Between the 'Rock Life' and soft place

Whitestarr is the cubic zirconium of Los Angeles music -- imitation rock.

Oh, they can play, especially guitarist Rainbow Jeremy, he of the beach ball-sized white man's Afro. Whitestarr can strut, preen, strip, shimmy and pose too, and that's just front man Cisco Adler. But despite the swagger, you don't believe for a second that they believe what they're doing, unless you've had a lot to drink. Or think maybe "Meatballs III" was funny.

They come equipped with pedigree -- Cisco is the son of record producer and Roxy Theatre owner Lou Adler, and drummer Alex Orbison is the son of music icon Roy -- but they are so affable it's impossible to resent them because they're privileged. There are scads of trust-fund kids around L.A. who wear their ostensibly higher aspirations on their oh-so-pained brows. At least Whitestarr, as it turns the Southern-fried rock 'n' roll of decades ago into the soundtrack for every kegger party in Malibu, never goes for the tortured artist effect.

Or do they? On Saturday night, as the band gave an uncharacteristically ragged show on Adler's home stage, cameras dotted the room. Turns out the night was being filmed for a reality show called "The Rock Life," scheduled for later this year on VH1. Simple storyline: Band tries to overcome odds to make it big. That adversity includes things like getting signed and then dropped by Atlantic Records a couple years ago, struggling to get its album "Luv Machine" released, young Orbison ending up in rehab and the Hummer blowing a tire on the PCH. Sorry, just kidding about the flat.

This "Rock Life" has nothing to do with slapping together recordings in a friend's studio, saving your tip money to have 1,000 CDs pressed and then hopping into van for three months to play venues smaller than Adler's family room. This "Rock Life" has everything to do with party-or-die hedonism, the kind that comes easily to a band with four musicians and a fifth member named Tony Potato, who, in his role as "dancer," removes his shirt (thereby making the 147-pound weaklings in house feel good about their bodies) and channels Belushi to Whitestarr's riffs. In this "Rock Life," the also-shirtless front man feels obligated to invite varying degrees of groping while announcing to female admirers that he is, sigh, probably sleeping alone tonight. Ah, sadness on the tumbleweed-strewn streets of Malibu.

It's all so "Girls Gone Wild," and when the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue was in easy reach.

The show will probably be a big hit. After all, the band needs one. I just hope that at the end, Whitestarr winks.

Photo: Whitestarr rocks the Roxy (Kevin Bronson / LAT)

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Saturday night's opening act, a Malibu rapper named Shwayze who is signed to Suretone Records and is being produced by young Adler, is also a party animal. But his sense of melody, charm and flow -- solo and during a duet with Adler -- marked him as an artist to watch.

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Monday's touts: Orange County quartet the CoCo B's, whose finished album has been making the rounds in the industry, play the early set at the Silverlake Lounge as Eastern Conference Champions close out their February residencies. ... Simon Dawes closes out its residency at the Echo, and Division Day winds up its string of Monday nights at Spaceland. ... The John Butler Trio's show at the Hotel Cafe is sold out. ... Piebald plays Safari Sam's. ... And the Happy Hollows and the Movies are among the bands on the bill at the Viper Room.

P.S.: I am scheduled to be impaneled today at 11 a.m. on Jonesy's Jukebox Jury on Indie 103.1 (KDLD-FM). It's the show on which DJ Steve Jones' guests weigh in on new music he plays for them.

Comments

[The Riverboat Captain]

Tony POTATO? Amateur. Give me Bez any day of the week (hope he's on stage with the Mondays at Coachella).

[L]

I think Whitestarr is an amazing band and I know good things are coming for them. Why are you hating? HATERRRRRRRRR!

[Your MOM]

The Rock life is a stupid show and the band Whitestarr is a joke. Thats not hating, thats reality. Something the show is not.