A Finder of Lost Musical Loves

Out on the back roads of pop music, the orderly grids of the mainstream give way to unmarked, meandering lanes. Here’s where the outcasts and the used-up and the eccentric pitch camp: the ‘50s TV actor who was a teen idol for a season or two, the guy who spends all his money reissuing ‘60s garage-rock albums, artificial bubble-gum bands, musical flavors of long-ago months.

It can be fun to get lost here, but sometimes a map comes in handy. That’s when you pull out a copy of Scram, which has been documenting the record-geek world for 10 years. The magazine celebrates that anniversary with Scramarama, a concert festival today and Saturday at the Palace Theatre in downtown Los Angeles featuring many of the artists who have graced its pages.

The lineup includes Sean Bonniwell and Ron Edgar, whose band the Music Machine had the 1966 garage-classic hit “Talk Talk,” Pittsburgh garage-rock revivalists the Cynics and the out-there cult figure Brute Force.

“In a way I’m the curator,” says Kim Cooper, 34, the magazine’s founder and self-described “editrix.” “I know when something’s Scrammy and when it’s not.... If it interests me, if it seems kind of special and bizarre and unusual and nobody else would run it, I’ll usually run it. Except no sports.”

Fanzines such as Scram were once the primary outlet for fanatics and collectors in all subcultures, beginning with science-fiction buffs in the 1930s. But with the Internet offering them an easier platform, the number of zines has dwindled, and in the pop realm Scram now represents an endangered species.

That’s fine with Cooper, who produces three issues a year out of a small hillside house north of downtown. She was more or less born into her role, growing up in Hollywood with her mom and hanging out and working at her uncle’s store--the Record Connection in West Hollywood, a storied hub for pop music obsessives. After writing for some other publications, she started Scram so she could do it her way.

“In the early ‘90s zines were everywhere, but they were really negative, there was a lot of snottiness,” she says. “I liked the idea of being a booster. If I’m gonna sit down and write about something, I want it to be something I feel really passionate about, and I want it to be something uncelebrated and neglected.”

That means anything from bubble-gum records (Feral House has just published a book by Cooper and David Smay called “Bubblegum Music Is the Naked Truth”) to Rod McKuen to Japanese surf music.

Singer-guitarist Deniz Tek, who plays on Saturday’s Scramarama bill, is a classic Scram subject. The leader of the short-lived but cult-gathering Australian band Radio Birdman, which put out its one U.S. album in 1978, he’s now an emergency room surgeon in Billings, Mont., with a low profile but an ongoing music career on the side.

“It’s people like Kim that keep things like Radio Birdman alive,” says Tek, 48, “so we can get to the point where Sub Pop Records wanted to do a compilation. That came out in July and it’s done really well for something that’s 20 years old.

“But it’s people like Kim and other fanzine writers, really it’s the only way for most people to know about it. It’s pretty obscure stuff. If it wasn’t for that, nobody would know or care about it.”

There’s obscure and then there’s obscure. Cooper is especially looking forward to Saturday’s performance by Brute Force, a singer whose real name is Stephen Friedland.

“He was a buddy of the Tokens who put out an album in 1967 on Columbia called ‘Confections of Love,”’ Cooper says.

“It’s an extraordinary, bizarre record, it’s funny, he’s got a great voice, it’s really ahead of its time and silly and weird.

“I went to New York and looked him up and said, ‘Would you think about coming out and performing?’ He started to cry, he was so moved that young people would want him to come across the country and perform.

“There are about eight people in town who are going nuts.”

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Scramarama, today and Saturday at the Palace Theatre, 630 S. Broadway, downtown L.A., 8 p.m. $17 each night, $30 for two-day pass. (213) 688-6166. Deniz Tek also plays today at the AlterKnit Lounge, Knitting Factory Hollywood, 7021 Hollywood Blvd.,8 p.m. $8. (323) 463-0204.