Extra Fancy’s Grillo Busts Rock Images

“Being a gay man in rock is a total no-no,” says Brian Grillo, who leads the abrasive and beat-heavy L.A. rock band Extra Fancy. “It’s all right to be a drag queen or something that’s not threatening, but to go up against other boys. . . .

“But I just thought that so many of my friends have been beat up, have died of AIDS, have been treated like they were invisible, that this (band) is one way I can give off a positive image. I can break the stereotypes that gay men are either sick, wimpy or drag queens.”

Grillo does shatter those confining images, striking a traditionally aggressive rock stance--including gritty vocals and an imposing presence--while presenting his own gay perspective. “I want to tell you that I love you/I want to tell you that I care/But somebody might be listening,” he sings in one song, and he accents his quartet’s post-industrial grind with hard-core go-go dancing.

Homosexuality is nothing new in rock but it has generally been treated as a titillating diversion and glittery charade--from the flamboyant cross-dressing of David Bowie to Mick Jagger’s fey persona to, more recently, the coy lyrics of the London Suede. Rarely do any major artists lead an openly gay lifestyle. Folk-pop (Melissa Etheridge, k.d. lang) and dance music (Erasure’s Andy Bell) have been far more open and honest about homosexuality. Rock has treated it as a selling point while remaining safely heterosexual.

Extra Fancy--Grillo, drummer Derek O’Brien, bassist David Foster and guitarist Mike Hateley--is not a launching pad for a gay agenda, though. Says Grillo: “The music just happens to involve a gay guy, which puts a different viewpoint on our songs and sound. But as a band, I want to go up against the Chili Peppers, Rollins and the Beastie Boys and be just as respected for our music without any tag on it.”

Respect is already heading Extra Fancy’s way. The band, which will play Club Lingerie on Tuesday, hasn’t released any records, but sizable crowds (dotted with record execs) frequent its shows. Rodney Bingenheimer is playing “Self-Made’--a track from a compilation album--on his KROQ show, and the band has a song on the upcoming soundtrack for the film ‘The Doom Generation.” Pretty good for a group that’s only been at it two years.

Grillo, 32, grew up mainly in the Torrance area. He studied Afro-jaz dance and ballet and worked briefly as a nude go-go dancer in New York’s Times Square before putting on his own dance revue, “The Grillo Follies,” in L.A. in the late ‘80s. Turning to music, he sang in several local bands before forming Extra Fancy in 1992.

“I think my background as someone who’s always danced comes out in my music,” says Grillo, whose group can turn an entire club into a bump-and-grind-o-rama.

“There’s some songs that have a techno-ish base. That’s from going to gay discos and wanting to do an ode to that whole scene. But I always wanted to walk into a club and hear psychotic rock at the same time. So it’s not like we do dance music, like the kind that’s played on the radio, but you can shake and shimmy and go nuts to it.”

Ultimately, Grillo wants his music to have impact beyond an initial rush of beat and bass.

“My dream is to be what Patti Smith was to me as a kid,” he says. “She was the first woman to come into rock and get it right. She was threatening, cool and sounded better than most of the guy bands that were being shoved down your throat.

“That’s sort of what I’d like to be: one of the guys that got it right and didn’t have to do a campy song or come out in drag. I just want to go on like a man and say, ‘This is my point of view in life,’ reach a bunch of people, and eventually they’ll get over it.”

* Extra Fancy plays Tuesday at Club Lingerie, 6507 Sunset Blvd., 10:30 p.m. $5. (213) 466-8557.