Carson St., will continue to have regular blues nights as well. Jay Sheridan, a partner of Christensen, said some of the alternative rock shows he had lined up for Crawford’s will be switched to Night Moves in Huntington Beach.

HARMAN-IZING: The James Harman Band began recording a new album on Jan. 16--the same afternoon that the bombs started dropping on Baghdad. “The second engineer came in and told us. We found ourselves going back and forth to the TV set like everyone else,” recalls producer Hammond Scott, who has been overseeing the sessions at a Van Nuys studio. Despite those somber beginnings, the album will be a mostly lighthearted affair entitled “Do Not Disturb,” according to Scott, who will release it on his New Orleans-based blues and R&B; label, Black Top Records.

Lee Allen, known for his sax playing with Fats Domino and the Blasters, will appear on one song, and David Hidalgo of Los Lobos contributed accordion playing to two tracks, Scott said. The album, due in June or July, will be Harman’s first release with his revamped band, which includes guitarist Joel Foy, bassist Jeff Turmes, and drummer Stephen Taylor.

Black Top has just released “Blues in the Dark,” an album by the Mighty Flyers, the Riverside-based band that has been a longtime presence on the Orange County club scene.