Motel Room Rock : It’s just a wild guitar band going wild in suburbia. They’re playing Cheers Monday night.

Being the best band in Simi Valley is sort of like being the Invisible Man in an Armani suit. It’s hard to get noticed. In eastern Ventura County, where shopping malls seem to multiply like cement rabbits, there are too many bands and not enough places to play. It’s just like one of those high school parties, the ones with 48 guys, three girls, four beers and 17,000 zits. Pretty swell.

April’s Motel Room, perhaps the best band in the east county, is also pretty swell, if you’re lucky enough to see them play. Besides Cheers, there aren’t many places to play in Simi Valley. A Mexican restaurant, Paseo Nuevo, is doing Wednesday night gigs, but mostly it’s Cheers, Cheers, oh, and Cheers. Not so long ago in Ventura, it was the same story with Charlie’s. Anyway, April’s Motel Room will be headlining Cheers Monday night. Drastic Measures will open at 9 p.m. It’s 6 bucks if you’re 18 and $4 if you’re over 21.

At a recent gig at Charlie’s, the band did an hour and a half set before about 30 rock fans. The band has two percussionists who have so much stuff to beat on, it fills the stage. In front are two guitar players and a bass player. Together, they rock much like Blackbird, the Jesus & Mary Chain, Ride, Blur, Spacemen 3, the Cult, Nirvana and a bunch of those alternative guitar/shoe-gazer bands.

The songs were endless and mindless, leaving the audience with a senseless sense of senseless confusion and chaos, except for that one guy dancing. Perhaps the Solid Gold Dancers had a prior engagement. In short, it was perfect on a visceral level--rock that goes right through you.

Front man Tom Kelly, quite articulate when discussing the band’s five-tune tape, was totally indecipherable live. Maybe the mix man was mixed up. Kelly may have been singing in Mongolian and he didn’t know any jokes between songs.

But the band was totally tight, and it was worth the drive just to hear them do “Get Her Way,” a song that’ll live in your head a lot longer than whatever it was mom was telling you whenever that was. It’s just a wild guitar band going wild.

The boys in the band include Kelly on vocals and guitar, Ken Tatlock on guitar, Mike Hoolihan on bass, Aaron Zidenberg on drums and John Baffa is the percussionist. Kelly discussed the life and times of his favorite east county band.

Yeah, but who’s April?

She’s here tonight, but I’m not saying who. She’s a way happening friend who had a party in a motel room. We were just hanging around drinking, joking around. Someone mentioned April’s Motel Room, which sounded sort of sleazy and arty.

The east county has the most population. So how come there’s so few places to play?

I dunno, it’s just total suburbia. Simi Valley is the definition of suburbia. It’s closed in by mountains and there’s two ways in and two ways out. There’s a lot of bands there, but it seems like the cops frown on everything. There’s no place to hang out. Maybe there’s so many bands because there’s nothing else to do. For original music, we’re really restricted, usually we just play parties but they get busted by the cops because the neighbors call.

How did the band get started?

Mike and I started jamming around to get out our aggression about a year ago. Somehow, it evolved into this, which is totally different.

Describe April’s music.

A lot of soul, but it’s white-boy music. All the lyrics are nonsense. We’re influenced by things that have happened. We like the Chili Peppers, but we like the old guys, too, like Johnny Lyndon. I also like the Doors, Santana and the Grateful Dead.

How does a band get signed in Simi Valley?

They don’t as far as I know. Getting signed would mean we could do this all the time but with better equipment. Even if we never get signed, we’ll always be playing. We do this for fun. We get to express ourselves, but I hate loading up all the equipment.

Who goes to see your band?

We have a very faithful following that really help us out a lot. Most of them are girls.

Is there trouble at your gigs?

When someone starts slamming, we stop it, so now, no one starts slamming anymore.

How often does the band play?

We practice three times a week and play three times a month, and we play a lot of parties. We have about 20 songs, all originals. No covers. We tried to do a Cure song once, but it (was) real bad.

What’s next?

Keep playing and get a lot more together.