MUSIC : Band Serves Up Stew of Funky Garage Rap : Harold Lee, formerly of Los Guys, leads the new Rice and Beans in a loud and furious guitar groove.

Remember Harold Lee, the shredding guitar player for Los Guys, those peerless purveyors of intellectually challenging, aesthetically pleasing, totally off-the-wall, wise-guy folk songs? Forget about them. Lee’s got a new gig now.

When Jeremy Donaldson moved to Oregon to work on an MA in engineering, that ended Los Guys and left Lee as El Dude.

Lee’s new band, Rice and Beans, gives fresh meaning to the word eclectic . For one, Lee changed his name to Soi Being; bassist Chris Ohno became Fri Ri; drummer Oscar Hermosillo became James Bean, and vocalist Dave Cassell, became Bean Martin.

Besides being twice as big, Rice and Beans is twice as loud, doing a sonic stew of funky garage rap with an attitude. Lee--who during pre-gig sound checks used to sample every guitar solo from every rock song from the ‘70s--still does some guitar solos, but not many. Now he’s more integrated into the overall sound rather than being the Guitar God of Los Guys days.

“It sort of feels like I’m stepping out from all that to play very loud rock ‘n’ roll,” Lee said just prior to the band’s recent Ventura Theatre debut. “It’s completely different. For one thing, I party a lot more with Rice and Beans.”

What would you expect from a band that made its debut on Halloween at Hermosillo’s grandma’s house in Fontana?

The band was easy to put together because all the members, with the exception of Lee, live together in Goleta. But, like most local folks, none of the guys is from this area. Lee is from Connecticut, Ohno is from Duarte, Hermosillo is from La Puente and Dave C. is from East L.A.

According to Dave, it all started with a call from Ohno.

“So he calls me up one day and says, ‘Hey Dave, we want you to front our band,’ ” Lee said. “I thought, ‘What band?’ So I came up and sat in, and it worked. Before, I was in a Riverside band called Apple Core. I was playing guitar, but somehow I wasn’t expressing myself. I’ve been in bands since I was 11 years old. I’m no good at anything else.”

At the Ventura Theatre gig, Dave C. paced the big stage like a cat in jail as the other three pounded out a furious funk groove. Lee, shirtless and smiling, jumped off the stage and sprinted through the mostly underage crowd before jumping back on stage to take a few laps around the drummer, all the while never missing a lick.

All this energy seemed to inspire the youth of Ventura to play human pinball as a mild mosh pit started to swirl clockwise. Even a few females joined in, with no reported loss of blood or teeth.

“It’s always different,” Hermosillo said. “Sometimes they dance, sometimes they just groove on our cartoon disco music. One time my mom came to a gig and wondered why they’d let us play in such a nice place.”

A lot of bands say it, but Beans and Rice really is a garage band. They made their first tape on an eight-track recorder in the garage--now Two Tamales in a Wok Studio. And eight songs for three bucks is quite a deal. They’ll only have to sell about 4 million tapes to have as much money as U2 spends each year on limos.

“We use a lot more samples and spontaneous stuff when we play live,” said the singer. “We’ve been playing a lot lately. The first time we played downtown Santa Barbara, we played with Primal Tribe, but the club didn’t like us too much because I cussed too much.

“Then we played at Toes, and the place was totally happening on a Wednesday night, and the club that didn’t like us called us back. We’re going to start playing San Francisco and L.A. We’ve got family and friends and places to stay.”

And in a show just added seconds before press time, Rice and Beans will also play Saturday at the Midnight Hour in Ventura, where owner Larry Burdorf offers another of his Larrypaloozas, this one featuring Bloody Mary Morning and those friends of Deadheads everywhere, Mr. Ectomy.

Details

* WHAT: Rice and Beans, Primal Tribe.

* WHERE: Alex’s Cantina, 633 State St., Santa Barbara.

* WHEN: Friday, 9-ish.

* WHY: No day jobs.

* HOW MUCH: About $2.

* PHONE: 966-0032