Disco Fever on the Rise at Area Clubs

Stargate in Thousand Oaks tonight will be packed to its well-lit rafters as droves of dancing disco dollies, along with scores of their ever-hopeful male admirers, sweat to the oldies. The music will be provided by Disco Inferno, who somehow tripped over a Village People lunch box and tumbled out of a polyester time warp. The beat goes on in Santa Barbara tonight with Grooveline at the Backstage. It all happens again Saturday at the Metro Nite Club in Ventura with the Polyester Pimps.

Under the Perfect World Entertainment umbrella (doubtlessly black plastic), there now are seven such bands and each of them plays a lot. In the late ‘80s, they were a single band from the San Fernando Valley called Roxanne. Things weren’t really working out until, as a joke, they donned some silly clothes and became the Boogie Knights. Since then, their success has spawned the Polyester Pimps, Grooveline, Disco Inferno, the Afro-Disiacs, Bootie Quake and, the newest one, La Freak.

Somewhere the Bee Gees, the Village People and Donna Summer are smiling, but none wider than Boogie bigwig Jamie Brown, who was lead singer in the original band and now runs the enterprise. The original Boogie Knights are still together (with a different singer) and playing in Las Vegas. Brown now sings only when he wants to.

“I’m chained to my phone these days,” said Brown during a recent phone interview from his home in Valencia.

“The musicians are all interchangeable. We know 55 or 60 songs, but we can’t play all those in one night. I get musicians when they come up to me at a gig or from friends of friends. Right now, I’m looking for a drummer. It always seems to be drummers and bass players.”

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Thus, a different band doing the same set at a different place seemingly every night of the week has booties shaking from sea to quaking sea--from as far south as San Diego to as far north as Seattle and as far east as Chicago, and there’s even talk of doing gigs on Broadway in New York. Brown, on the verge of becoming a tycoon, isn’t squawking.

“People always ask me, ‘How long will it last? When’s it gonna end?’ Well, right now, I’m probably doing six times the business I was doing a year ago. We play in places like Las Vegas and Hollywood where there are a lot of tourists, and we end up making a lot of contacts, and it just keeps growing. During the recent KROQ Acoustic Christmas Concert, the Boogie Knights were surprise guests, and I hear they stole the show.”

If the used-record bin is the final resting place of Steppenwolf albums, then the thrift store is the end of the line for polyester, a mainstay of the Boogie Knights. When they play, they dress to impress: platform shoes, scary bell bottoms, ugly shirts, gold chains, stick-on hairy chests and Afro wigs.

“Before our first gig, we went to Pic ‘N’ Save in Victorville and bought Elvis jumpsuit Halloween costumes for four bucks each,” said Brown. “They were so big, even the fat Elvis could’ve fit into them. Now, we get a lot of our stuff at this place in North Hollywood called Junk for Joy. They have the real ‘70s stuff, brand-new stuff, that’s been stored in a warehouse somewhere.”

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And what better place to show off your polyester collection than the Stargate, with a light show that owners claim cost half-a-million bucks? There’s more special-effects technology at work here than the entire first 78 episodes of “Star Trek.” The alien craft in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” is only slightly more elaborate.

Add to that real rock ‘n’ roll smoke, and you start looking around for John Travolta--the disco dude, not the reborn psycho killer--though it would be hard to locate him in the crowd.

The sensory overload is orchestrated at a massive sound booth. The controls are worthy of an F-16. The tiny dance floor gets packed pretty quickly as the DJs serve up generic disco dance music, heavy on the beat, heavier on the volume and light on the meaningful lyrics.

The next thing one notices is the fact that there must be peroxide in the water of the Conejo Valley. These are the people who show up at the gym just to show off, because they’re already perfect. And they are packed in like so many blond sardines--here to see the band that hasn’t arrived yet.

“They’re really fun,” says one particular blond. “They dress up. They’re just fun.”

The dance floor gets more packed, and those who have alcohol whispering in their ear to “act stupid now,” begin to obey.

At last Disco Inferno appears in the flesh, mindless entertainment at its loudest and most blank--four skinny guys in scary pants, providing a home for all the hideous shirts moms inflicted on their kids during a long, tasteless decade.

At a Disco Inferno show, you can count on tight musicianship and on hearing “I Will Survive,” “Play That Funky Music,” “YMCA,” “We Are Family” and the like. By the third song, the dance floor is totally packed, and the watchers are twitching in the aisles. There are no disco haters here.

“I dunno what it is,” said Brown. “I think people just like to dance, and we provide a good beat to dance to with a sense of humor. Even if you can’t dance, you can dance to the Boogie Knights. Everyone--all ages--comes to see us, even people with fake IDs that shouldn’t be there. I dunno, I’m just the boss.”

Dave Hewitt, entertainment manager at Stargate, knows a good thing when he sees it. While managing the now defunct Pelican’s Retreat in Calabasas, he gave Thursday nights to the Boogie Knights.

“Five years ago, I gave them their first regular gig. That place used to hold 400 people, and we’d pack 800 or 900 in there.”

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At the Metro Nite Club in Ventura, where they have been performing for the last few years, it’s much the same scenario Saturday night, except with fewer blonds. But they do have a pair of go-go dancers in cages on stage.

With the exception of the Metro Bay, all this disco thrives on nights other than Friday and Saturday--nights that have historically made owners go gray or go broke.

“That’s the cool thing about all this,” said Brown. “Most clubs don’t need help on Friday and Saturday nights. But we know we’ll do fine on whatever night. Disco is the answer.”

What was the question again? Oh yeah, so just how far will these retro revivals carry us? Rockabilly from the ‘50s has a limited appeal, because you can find only a limited number of guys who want to comb their ducktails and worry about their blue suede shoes.

What about a ‘60s retro scheme? Actually we had that, it was any Grateful Dead concert. But without Jerry Garcia, the Dead died, though there are plenty of Deadhead-friendly replacements. Can a punk revival be far down the road? In 20 years, will there be punks with Mohawks in wheelchairs lip-syncing Fear songs? Scary.

“Yeah, disco sucked. A lot of people hated it, but a lot of people liked it, too. And now a lot of people still like it, and a lot of people still hate it,” said Brown. “If anything, the ‘90s suck.”

DETAILS

All of these bands start about 10 p.m. and will cost you about $5, less if you’re earlier.

* TONIGHT: Disco Inferno at Stargate, 130 W. Hillcrest Drive, Thousand Oaks, 496-3755; Grooveline at Backstage, 18 E. Ortega St., Santa Barbara, 730-7383.

* SATURDAY: Bootie Quake at Metro Nite Club, 317 E. Main St., Ventura, 653-2582.