You Can Bet That All’s Phair in the Bidding War for Liz

The major-label battle for Liz Phair is on.

The Chicago-based singer-songwriter, whose 1993 debut album “Exile in Guyville” made her one of the most acclaimed new artists of recent years, isn’t a free agent yet. She’s still under contract with New York independent Matador for one more album.

But already the big companies are climbing all over each other to offer her a deal. Geffen, Atlantic, RCA, Warner Bros., Virgin, Epic and A&M; have made particularly aggressive overtures to the young artist, and virtually every record company had representatives on hand when Phair played shows in Los Angeles and New York last month.

And the early betting is on . . . none of the above.

The big companies may be wasting their efforts, industry officials close to the situation say. When all is said and done, Phair is likely to stay with Matador--which would make Atlantic at least a partial winner, since it distributes the company’s releases.

“She really likes Matador and likes working with them--they really understand each other,” says Bob Lawton of the Twin Towers booking agency in New York, who has been fielding a lot of calls from Phair’s industry suitors in the absence of an official manager.

“Music is only a part of the things she wants to do,” he says of Phair, who was unavailable for comment. “She wants to be a visual artist and to direct (videos and films). And if you know enough about what you want or what you don’t want, you don’t need a big manager or record company to get you there. She’s going to get there anyway.”

Matador co-owner Gerard Cosloy is confident his star artist will stay with him.

“We’re in the process of negotiating a new deal with her,” he says. “After she’s finished her recording commitment with us she’s free to do whatever she wants. And it’s to her advantage to talk to everybody. But my feeling is we have more to offer than anyone else. Everybody assumes they can do better (than a small company), but they rarely can.”

How does he feel about all the major-label executives following her around?

“As long as they pay to get in to the shows, I don’t really care,” says Cosloy, who hopes to release Phair’s second album, currently being recorded in Chicago, in the fall.

“And if you took away the sales of the record to people in the record industry who got interested in her,” he adds, “she wouldn’t have sold as many records. We’re happy to take money from anyone.”

Even RCA’s director of A&R; Bruce Flohr, one of the executives who would love to sign Phair, finds it hard to argue.

“We’ve been hounding not only her but her lawyer,” he says. “We agree with all the critics that she has a real vision. But I don’t think that it will come down to a bidding war, but down to where Liz sees as the best place for her vision. It wouldn’t surprise me if she decided to stay with Matador.”

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KNACK ATTACK: First “Wayne’s World” brings back Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Then “Benny & Joon” breathes life into the Proclaimers’ “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles).” And then “Wayne’s World 2” puts the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.” back on the airwaves.

What next? A movie reviving “My Sharona”?

Yikes! That’s exactly what the makers of the new film “Reality Bites” and the folks at RCA Records have in mind. The Knack’s ode to a teen-age groupie--a No. 1 hit for six weeks when it was released in 1979--is prominently featured both in a key scene in the new Ben Stiller-directed film starring Winona Ryder, Ethan Hawke and Stiller, and also in the preview trailers for the movie.

The soundtrack album also includes new tracks from World Party, the Posies and Me Phi Me and previously released songs by U2, Lenny Kravitz, Crowded House and Juliana Hatfield, but both RCA and Universal Pictures, which is releasing the movie, are giving “My Sharona” a big push.

“We’ve talked to a lot of radio programmers and they’re excited about the song coming back,” says Hugh Surratt, RCA senior vice president of artist development. “The song isn’t in anybody’s oldies rotation and they haven’t played it in years, so they think that with the boost from the movie there could be a very fresh audience for it out there.”

Surratt says that a new video is being edited from old footage of the L.A.-based band and clips from the picture, in which the main characters rock out to the song at a 7-Eleven, and that there’s already been some interest from TV talk shows about having the Knack--whose attempted comeback a couple of years ago flopped--performing live.

Now let’s see, where did we put that old “Nuke the Knack” T-shirt?

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DIGITAL DISHING: Everyone’s always looking for the pulse of the music industry, but it may have turned up in an unlikely place: a computer bulletin board.

A Pop Eye reader alerted us to the America OnLine service’s “Music Industry Dirt”--an ongoing computer conversation full of gossip and gripes of record industry personnel. Judging by a recent conversation about the EMI Record Group (ERG), it’s a no-holds-barred forum, with subscribers taking full advantage of the anonymity it offers.

In the conversation, a participant called “Midi900” suggested that EMI stands for “Every Mistake Imaginable,” while ERG is “Every Record Gone.” Meanwhile, the others involved (“SkippyUSA,” “Big Soul” and “KMART 222”) slammed the company’s fondness for inconsequential, quick-hit artists such as Vanilla Ice and Barney the Dinosaur.

People at other companies shouldn’t laugh. These folks don’t seem like the type to play favorites or give anyone a break.

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AND ONE MORE THING: We’re not sure which is scarier about veteran performer-producer Al Kooper’s new instrumental album, “Rekooperation”: the liner notes by Stephen King or the series of cover photos taking Kooper from geeky teen to graying, middle-aged gent.

Anyway, here’s a sample of King’s stab at rock criticism:

“There’s not much soul of any kind in the video graveyard of pop music these days, I’m sorry to say. Even the rhythm and blues too often feels machine-tooled and soulless, music that’s gone politically correct and turned its switchblade over to Officer Friendly. . . . Pop music left its heart in San Francisco right around the time Garth Brooks recorded “Friends in Low Places,” and its soul in a place where only your proctologist can get a good look at it.”