Sweet and Sour ‘Snacks’ : Mixing Sugary Melody With Bitter Lyrics Set Miracle Legion on a Course From Songs of Romantic Upset to Social Unrest

You can’t always judge a song by its title, or even by its sound.

“Snacks and Candy,” by the Connecticut band Miracle Legion, is a title that would have fit comfortably on an album by ‘60s bubble-gum merchants like the Ohio Express and 1910 Fruitgum Co. The song’s jaunty riffs and airy harmonies fall right in line with its sugary name.

But the lyrics to “Snacks and Candy” recount a bitter episode in American race relations: the 1989 killing of Yusuf Hawkins in Bensonhurst, N.Y.

Miracle Legion’s singer-lyricist, Mark Mulcahy, takes the role of a nameless member of a youthful white mob. Through his eyes, the Hawkins story is replayed: white vigilantes congregate near a candy store, armed with baseball bats, in response to rumors that several blacks have been invited to a birthday party in the neighborhood.

Gonna keep the beach here white and sandy,

When we rendezvous down at Snacks and Candy. Hawkins was a 16-year-old black who came to Bensonhurst, a predominantly Italian-American section of Brooklyn, to answer an ad for a used car. Instead, he was confronted by a mob.

And then I heard a sound just like a firecracker,

Must be good old Jo Jo, he’s a pistol packer.

There’s a little boy lying like a raggedy Andy,

Just another weekend at Snacks and Candy.

To Mr. Ray Neal, Miracle Legion’s guitarist, “Snacks and Candy” is “the boldest thing we’ve done so far”--even if there was an element of accident involved in the way the music came about.

As Neal tells it, Miracle Legion thrashed out the song in a rehearsal studio where Mulcahy’s vocals were drowned out by the band.

“You couldn’t hear what Mark was singing, just the words ‘snacks and candy.’ We thought it was an upbeat song, so we were making it sound more and more pop.” That, thinks Neal, was a happy accident. With the sweetened music, “It’s even more thought-provoking.” Indeed, the animated sound captures the carnival atmosphere that can descend upon a mob, heightening the irony and condemnation in Mulcahy’s frayed, emotional tone as he heads toward the song’s murderous climax.

A classic example of the device is the Band’s “Look Out, Cleveland,” in which giddy, careening music carries apocalyptic lyrics about an onrushing tornado--with the storm serving as a metaphor for the racial explosions and other social turbulence that swept urban America in the late ‘60s.

“Snacks and Candy” and a couple of other dark, socially conscious songs that appear on Miracle Legion’s new album, “Drenched,” are departures for a band that previously had been known mainly for introspective songs about romantic upsets.

On tour the past few weeks (with a date tonight at Bogart’s in Long Beach), the band has watched those songs gain a topical resonance they hadn’t bargained for.

“When we wrote them, they were more a commentary on an intellectual level,” Neal said. “Then the racial stuff started happening, and it tied in in a really frightening way. The day the tour started, the Rodney King (verdict) came down, and we were playing ‘Snacks and Candy’ after spending the whole day at the hotel watching a riot.”

The turn toward social awareness on “Snacks and Candy,” “Everything Is Rosy” (a bitterly sarcastic demolition of smiley-face innocence) and “Waiting Room” (a lament of religious intolerance) reflects a broadening in Mulcahy’s outlook, according to Neal, the lyricist’s longtime songwriting partner. “Mark has said all the albums before this were him writing about himself. Now he’s caught up with himself, and I think he is branching out.”

Neal and Mulcahy, both 32, first hooked up in a New Haven band called Stray Divides.

“Instead of being in somebody else’s group and being at their whim, we decided, ‘Let’s try to do our own songs.’ ” In 1984, the duo put out a cassette that, despite extremely limited distribution, managed to get reviewed favorably in the British pop periodical, “Sounds.” Encouraged, Miracle Legion expanded to four members and went on to release a successful vinyl EP, “The Backyard.” That wistful, jangly, introspective release attracted both a following and constant comparisons to R.E.M.

According to Neal, “It doesn’t bother me at all now” if critics compare the band to R.E.M. (on the toughened-up “Drenched,” the similarities are less pronounced). “But when you’re starting out, you get a little defensive. R.E.M. is a great band, and we’re not the only band that’s been compared to them. I know I’m not trying to sound like anybody else. What we do is legitimately ours.”

After “The Backyard,” which it put out on its own, Miracle Legion moved up to the independent label, Rough Trade. After three more releases and some personnel changes, Miracle Legion found itself reduced again to a twosome. Mulcahy and Neal put out a folk-tinged album, “Me and Mr. Ray,” and performed for a time as a duo.

“That improved my guitar-playing a lot and gave me more confidence in general,” Neal said. “We could do it with just the two of us, and the songs held up without a lot of noise. But it’s limited. You want to rock.”

In 1989, after extensive auditions had turned up “literally hundreds of drummers and bassists who didn’t have a clue,” bassist Dave McCaffrey and drummer Scott Boutier (who goes by the stage name Spot) walked in and were judged “immediately so right.” The two had played together in a Providence, R.I., band, What Now.

Miracle Legion toured as a four-piece, then went into a down period as it searched for a new record deal. The members went off on separate pursuits (McCaffrey got a job on a fishing boat in Alaska; Mulcahy spent time in England and Spain). But, says Neal, “we always knew we wanted to do more. We still wrote songs and did odd gigs. There was never a thought of a split. We always had incredible optimism in this group.”

Eventually, Miracle Legion signed with Morgan Creek Records. With major-label resources behind it, the band was able to broaden its studio sound with elaborate touches such as the choir that chimes in on “Waiting Room,” recalling the Rolling Stones’ “Salt of the Earth.”

“The album came out the way it did because we were given two months instead of two weeks,” Neal said. “We’ve been lumped with the indie-college-alternative thing. That’s cool, and it’s what we listen to. But one of my big influences, which I share with Mark, is Queen. We’d like to make albums that are big and varied, and this was the fist chance we’ve gotten. We always had very big, grand ideas--grander than we can afford.”

Miracle Legion has a long way to go before it can afford real grandeur: Neal said the band remains a four piece on stage because it lacks the money to hire a touring keyboard player to duplicate parts played on the album by Ian McLagan, the former Faces member and Rolling Stones side man. But, being on a bigger label has improved the band’s chances of being heard.

“I don’t know any numbers, but it’s being done in a bigger way. For the first time our record is actually available in every record store, which is a big step.”

* Miracle Legion and Mark Davis & the Inklings play tonight at 9 at Bogart’s, in the Marina Pacifica Mall, 6288 E. Pacific Coast Highway, Long Beach. $10. (310) 594-8975.

ALTERED STATE FULLERTON: The local band Altered State figures to be in an upbeat mood when it plays a free concert today at 1 p.m. at the Pub in Cal State Fullerton’s University Center ((714) 773-3501).

After seeing a fast, dance-oriented first single, “Step Into My Groove,” languish last year, Altered State has seen its prospects brighten with album-rock radio exposure for “Ghost Beside My Bed,” another track from its 1991 Warner Bros. debut album. The lush, dreamy, progressive-rock song recalls such sources as the Beatles, Pink Floyd and Todd Rundgren.

Altered State’s singer, Gregory Markel, reports that the band has traveled recently for live appearances in cities where “Ghost” has been getting substantial airplay, including Cleveland and Detroit. Joining Markel, guitarist Curt Mathewson and drummer Chip Moreland at the Fullerton show will be Altered State’s newest member, bassist Paul Edwards.

ON THE ROAD AGAIN, ALMOST: About to embark on its first national tour, a five-week trek, Luke & the Locomotives will deliver a parting shot of its tradition-minded electric blues Saturday night at Randell’s, 3 Hutton Center Drive, Santa Ana ((714) 556-7700).

Band manager Berkeley Green says that bandleader Robert Lucas also has been booked to make his European debut in July, a solo appearance at a blues festival in Belgium. Last weekend, Lucas recorded a new album, his fourth, to be released this fall on the San Clemente-based label, Audioquest.

TAKING OUT ADZ: After a series of nostalgia-driven reunion shows by the original Adolescents earlier this year, three of the five members are carrying on as ADZ. The idea, says guitarist Rikk Agnew, is to concentrate on new material rather than replaying old faves from the seminal Orange County punk band’s catalogue.

“We pull a couple (of old songs) out of the hat when necessary,” meaning when fans insist, Agnew said. “But we like to concentrate on the fact that it is a new band with new material.” Rounding out the band are Tony Montana and Casey Royer, the Adolescents’ original singer and drummer, plus newcomers Roger Seeman on guitar and Mike Rouse on bass. ADZ (pronounced Ads, which was the Adolescents’ nickname) will headline Friday at New Klub on the Block at the Newport Roadhouse in Costa Mesa. (714) 650-1141.