Samba Sideshow : Don’t expect heavenly music from a band called Samba Hell. ‘Schizophrenic’ describes the trio’s style.

Rumba Hell is probably a boring “I Love Lucy” rerun. Mambo Hell is outside the law of gravity. Maybe they are both separate wings of Motel Hell. Samba Hell is easy--it’s just a band, a band that will appear, along with local rockers Chunk, on Saturday at Bermuda Triangle in Ventura.

The music of these three quirky guys stops and starts, goes fast then slow, like the Road Runner learning to drive a stick shift. Samba Hell music is jumpy--like Oingo Boingo drinking espresso.

“Samba Hell music is a big stew of different genres and styles and key changes and sensibilities ground into something we enjoy,” bass player Alex Nelson said in a telephone interview. “We’re into variety, humor and melody. Our music is somewhat schizophrenic, and we use harmonies and melodies to glue it all together.”

So every song seems to contain 10 others, and they’re more complicated than Rubik’s Interpretation of This Week’s IRS Rules. And, of course, all of them are original--with a capital O. Surf, rock, pop and about everything else appears somewhere in a Samba Hell set, if not in a single Samba Hell song. Even Gumby would find it hard to dance to this stuff.

“Our crowd tends to vary from high school to college-age kids. Then it jumps to those in their late 20s-early 30s, or those with intellectual overtones who get off on our musical quips. No one dances much--they’re pretty much into the watching thing. There’s so many changes in our music that you have to be a great dancer or else really wasted.”

Remember that Beach Boys song “Dance, Dance, Dance?” If they were singing about Samba Hell, it would be “Stare, Stare, Stare.” Hey, no point in getting all sweaty when you’re not in the gym. This is more cerebral music. The Samba dudes must be pretty smart because they actually made someone else pay for their CD after winning a “Battle of the Bands.”

“On a whim, we sent this tape to a ‘Battle of the Bands’ contest and we won and were selected to represent the West Coast. We recorded some songs for a CD with three other bands at Warner Brothers’ studio, which was sponsored by Tower Records and Tanqueray. Anyway, they flew us to New York City and we played at the Ritz. We didn’t win the whole thing, but we made $2,000, which allowed us to make our own CD.”

Besides all that, Samba Hell can actually sing. In too many bands, nobody can sing; in this band, everybody sings. Usually it’s Nelson and guitarist Bernard Yin harmonizing like a couple of songbirds, then drummer David Curran jumps in and it’s three-part harmonies.

“We just work at it,” Nelson said. “We’re not as tight as we could be, but we work at it because the energy and difficulty of executing our music leaves very little margin for error. Actually, our drummer has the best voice of all of us.”

The Ventura gig will be the second local appearance for the L. A.-based trio. It will be a welcome relief because lately Ventura has been rocking about as much as a crypt in a Stephen King movie. By comparison, Santa Barbara, any night, is like the Mardi Gras. But then L. A. makes S. B. seem like Oak View on a Tuesday night. So how come Nelson is complaining about L. A.?

“We play the Hollywood area two to three times a month and, right now, the scene seems pretty lifeless to us. The band-viewing public seems pretty burnt out. No matter what band plays, there’s no energy between the audience and the group. It’s sort of like a David Lynch movie.

“Our best gig was probably when we opened for Devo in Tijuana. The first band got booed off the stage, but we were very well received. We had 1,200 people absolutely behind us. That was a lot better than the time we played for a bunch of dentists at a private party. They sort of just stood there and stared at us, then they asked us if we could please turn it down.”

Samba Hell got the name from one of their own songs. Their first band was the Panic in San Diego. That was six years ago; they’ve been in L. A. for three years now, but still haven’t had the financial success that would allow them to give up their dreaded day jobs.

“For now, we’re just taking care of ourselves, although we’d like someone else to pay all the bills and do all the work. We’ll keep going; we’ve gone this far. It would be silly to pack it up now.”

Maybe as silly as some of their songs? It’ll be worth showing up just to see them do “Huevos Rancheros,” which musically rehashes what happens to your intestines an hour after eating the well-known Mexican dish without Rolaids.