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Here is a transcription of a press clipping from the Los Angeles Times (pop notes, by Mike Boehm) regarding "Won't Anybody Listen" which was originally titled "The NC-17 Movie":


NC-17: FILM TO DEPICT ROCK BAND'S STRUGGLE

Los Angeles Times

Staff Writer Mike Boehm

NC-17 is making a movie that it figures will be rated PG.

The idea, according to singer Frank Rogala, is to depict the life and times of the long-struggling band from Orange County and to use its story to illustrate the downside of the Southern California rock dream.

Filmmaker Dov Kelemer chose NC-17 as his subject after being impressed with the band when it appeared on "Rock America," a cable television show he produced. Kelemer already has shot concert footage at Club 5902 in Huntington Beach. Rogala said the goal is to make a documentary with broad enough appeal to run on cable networks or to be given theatrical release.

"This is the story of one band but we're trying to put it through the lens that there are thousands of other people going through the same experience," Rogala said. "The director is really trying to make it a mass-appeal type of thing, a cross between "Roger and Me" and "Truth or Dare."

Rogala said the film, which is being financed with the help of NC-17's fans, with involve interviews with music industry figures, including executives who have turned down the band's bids for a record contract.

"Its [about] the insanity of playing music in Southern California and thinking you're going to get anywhere [given] the odds." Rogala said, "Everyone flocks here - there's estimated to the 10,000 artists clamoring for attention, and 97% of the records that are put out [nationally] fail. Its a struggling-against-impossible-odds kind of thing. We want to show things that are the truth, not have any acting, and just let it be real."


Last but not least, here's another Los Angeles Times press clipping (Pop Beat/Mike Boehm) that talks about the "Hellhead" EP:



Los Angeles Times
NC-17
  
"Hellhead"
Rah! Rah! (cassette only)

Without benefit of any substantial record deal, the core members of NC-17 have been an admirably persistent and resourceful presence on the Orange County scene since the mid-1980's.

Formerly a synth-rock band called Exude, they have dropped their old no-strings rule and added accoustic guitars and a sizzling violin while branching out into heavier sounds.

This latest well-crafted missive from the band's back-yard studio is a six-song cassette that introduces Robert Aviles, an electric-violin wiz who also leads a Satriani-meets-Stradivarious instrumental trio called Insight.

With a voice that is scratchy and narrow, NC-17's singer, Frank Rogala, isn't going to win any awards for crooning. But the band always comes up with vehicles that work.

Find the right atmospherics and a sharp enough melodic hook for a song, and even a less-than-pure voice will do nicely. Here, NC-17 casts its hooks on songs concerned mainly with romantic and sexual obsessions.

Rogala ostensibly addresses the lingering shadow of a lost love as he sings the title track's refrain, "get the hell out of my head." But he might also be slyly sizing up a listener's chances of expunging said refrain once it has sunk in. The hook is unshakable.

"Shoot the Bull" finds him playing a lounge sleaze who comes on to emotionally vulnerable prey with lines worthy of a self-help guru. Singing in a hissing near whisper, he makes a good, snakelike villian.

Aviles, who is used with restraint elsewhere, turns a cover of "Purple Haze" into an orgy of flashy, electronically distorted bowing.

The violinist's finest contribution is the instrumental, "Anxious Echos," a tensely undulating piece that would have sounded at home on Brian Eno's 1975 progressive rock gem, "Another Green World."

A bit of everything...

NC-FLY2.GIF (1076632 bytes) (>1 meg). NC-17 has received a lot of press coverage. This is a very high resolution image of the flyer NC-17 has used for promotion, which includes quotes about the band from a number of music publications.