It’s Happening at K With Mavericks and ‘Weirdos’ : Despite corporate interest in alternative-rock bands, K Records remains deep in experimental fringe.

If you think “Lollapalooza” was the ultimate underground rock festival, you’re not digging deep enough.

Last year’s “International Pop Underground Convention” in Olympia, Wash., was much more like it--six days of music and related arts by maverick performers from around the United States and abroad.

“It was pretty great,” says the convention’s organizer, Calvin Johnson, perhaps the West Coast’s key underground entrepreneur. “Everything worked the way it was supposed to. We didn’t have any security people, we didn’t have any bouncers. . . . People were respected and were expected to respect each other, and that’s what happened.”

As the owner of the underground label K Records and leader of the rock band Beat Happening, Johnson, 30, is a sort of Western counterpart of Washington, D.C.’s punk role-models Fugazi. Both have bands as well as record companies, and they share such pure punk-era values as individual vision, low-priced shows open to all ages, self-respect instead of authority figures.

One point of the convention was to show how to do it.

Said Johnson, speaking by phone from K’s headquarters above a Chinese restaurant in downtown Olympia: “It just bothers me when we go out on tour and we say we want to do a show this way and people say, ‘Oh, you can’t do that, no one does that.’ Well, we were gonna do it. That way when people say, ‘You can’t do it,’ we can go, ‘Oh yeah, well, we did it.’ ”

The event even got some coverage in Rolling Stone, edging into the consciousness of the mainstream and raising K Records’ profile, if not its profits.

“Since the convention, somehow the name K has gotten a lot more recognized than before,” said Johnson, a singer and occasional guitarist who sounds as deadpan, if not quite so deep-voiced, as he does on record.

“When we call stores to see if they want to order from us, instead of their going, ‘Now who are you guys?,’ they go, ‘Oh, K, yeah, all right.’ Even if they don’t want to order from us at least they’ve heard of us.”

K is the kind of grass-roots, personal-vision enterprise that nurtures rock’s experimental fringe--bands so deep in left field that the recent phenomenon of corporate record-company interest in alternative rock bands has no impact.

“There’s always gonna be people doing weird stuff,” said Johnson, “because the cassette and Xerox technology is so accessible now, so cheap. So no matter how many bands sign to major labels there’s gonna be another weirdo coming along.

“The fact that some people are making it big or whatever, that’s just part of it, but that’s not our main interest. My interest has always been in the weirdos and the freaks, basically the misfits.”

Johnson’s trio Beat Happening pretty much fits that bill, though its latest album, “You Turn Me On,” made a strong showing on the independent/college airplay charts.

Johnson, guitarist-drummer Bret Lunsford and drummer-guitarist Heather Lewis play a minimalist brand of melodic pop that has some dark strains in the lyrics and a melancholy tinge in the music. The overall impression is winsome, buoyant and naive.

There’s also a charming amateurism in Beat Happening’s music, but Johnson--who says his goal is to write the perfect pop song--thinks that reputation has led to a misconception about the bands on his roster.

“One thing I notice is a lot of people who write about K talk about how no one at K knows how to play their instruments,” he says.

“I freely admit that Bret and I have no idea how to play our instruments. But Heather is a very good drummer and guitar player. I think that Dave Lester and Al Larsen from Mecca Normal and Some Velvet Sidewalk are incredible guitar players. I think that everybody on the label is really amazing musicians, except for me.”