The faces are familiar

Dark-suited doormen, bare-shouldered young women, off-duty actors tending bar -- it looked like an average Tuesday night in Hollywood, populated by the regulars. But the over-30 crowd in the upstairs club Cinespace lacked the neighborhood’s requisite after-hours attitude, that strange aura of bored disinterest occasionally spiked with exaggerated joy. Instead, the mood was relaxed, even friendly.

Then a bare-footed Dennis Quaid, wearing faded jeans and mutton chop sideburns (for a movie role, naturally), walked out with his band the Sharks, woo-hooing to the audience as if the whole scene were being played out in his backyard. Several people snapped pictures. The ladies in the front row shimmied to the beat of the band’s rocking blues. The only reminder that this was indeed taking place in Hollywood was when actor Stephen Dorff shouted out to Quaid: “You’re the man!”

The evening was all party promoter MacAfrica’s doing. For the last three years, the South African transplant (nee Marilyn Zlotnick) has specialized in booking celebrity bands around Los Angeles, first with Jeff Goldblum’s jazz combo the Mildred Snitzer Orchestra, and most recently with “Kung Fu” icon David Carradine and his band Soul Dogs. Formerly a jewelry designer -- she says she “lived in mud huts with African tribes” for months at a time gathering ideas -- MacAfrica decided to parlay her own weekly club-going into a new career in 1986. Now she maintains an e-mail database of thousands.

But celebrity publicity isn’t her aim. “I never go to the movies, so when the celebrities come in, I don’t even know who they are half the time,” she says. “I’ve only seen one movie of Dennis Quaid’s and one Jeff Goldblum movie. I just treat them like a normal person because, to me, they really are.”

Each band plays once a month or more to a faithful following of entertainment industry folks. The evenings are e-mail invite-only. There’s no cover charge, and MacAfrica likes to keep the performances low-key, meaning no publicity, no professional photographers and, generally speaking, no press.

“I have gossip columnists who call me every week,” she says. “I never say a word. So it’s really cool. And everybody gets in.”

Then again, Los Angeles club-goers don’t usually turn out in droves to see movie stars at the mike. Perhaps it’s their ubiquity that fails to lure more fans. There’s Dogstar, Keanu Reeves’ band. Jason Schwartzman plays drums in Phantom Planet. Harry Dean Stanton performs regularly at the Mint. Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton and Russell Crowe occasionally turn up in their own rock bands. And Zooey Deschanel and Samantha Shelton perform pop standards from the ‘20s, ‘30s and ‘40s as Pretty Babies.

Industry types, everyday people

At Quaid’s April 15 gig, the audience was dominated by entertainment industry folks, most of them anonymous independents rather than high-level executives. In the front row sat film composer Carlos Dospasos, a guest list member for the last three years. “I enjoy this because it’s so far from what I do,” he says. “You don’t have to put on any airs, you can just sit back and enjoy it without thinking, ‘Am I in the right crowd?’ There’s no clique.”

While Quaid was unavailable for an interview with The Times, he spoke candidly with the Edmonton (Alberta, Canada) Journal in January, explaining that he has no rock star aspirations but enjoys the attention. “It’s nice to have an audience again,” he said. “It’s like going back and doing theater.”

Indeed, during a performance of one bluesy number at his Hollywood show, Quaid, guitar in hand, left the microphone to walk into the crowd, across tables and on chairs. During a cover of Jerry Lee Lewis’ “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On,” he spotted three young women posing for a photo and leaned into the picture, still singing.

It was a much milder scene the next night at Level One, a new dinner theater just outside Beverly Hills on Wilshire Boulevard, where Jeff Goldblum and the Mildred Snitzer Orchestra performed on an elegantly draped stage area. A modest group, many of them students of Goldblum’s acting class at Playhouse West, sat at candlelit tables and sipped wine. The five-piece band, named after a Goldblum family friend, performs mostly standards, and features professional vocalists such as Elaine Miles, as well as guitarist Peter Harris, who’s played with Chuck Mangione and Bruce Hornsby. Actor Peter Weller occasionally plays trumpet.

At the Wednesday night show, Goldblum, wearing a beige corduroy jacket and athletic shoes, squirmed on his piano bench, pounding his foot and swinging his head as he played. Acting student Kryssa Mooney and her friend Louis Lesko regularly come out to see Quaid and Goldblum. “To see something beyond what you would expect, it’s exciting,” said Lesko. “It humanizes them.” Mooney added, “It’s amazingly private.”

While the performance was lively, the breaks between songs felt like a live radio talk show as Goldblum and his bandmates bantered about everything from their favorite Broadway musicals to the hygiene of ancient man. “Can you imagine those days, 2,000 years ago when they didn’t bathe?” Goldblum asked.

Later, Goldblum toured the room, casually hugging nearly everyone he spoke with. “We don’t rehearse,” he said. “It’s my chance to play with really great musicians. I don’t go out, so it’s also my chance to have a little bit of a party.”