Friday, February 6, 1998

'Plaid' in color for SMT

By LAURA STEWART
NEWS-JOURNAL FINE ARTS WRITER

DAYTONA BEACH — When the songs of "Forever Plaid" were on the Hit Parade, Terry Tichenor danced to them.

Oh, not like his older sister, who had her 45 rpm records neatly arranged on a storage rack. But Tichenor, 48, watched "American Bandstand" and "The Ed Sullivan Show." And he made sure when dance teachers in his hometown of Bowling Green, Ky., asked him to squire young ladies at cotillions that he had not one but two clean white handkerchiefs in his pocket.

"One was for show and the other was, you know, to put in the palm of your hand so when you danced you didn't soil their dresses with perspiration," said Tichenor, musical director of "Forever Plaid," the Seaside Music Theater show that opens today at the Ormond Beach Performing Arts Center, 399 N. U.S. 1, Ormond Beach.

"We worried about that; it was still a time of innocence, decidedly," he said.

That time was the do-wop era, when teens swooned to Elvis and his shocking rhythms, danced at sock hops, cruised their towns' main drags, usually in the family car, dreamed of being avant-garde enough for coffeehouses, beatniks, berets and poetry readings.

And they listened to songs like "Three Coins in the Fountain," "No Not Much," "Catch a Falling Star" and "Love Is a Many Splendored Thing," said Tichenor, pausing to hum the melody from "Temptation," the show's oldest tune. "Da-dada-dee . . . some of the songs were used in a number of movies in the early '30s, and the trend then was to go back and give a new sound to the old tunes -- a lot like what's going on today.

"But the rest of the tunes pretty much come from the '40s and early '50s. Maybe I shouldn't say this -- I don't want to spoil the plot -- but there's even one short tribute to the Beatles. They do `She Loves Me' -- they change it a little bit."

Of course, they -- Forever Plaid, the pop group that sings in tight four-part harmony -- have total freedom in the musical, which is their comeback show. That's not because the group -- actors Matt Clemens, Brian Bowman, Greg Mills and Christopher Briggs as Sparky, Smudge, Jinx and Frankie -- is back on the road years later, a la The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac or whoever, but because of their pseudo-tragic story.

The imaginary pop group met in high school, in the audio-visual club. They jammed in the basement of Smudge's family plumbing-supply business, and tried to sound like their idols -- The Crew Cuts, The Four Aces, The Four Lads. They were the good guys, who wore madras-plaid jackets and, always, carried two clean white handkerchiefs. On the way, finally, to pick up their brand-new plaid jackets and play their first big gig, Forever Plaid went to the big Bandstand in the sky instead; their car was broadsided by a bus of Catholic school girls on their way to watch The Beatles on Ed Sullivan.

Oh, teen angels, returned to earth for that one last dance, in a sort of karmic justice, Forever Plaid shows up at the Ormond arts center where -- as if by magic -- a piano player is waiting at the keyboards with just the combo the guys need to complete their destiny and go on to find peace, Tichenor said, chuckling.

"It's great fun. I'm just at the piano, as I was trained to be. We're just part of the set to them, and I'm the piano player, the one who `came with the room,' as someone in Forever Plaid says," he said.

"It was an interesting project to do research on, to go back and listen to all-male singing groups. It turns out that there was even one at my university, Bowling Green: The Hilltoppers. They had several tunes we listened to, and I remember people talking about them -- it was such an innocent time.

"And it had such terrific music," said Tichenor. "The show is also a piece of theater in that it's really a crowd pleaser. It puts a smile on your face, a hum in your throat and -- you know, it really does -- a tap in your feet." "Forever Plaid" will be presented by Seaside Music Theater at 8 p.m. today and Saturday plus Feb. 10-14, and 17-21, also at 2 p.m. Sunday and Feb. 15 and 22 at Ormond Beach Performing Arts Center, 399 N. U.S. 1, Ormond Beach. Tickets are $1 8/2 0, $12 for college students with valid I.D., $10 for children younger than 18. Discounts available for groups larger than 20. For more information, call (904) 252-6200.