Musical keeps on lovin’ ‘80s

Get out your lighters. It’s power ballad time!

A rock musical in development is drawing interest from Las Vegas and New York theater producers with its recipe of all power ballads, all the time.

“Rock of Ages,” set in the ‘80s, is the tale of a girl from Indiana and her journey to the Sunset Strip to work at a rock club. It’s a tale of love in the time of Reaganomics, built around hits by such era favorites as Journey, Bon Jovi, Foreigner, REO Speedwagon and Night Ranger.

The show will be presented in truncated form this week and in early August for an invited audience of Vegas and Broadway producers, national concert promoters and other potential backers, performed by a cast headed for Laura Bell Bundy (one of the leads in the Broadway production of “Hairspray”) and Tenacious D’s Kyle Gass.

The team behind the show sees “Rock of Ages” in the vein of the Queen-based musical “We Will Rock You” and the ABBA revue “Mamma Mia!,” both of which have been solid hits in Vegas.

“After ‘Mamma Mia!’ and things like the Pussycat Dolls burlesque show, a lot of people are looking for something like this,” says Brian Loucks of the powerful Creative Artists Agency, which is representing the show. “It’s a new theatrical entertainment genre, and this has a lot that’s original to it.”

The show was written by Chris D’Arienzo (writer and director of the feature film “Barry Munday,” which opens later this year), directed by Kristen Hanggi (who wrote and directed the musical “bare”) and produced by Matthew Weaver, Carl Levin and Marcos Siega of Prospect Pictures. Janet Billig Rich, former manager of Courtney Love and her band Hole, is executive producer.

“Catalog musicals are everywhere, some work and some don’t,” says Weaver, whose company is also behind the ‘80s-rooted movie musical “Time After Time,” which was recently sold to Universal Pictures. “But with this one, every song is a greatest hit. Some are funny, some are emotional. When the cast is singing ‘Don’t Stop Believing’ by Journey at the end, it’s great. It’s not a one-note joke about Rubik’s Cubes and parachute pants.”

In addition to Vegas and Broadway potential, Loucks sees a touring version that could be staged in rock venues as another possibility. But Vegas-watcher Rick Garman says this concept could be well-suited to Sin City’s current aesthetic.

“It’s a natural fit,” says Garman, who operates the Vegas4Visitors website and is author of “Moon Handbooks Las Vegas,” which will be published later this year.

“ ‘Mamma Mia!’ is perfect for Las Vegas, light and bubbly and immediately recognizable music. This one has that going too,” he says. “The demographic may be a little off. The two audiences [most courted in Vegas] are primarily people over 55 and people in their 20s. But ‘We Will Rock You’ is going great across demographics.”

Garman notes that there is much talk that with recent mergers of casino ownership and the building of new facilities, there is a very active market for such shows, especially with such established musical theater entities as “Hairspray,” “Phantom of the Opera,” “Avenue Q” and, rumor has it, “Monty Python’s Spamalot” all headed to town. And, of course, the pop audience is also drawn by the ongoing concert residencies of Celine Dion and Elton John.

“A lot of buyers in the marketplace are saying they want something new,” says Loucks. “We hope this is what they’re looking for.”

*

Why a heartland scene is ticking

Los ANGELES ... New York ... Omaha ...

OK, the Nebraska burg will never displace the coastal metropolises as music capitals, but in recent years it has become a mecca of independent rock, coalescing around the vibrant Saddle Creek Records label community and such stars as Bright Eyes and the Faint.

How’d that happen? The story is about to be told in a new documentary, “Spend an Evening With Saddle Creek.”

The film was made over the last couple of years by Saddle Creek label manager Jason Kulbel and Omaha photographer Rob Walters, telling the story via interviews with all the key figures and music clips from the bands, a roster that also includes Azure Ray, Cursive and Rilo Kiley. It traces the tale from the first release, a 100-copy run of a cassette by 13-year-old Conor Oberst, who, as Bright Eyes, now stands as the label’s biggest star.

“It definitely gets the point across that this is a small group of people from a town in the middle of nowhere, so to speak,” says Kulbel. “It’s not necessarily ‘This is how we did it’ or ‘This is how we did the first tour.’ But it’s a lot of ‘We are a small band from here, started playing basements and slowly branched out and next thing you know we’re a national presence’ -- over the course of 10 years.”

The 90-minute film will be released as a DVD by Plexi Films, the same company that put out the acclaimed 2002 Wilco documentary, “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart.” A 70-minute “extras” section will feature some complete song performances that are excerpted in the film proper. Hopes are for some festival and theater screenings as well.

“It is really about how it happened here, why it happened here as opposed to everyone leaving Omaha and doing something else,” Kulbel says.

Small faces

* Ashlee Simpson’s manager-dad Joe Simpson previewed four songs from the singer’s next album on a New York radio station recently. One is titled “Didn’t Steal Your Boyfriend.” The album is scheduled for an October release ...

* Filmmaker Steven Soderbergh (“Out of Sight,” “Ocean’s Eleven”) has hired former Guided by Voices leader Robert Pollard to do music for his upcoming indie film “Bubble” -- set in a doll factory and using real workers of the factory as actors. Soderbergh is a big Guided by Voices fan and has written the forward to a forthcoming book about the band. He’s known for tabbing non-Hollywood composers to do scores, including Irish electronica figure David Holmes and former Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Cliff Martinez....

* The Goo Goo Dolls are working with producer Glen Ballard (Alanis Morissette, Dave Matthews) on the Buffalo band’s first studio album since 2002. Plans are for a late 2005 release....

* In a break between dates with the reunited Pixies, drummer David Lovering, along with former Possum Dixon leader Rob Zabrecky and a figure known as Fitzgerald, are doing a show in their prestidigitational guise as the Unholy Three. The magicians, who have been working Friday nights at the Magic Castle for the last three years, will venture out from that exclusive locale for an Aug. 11 show at the Center for Inquiry-West’s Steve Allen Theatre in Hollywood to mark the release of their performance DVD.