Capitol Idea to Step Up the Satire : Performance: Washington, D.C.,-based troupe, coming to Fullerton for two shows today, lampoons pols through topical lyrics set to well-known tunes.

By ZAN DUBIN

April 10, 1992 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

The song titles alone have elicited laughs:

Lookin’ for Scuds in All the Wrong Places.

76 Bad Loans.

Tie a Yellow Ribbon ‘Round my Oldsmobile.

And the songs themselves have kept Americans chuckling for more than a decade now. Try this recent one, written for Republican presidential hopeful Patrick J. Buchanan, to the tune of “My Favorite Things” from “The Sound of Music”:

Trade blocking schemes aimed at Germans and Asians

Basketball teams should employ more Caucasians

Send Chinese immigrants back to Nanking

We on the right always do the white thing .

Or this one, for former Massachusetts Sen. Paul E. Tsongas, to the lilt of Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Sounds of Silence”:

Hello voters, my old friends

I’ll give this speech to you again

The message in it is so boring

I just begin it and you’re snoring . . . .

The words you can profit from were written by a dweebish nerd

What you heard

Were echoes of the Tsounds of Tsongas.

Both are the work of the Capitol Steps, a satirical singing group of 15 current and former congressional aides whose topical lyrics set to well-known tunes have lampooned pols high and low and made light of myriad current events.

Performing two shows today at the Fullerton Museum Center, the Washington, D.C.,-based troupe leaves no stone unturned, from politicians’ sexual dalliances and the Persian Gulf War to the S&L; debacle and Vice President Dan Quayle (“Stand by Your Dan”).

The group, has recorded 10 albums, toured the country and has been heard regularly over National Public Radio since it was formed in 1981. That year, co-founders Elaina Newport, Bill Strauss and Jim Aidala, then staffers for Sen. Charles Percy (R-Ill.) and affirmed political junkies, were asked to provide entertainment for the senator’s Christmas party. Instead of staging a Nativity play, they mined the headlines for caustic good cheer.

“Bill had been going around the office humming ditties he was working on, and I played the piano, and we put (the show) together with six Percy staffers,” Newport said in a recent phone interview from her Alexandria, Va., office. “Then, someone said, ‘Why don’t you perform at our Christmas party?’ It snowballed from there, and like most things in Congress, we didn’t know when to stop.”

A standard tour contingent of five singers and a pianist will appear here and perform about 30 songs. They’ll don wigs and costumes to impersonate those they skewer, and stage at least one skit: “To Run or Not To Run,” a “Shakespearean tragedy” about New York Gov. Mario Cuomo. “It’s tormented, yes,” quipped Newport, the troupe’s producer.

The group owes its name and philosophy to former Rep. John Jenrette (D-S.C.) and his wife, Rita, who years ago boasted publicly about having sex on the Capitol steps.

“After that, we decided we would dedicate ourselves to going after every scandal,” Newport said.

So far, the Democratic presidential primaries--peppered with scandals and questionable deeds, from alleged extramarital affairs to marijuana puffs--have offered rich fodder for new songs, Newport said.

Earlier in the year, “We thought, ‘Oh my God, what’s funny about (Arkansas Gov.) Bill Clinton?’ ” Newport said. But then, allegations surfaced that Clinton had an extended affair with sometime nightclub singer Gennifer Flowers, “and ever since it’s been like scandal du jour .”

Two troupe members portray Clinton and Flowers for the song “When They’re Fishing in the Star,”-- Star , as in the tabloid that published Flowers’ charge and paid her for it.

Clinton’s Democratic opponent hasn’t escaped unscathed, of course. Former California Gov. Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr., dubbed “Gov. Moonbeam” by critics, is considered for “chairman of the Ouija Board” and plunges through the hole in the ozone in “Space Oddity,” sung to the tune of rocker David Bowie’s tune of the same name.

As far as their personal politics go, Newport said, Steps members are about evenly divided along party lines; professionally, “we try to be excruciatingly bipartisan.”

Newport, who studied piano at the University of Maryland and graduated with a business degree, said she writes most of the group’s songs with Strauss, a non-practicing “Harvard lawyer.” She works in the Steps office, a.k.a. “Comedy Central,” and he works at his home nearby. The separation poses no problem, though.

“One of us will have an idea and send it (to the other) over fax, then the fax comes back with question marks and arrows or ‘That’s not funny’ written in the margin,” she said.

The songwriting life isn’t stress-free, however. For example, there was the day Tsongas dropped out of the primary race, forcing retirement of “The Tsounds of Tsongas,” one of the troupe’s most popular songs.

Keeping up with rapidly unfolding events is no picnic either, Newport said.

“There was one week in 1987 when Gary Hart got caught, Tammy Bakker announced she had an air-conditioned dog house and Ollie North testified,” she said. “I don’t think we slept at all that week.”

The job has had another deleterious effect. “When you listen to the news, you don’t think, ‘Gee, is that going to be good for world peace or retire the national debt,’ you think ‘Is this good for comedy?’ I have to admit, our minds have gotten a little sick on that front. Or, all we think about is rhyming. When (Soviet leader Konstantin) Chernenko died, all Bill (Strauss) thought about was, ‘What rhymes with Gorbachev?’ ”

Politicians and others, including such Iran-Contra figures as Robert (Bud) McFarlane, John Poindexter and Oliver North’s secretary Fawn Hall among them, have guest-starred with the Steps, who are slated to appear in a third public television special this fall. But not once has anyone complained about character assassination.

In fact, only when somebody is unsung, as it were, do the singers hear about it. Just before the group was to stage its first show for President Bush (they’d done many for him when he was vice president), they were given strict instructions by his staff to lay off Bush-bashing, Newport said.

“So we did nothing about Bush, and at the end of the show, he came up on stage and said, ‘Well, aren’t you going to do anything about me?’ So we did a couple more songs.”

Newport, 35, worked on Capitol Hill for seven years, and believes that a healthy desire for humor is behind the Steps’ popularity, particularly in Washington where they perform weekends at Chelsea’s, a cabaret club.

“If I can get sappy for a minute, so many people in Washington take everything so seriously, and I think it’s necessary to go around and burst a few balloons and poke fun,” she said.

She’s modest about the troupe’s comedic abilities.

“You couldn’t make some of this stuff up, right? I always like to encourage people to vote for the funniest candidate, and I think it’s been working.”

Actually, the Steps do have concerns about the outcome of November’s election. They’re not losing any sleep over it, though.

“Our worst fear,” Newport said, “is that the voters will elect someone President who is quietly competent and solves the country’s problems.”

The Capitol Steps will appear Friday at 6:30 and 9:30 p.m. at the Fullerton Museum Center, 301 N. Pomona Ave., Fullerton. $25. (714) 738-3124.

A Lyrical Look at Capitol Steps’ Lampooning

A sampling of Capitol Steps’ lyrics:

“Roll Out the Daryl” (to the tune of “Roll Out the Barrel”):

In California, image is always the thing

Cops try to warn ya, don’t photograph Rodney King

Somebody did that, now LA law stipulates

You’ll wait seven days to buy a camera

Says Police Chief Gates!

“Space Oddity” (to the tune of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”):