PROFILE : VALLEY WEEKEND : DJ Faces Frenzy of Musicians Anxious for ‘Local Spotlight’ : Mimi Chen of KSCA-FM sorts through the good, the bad, the inaudible to find bands.

When DJ Mimi Chen arrives at KSCA-FM (101.9) for work, the typical messages are waiting on her answering machine.

”. . . We love the airplay. . . .”

”. . . It was critiqued in Music Connection, if you can take a look. . . .”

Professional, but desperate, voices. Each call tries to draw attention to one cassette, digital audiotape or CD among the dozens that arrive every week. They all are trying to get on “Local Spotlight,” the 11 p.m. feature in which Chen plays one song by a local band with no record contract.

Chen brought the idea from KRQR-FM in San Francisco, where she worked before joining KSCA last year. She suggested a weekly spot, but program director Mike Morrison made it nightly. Settling in for her 7-to-midnight shift one Wednesday night, Chen says that she simply expected to throw a CD in the player every night, and that would be the end of it. “But the musicians in the area have greeted it with a frenzy I don’t understand.”

The idea isn’t new to Los Angeles. KLOS-FM (95.5) has done its “Local Licks” feature--a half-hour every Sunday night at 11:30 p.m.--since 1980. The idea is popular there too: The spot is booked through February. KROQ-FM (106.7) started “Music From Your Own Back Yard” last summer. The half-hour show on Wednesdays at midnight features songs by seven local bands, at least three of them unsigned.

KSCA’s submissions are running about three a day right now, but surge significantly when the station is soliciting tapes. Space in the KSCA office near Burbank is limited, so Chen sorts through them at home. At one point, eight boxes of tapes and CDs dominated her living room.

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Once a week, Chen goes into her own frenzy, listening to one demo after another until she finds five worth playing. Sometimes she wades through 10 tapes, sometimes 50.

KSCA’s AAA format--radio lingo for adult-album-alternative--is accommodating, and Chen has played jazz, grunge, funk and world music. But not everything fits. “I’ll get these tapes from bands who want to stay in the ‘80s. Those hair bands, corporate rock,” she says. “C’mon guys, it’s the ‘90s.”

It’s tough being a harbinger of hipness. Besides listening to countless demos, she also has to deal with some bands who feel entitled to a personal critique. The normally congenial Chen can turn brutal, offering tips like, “Maybe you should go back and re-record the vocals, because they’re all off key.”

“I usually also tell people to take whatever I have to say and then throw it out the window, because I’m only one person,” Chen says.

As a singer-songwriter herself, Chen empathizes with their struggle. But she figures coddling doesn’t help anyone. She knows whereof she speaks. She studied piano and violin at Julliard and studied voice with the woman who coached Barbra Streisand.

In the studio that night, Chen had to pick from four songs recently recorded by Experience Leland. She’d selected the band based on an older digital audiotape, when the group was called Electric Lash, but wanted to play something from the new CD.

Heidi Rodewald, singer and bassist for Experience Leland, says the timing--with the name change and new CD--was ideal for the Burbank-based quartet. “Getting played on that was like playing 10 [live] shows, in terms of the people who could hear us,” Rodewald says.

Janet Robin, a North Hollywood singer and guitarist, says that the radio exposure is helping Los Angeles’ fledgling pop-acoustic scene. And people are tuning in, as she found out after her song “I Found It” was played Aug. 2.

“David Geffen didn’t call me, but I did get a lot of calls. It solidifies some kind of professionalism in people’s mind,” Robin says. “It’s hard to attract [music] business people. But you never know who’s listening.”

An RCA executive was apparently listening the night that Chen played a song by Jeremy Toback last summer. Now Toback is poised to sign with RCA and cut an album early next year.

The 29-year-old singer-songwriter had heard his music on college radio stations, but the play he got on KSCA and KROQ brought people to his shows. And emotionally, he says, it reaffirmed his faith in his songwriting. No such radio support existed when he started playing in Los Angeles seven years ago, Toback says.

“The audience in Los Angeles is pretty jaded because so many people are in the industry,” he says. “But it’s nice to see radio stations interested at a level that isn’t necessarily industry-based.”

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Chen doubts airplay on “Local Spotlight” will break a band out of total obscurity. But the station is doing what it can, including sponsoring a local music showcase at the Alligator Lounge in Santa Monica starting Jan. 6. Chen says she’s happy to bring fans’ attention to good local acts--emphasis on good.

Two things will rule out a musician right away: bad recording (“It just sounds crummy”) and not writing your own songs (“Covers are a cop-out”). Good lyrics are a plus, but no guarantee. A three-song demo is preferable. And what Glendale-based group Blue By Nature did was a big faux pas: “Great band. Great package,” Chen says. “No phone number.”

Bribes aren’t necessary. Chen’s gotten T-shirts, cookies, flowers and even Huggies for her 8-month-old daughter, Alia, who spends evenings in the studio with Mom. The gifts don’t sway her opinion. “I used the diapers,” she confesses, “but I didn’t like the tape.”