To be born under a band’s sign

“Hey there -- what sign are you? I’m an Elvis. I bet you’re a Debby Boone.”

Singles bar conversations will never be the same -- if a new idea takes off.

It’s called popstrology, and its creator, Ian Van Tuyl, suggests that if you can read your fate in the star charts, why not the pop charts?

The concept, presented in the highly entertaining book “Popstrology,” due Nov. 1 from Bloomsbury Books, is pretty simple: We are influenced by who was the dominant pop music figure at the time of birth. Van Tuyl’s book breaks it down both by year (the chart begins in 1956, the First Year of Elvis, since the King spent more time at No. 1 on the Billboard singles chart that year than anyone else) and by artist, with an entry for each act that had a No. 1 hit between April 21, 1956 (Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel”) and Aug. 26, 1989 (Richard Marx’s “Right Here Waiting”).

“If one week the culture throws its weight behind Barry Manilow and the next week Grand Funk Railroad, how can there not be some shift in the waves that shape us?” says Van Tuyl, a 37-year-old New York-based writer.

Children of Elvis, the book says, are vulnerable to “seeing their considerable spirit sucked out of them as they bend themselves to the needs of the Establishment.” Beatles babies have a “passionate commitment to work,” but are cautioned against solo ventures as “the greatness of what you achieve in groups may outweigh the personal fulfillment you derive from what you do on your own.”

On a less hip tip, there are those born under ‘70s wimp-popsters Air Supply, with the advisement that “it’s not getting you to talk about your feelings that’s the problem. It’s getting you to stop.”

Van Tuyl himself is a Double Monkee since his birth year, 1967, was the Year of the Monkees, and the No. 1 song at the time of his birth also was by the Prefab Four: “I’m a Believer.”

The author became a believer in popstrology when, while flipping through a book chronicling the No. 1 hits of the pop era, he checked out who was on top the week he was born.

“Somehow it made sense that during the era of the Beatles, I wouldn’t be born under them, but under a made-for-TV knockoff of them,” he says. “I had the epiphany that I was a Monkee and it all made sense.”

But he realized it couldn’t be that simple. “I had this conflicting thing that my wife was also a Monkee, and yet is very different from me -- she’s a professor of sociology, very serious-minded,” he says. “So how does this work? I more reflect the influence of the Monkees, this group that’s artificial. I have no problem admitting that. But my wife is more an oppositional Monkee, pushing against the same forces of artificiality.”

The idea led to lively dinner-table conversations with friends and the concept was expanded and refined. Van Tuyl found that he could align many pop stars into constellations. His Monkees join the Archies and the Partridge Family in the constellation Artificial Ingredients; such ‘80s corporate acts as Starship and Bryan Adams populate the constellation Reaganrock.

The book also shares the popstrological signs of some celebrities, and a few are just too perfect. Britney Spears, Van Tuyl notes, was born when Olivia Newton-John was at No. 1 with “Physical,” a classic case of a good girl trying to act bad.

Then there’s this power couple: Courtney Love’s birth song is the Beach Boys’ “I Get Around.” Her tragic, late husband Kurt Cobain? The Buckinghams’ “Kind of a Drag.”

And if there are still doubters, how about this? Prince, the enigmatic artist known for his love of a certain color, was born under the sign of Sheb Wooley’s “Purple People Eater.”

Jobriath’s time may be here at last

The ‘70s artist known as Jobriath is at best remembered, if remembered at all, as a footnote to the glam years. At worst, he’s a joke, one of the most hyped but least successful boondoggles of major-label excess.

Today, though, some who cherished his music are trying to salvage the legacy of what the distance of time shows as a talented, ambitious artist who was cast aside by the music business and died of AIDS in 1983 before having a chance to salvage that legacy himself.

On one front, Morrissey has compiled an anthology of Jobriath’s music that will be released Nov. 26 on the singer’s Attack Records label, the first CD appearance of Jobriath music. And a New York documentarian is working on a film about Jobriath’s life and music

Jobriath (real name: Bruce Campbell) was signed with great fanfare to Elektra Records in the early-’70s, as such flamboyant artists as David Bowie and Elton John had become pop sensations. A 1973 debut album, “Jobriath,” was launched with great and costly flourish, including a prominent Times Square billboard of the album cover, which featured the naked upper torso of the artist, reclining against a fuchsia background.

But reviews were generally negative for the music’s combination of glam showiness and Broadway romanticism, and the album made virtually no impact. (It didn’t crack Billboard’s Top 200 Albums chart, and yielded no charted singles.) A second album, 1975’s “Creatures of the Street,” went pretty much un-promoted and unnoticed by the public -- it never charted either -- and Jobriath turned to a life as a singing waiter and still-aspiring composer before becoming ill.

More recently, though, an awareness and appreciation of Jobriath started to creep into pop consciousness. The 1998 movie “Velvet Goldmine,” fictionalizing the glam scene, included visual and musical references to Jobriath, while the stage and film musical “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” intentionally or otherwise, echoed his musical sensibilities in many places. And Jobriath’s music, heard today, stands on its own as entertaining and accomplished, a very worthy artifact of its era.

“Jobriath’s music transcends rock and goes back to theatrical styles, and maybe while it sounded a little cheesy in its day, it was just ahead of its time a little -- or a lot,” says Mark Petracca, who is directing the documentary “Jobriath: Queen of Prussia,” a play on the openly gay singer’s hometown, King of Prussia, Pa. “And his story is compelling. It’s the story of anyone who dares to dream to be a major pop-culture figure. When you dream of being an icon, the fall from grace is even harder.”