CLASSIC PARTS : Though the Stones and Others Play a Role in Dramarama’s Sound, These Guys Are Nobody’s Understudies

The problem with being a smart, well-versed, guitar-based rock band in the 1990s is that everything you do is apt to sound like an echo.

On its new album, “Vinyl,” Dramarama bridles at having arrived too late for innovation, but it also gives in to the pleasures of paying homage.

The poke at the past comes in “Classic Rot,” a dig at “classic rock” radio. But no sooner has John Easdale, Dramarama’s singer-songwriter, finished decrying the endless regurgitation of the past than he and band mates Chris Carter, Pete Wood and Mr. E Boy are serving up a Rolling Stones oldie, “Memo From Turner,” on the very next track. And the song after that, “Train Going Backwards,” is an Easdale original that sounds like a cross between Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” and Neil Young’s “Cowgirl in the Sand.” Elsewhere, there are obvious bows to John Lennon and the Byrds.

If classic rock is rot, then Dramarama has an incurable case of the fungus.

Of course, there’s a difference between Dramarama probing for an out-of-the-way Stones number such as “Turner” (originally released on the soundtrack to the Jagger film “Performance”) and some classic rock deejay giving “Sympathy for the Devil” its jillionth spin. By placing an obscure Stones cover back to back with a tirade against classic rock programming, Dramarama makes the apt point that radio only skims the most obvious hits and leaves most of the wealth from rock’s past still buried.

But the question remains: Why should we listen to a band like Dramarama draw upon the past, when the original sources are crowding the same CD bins?

The fact is, if you don’t own “Aftermath” or “Beggars Banquet,” you’d probably be making a mistake spending your $12 on “Vinyl” instead. On those albums, Jagger and Richards are forever 25 and at their peaks.

But the Stones at their peak exist only on record. It’s Dramarama (most of the members are in their early 30s) that is playing this weekend. And it’s Dramarama, in 1992, that is still using rock to sort through its confusions and passions of the moment. With occasional exceptions, the Stones, and most of their contemporaries, have long since lost the spark for that. You’d be much better advised to put your $12 into “Vinyl” than into “Steel Wheels.”

Dramarama has had an unusual saga. Its four principal members started out in New Jersey, issued their first album on a label based in France, and found themselves a hit in Southern California, when KROQ disc jockey Rodney Bingenheimer began playing “Anything, Anything,” a terrific track full of the bristling anguish Dramarama can muster at its peak.

The band moved to Los Angeles in 1986 (Easdale now lives in La Habra), but record companies were less impressed than the KROQ fans. Dramarama recorded another album on its own, “Box Office Bomb.” The title proved prophetic, and Dramarama went through a breakup in 1988. The divorce didn’t take, and the band was soon back together, working on its third album, “Stuck in Wonderamaland.” Released in 1989, it earned Dramarama a national following and set the stage for “Vinyl,” which has improved its prospects further. One sign of Dramarama’s momentum is its recent showing at the Los Angeles Music Awards, where it won honors as the area’s Best Modern Rock Band of 1991, and “Vinyl” was named Best Modern Rock Album. The four longtime members recently were joined by a new drummer, Blondie alumnus Clem Burke.

Who: Dramarama.

When: Sunday, April 5, at 8 p.m., with the Cavedogs and Primitive Painters.

Where: Event Center, Cal State Fullerton.

Whereabouts: Take the Orange (57) Freeway to Nutwood Avenue exit; go west to Cal State campus. Event Center is adjacent to the University Center.

Wherewithal: $12 in advance, $15 at door.

Where to call: (714) 773-3501.