The Town Square

Being from the Valley is hard. When your hip friends speak of their homes in more trendy areas of Greater Los Angeles (i.e. anywhere but Simi Valley), you sometimes feel an inner shame, even though you live where the rent is cheaper and you don’t have to circle the block endlessly looking for a place to park the Land Rover. It takes a special courage to confess that you embrace all the Valley has to offer--to overcome one of the greatest of all possible fears: that you’ve become your parents.

So how is it that at a time when most image-conscious Valley residents will confess the location of their domicile only under the fiercest interrogation, there is a rock band--those people for whom being hip is their stock in trade--whose members are proud to say: “We’re from North Hollywood.”

In fact, Discovery Records recording artists Slush love their home base of North Hollywood so much they’ve named their debut album after the Valley community.

And in an effort to promote the album, themselves and their adopted community, the band has unveiled a Web site where net surfers can take a cyber tour of the band’s favorite North Hollywood haunts.

“North Hollywood’s got a small-town community thing to it, without the small-town limitations,” says Johnne Peters, lead singer of Slush. “It’s got real thrift stores and cheap places to eat.”

Does this mean that the Valley, long the bastard child of Los Angeles, has actually become hip?

Hmmmmm. Probably not. In fact, if you ask the members of Slush, it would be more like anti-hip. Or hip minus.

It’s hard to cop an attitude and get away with it once you’ve confessed you’re from the 818, said Peters.

And Slush harbors no grand illusions about their adopted home. Their cyber tour is subtitled “That Special Kind of Nothing,” a quality they say they admire about North Hollywood.

“It’s kinda like ‘Anywhere-ville.’ It could be a suburb of Detroit or Barstow,” said Peters. “On one block, you can have a porno shop and then a hardware store straight out of the 1950s.”

Thus unburdened of the constraints of hipness, the band found its spiritual home here, along with Reprise Records artists Grant Lee Buffalo, Geffen Records artists Sugarplastic and as-yet-unsigned acts Spanish Kitchen, Eenie Meenie and other bands.

“Like all creative communities or scenes, it’s a cheap place to live,” Peters said. “You get tons of space to be creative.”

According to Peters, the NoHo rock scene coalesced a few years back around Eagles coffeehouse, when it still had the performance space next door, which is now the Raven Playhouse.

“There was much more of a scene happening in 1994 than now,” he said. The best thing about the Eagles’ performance annex, Peters added, was it really had no great concept--it was just a room with a sound system. Bands were allowed the freedom to play whatever they wanted because no one was really listening anyway.

“It’s a sad, beautiful truth,” he said wistfully.

Is there a North Hollywood sound?

“That’s exactly what there isn’t,” Peters said. The styles of the individual bands are different, their only common denominator is where they all lived, loved, laughed and rehearsed.

*

Other members of Slush are guitarist Dean Zuckerman, bassist Jamie Lau and drummer Kevin Costigan. Peters’ brother Joey is the drummer in Grant Lee Buffalo, with whom Slush just completed its first national tour.

Slush plays melodic hard rock with a ‘90s edge. Zuckerman describes his band’s sound as “rock ‘n’ roll aphrodisiac music.” The first single from “North Hollywood,” the album, will be “Touch You (Mercury De Sade).” The album is due out March 14, but the band’s Web site opened earlier this month.

Slush’s cyber tour of North Hollywood starts at the 68 RPM Lounge, which bassist Lau admires for the classic cars that usually can be found in the parking lot. The tour then moves on to the Ragtime Cowboy Emporium, Eagles coffeehouse and a guide to inexpensive North Hollywood eateries.

The North Hollywood Chamber of Commerce is getting behind the young band. In presenting a membership plaque to the brave young artists, chamber spokeswoman Chris Chesney said, “The Chamber is happy to have young and exciting members like Slush to bring excitement to our community.”

Which doesn’t mean that Slush should be accused of mindless boosterism. In their cyber tour, the band seems distrustful of many of the recent “improvements” to the North Hollywood area. One object of scorn is the Television Academy--”It’s completely empty all the time. There’s nothing happening there.”

Also, a huge pile of earth that was created in the wake of subway construction near the corner of Cahuenga and Chandler boulevards is referred to in the cyber tour as “The Big Hill o’ Dirt . . . one of the region’s striking unnatural landmarks.”

*

The tour notes that the Red Line is scheduled to link North Hollywood with Los Angeles in the year 2002, but the band tells cyber tourists: “Don’t buy your tokens yet.”

Peters says he often rides his bike past “The Big Hill o’ Dirt” and has watched construction on a daily basis.

“It’s amazing to watch these people work,” he said. “One month, there’s a pile of dirt on one side of the street, and the next month, it’s been moved to the other side.

“It’s like kids playing with Tonka trucks.”

Now that North Hollywood has its own cyber tour, can Van Nuys be far behind? If North Hollywood has “that special kind of nothing,” maybe other previously hidden qualities of Van Nuys will finally be revealed on the Internet. Followed by Reseda and Canoga Park and then all image-conscious Valley residents will be able to walk with their heads held high.

Is it possible?

Naaah, probably not.

* Slush’s cyber tour of North Hollywood can be accessed through Discovery Records Web site, https://www.discoveryrec.com.