Three Albums Look to Win, Place or Show

The record industry’s Wednesday morning race to the fax machines for the latest SoundScan sales figures will be especially intense this week: Will Lauryn Hill’s “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill,” which has sold almost 700,000 copies in the last two weeks, hold on to the No. 1 spot for the third straight week? Or will “Back to Titanic,” the sequel to last year’s blockbuster soundtrack, take over? And, perhaps most intriguing of all: Does the rock world still love Courtney? “Live Through This,” Courtney Love’s last album with her band Hole, was voted the best collection of 1994 by the nation’s pop critics and it sold an estimated 1.3 million copies. All that would suggest there is a big audience waiting for “Celebrity Skin,” which was released Tuesday. But many in the industry are wondering whether Love’s image change--from former queen of the grunge-rock scene to glamorous Hollywood actress--will alienate her old fans. The tone of Hole’s music, too, has shifted from the rawness of “Live Through This” to more of a polished power-pop feel. The collection, which won rave reviews from Rolling Stone and Spin, isn’t likely to challenge Hill or “Titanic” for the No. 1 spot this week. “Live Through This” entered the SoundScan chart at No. 55, but touring and strong word of mouth kept it on the charts for nearly 70 weeks. Bill Bennett, president of Geffen Records, is delighted with the early radio response to “Celebrity Skin” and is confident of the album’s eventual chart impact. “Hole had more airplay the first week than the entire last album ever received on rock and hard-rock radio,” he said. “But we’ve never concerned ourselves with initial chart position with this record. . . . It’s all about long term and we feel so strongly about the appeal of the music in this album.”

A New Slot Comes With Timely Material

What delicious timing for KABC-AM (790) and Dennis Prager. With the Starr Report now ripened for full-dress talk-radio treatment, Prager, a “centrist” who says he talks about “all of life, utilizing common sense and a strong value system,” can now present his own special spin on what should happen next in the key 9 a.m.-noon slot. “Historically, it has been a spot of particular importance” to the station, notes Prager, who begins his morning gig on Tuesday. “In some ways, it sets the tone” for the day, he notes. It is, of course, the slot held by Michael Jackson for 30 1/2 years until he was replaced in 1997 by KGO-AM San Francisco host Ronn Owens, who himself was removed in August after failing to make headway against Rush Limbaugh on KFI-AM (640). Actually, Prager--author, lecturer and 16-year KABC veteran--began talking about his new idea for President Clinton in the last 15 minutes of his noon-3 p.m. show Friday, a spot he’s held since 1993. On Aug. 18, the day after Clinton testified before Starr’s grand jury, Prager said the president should resign. Now he’s suggesting that Clinton “ask the American people to have a plebiscite on whether he should continue in office.” If the people say yes, then he needn’t resign. “If he cannot be trusted, he cannot govern--and if he can be trusted, people have to stop with the issue. I’m interested in what’s good for America--not what’s bad for Clinton.” Limbaugh wouldn’t say that.

--Compiled by Times staff writers and contributors