The Tennessean from Nashville, Tennessee • Page 13

Hi L- sate- Comics 4-C Crossword. Horoscope. 4-C TV MONDAY, Jon. 30,1984 Section ix-Mouselcefeer Annette Going lountry Consumer News Now Buyers Are Paying For Holiday Boom By SHARON JOHNSON miN.Y.TimesNeusService NEW YORK A higher-than-expected swell of Christmas buying across the nation has created a major problem for some consumers: bills they cannot pay. "Many persons seem to have gone into debt," said Gary Walker of the New York City of Consumer Affairs.

"In December, we received 10 percent more inquiries about where to 'get help with debts than we did in November." Budget and Credit Counseling Services, a non-profit organization in Manhattan that helps people in financial difficulty, said it received 50 percent more inquiries about its services in December 1983 than it did in December 1982. So did the Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Houston and the Gulf Coast Area Inc. ONE REASON consumers are said to worry is that they spent so much for the Christmas just past: $125 billion, which somev economists attribute to improvements in the economy and greater consumer confidence. Christmas sales were the strongest since 1978, with some retailers reporting 13 percent gains over 1982. Dr.

Robert W. Johnson, director of the Credit Research Center, at Purdue University, said some people spend excessively at Christmas because it is socially acceptable. "A man who wouldn't think of buying a luxury item July or September will buy his wife an expensive fur coat for Christmas because he is trying to show her he loves her," Johnson said. HE AND OTHER experts cite these reasons why people get into debt at holidaytime: Merchants make it easier to buy on credit. Some stores allow charge-card holders to defer payments until February or March or to increase the amount of debt they may incur.

Spending goes up for entertainment or other discretionary items in the budget. Some people have more money to spend during the holidays because of seasonal jobs and bonuses. Spencer Nilson, publisher of the Nilson Report, a newsletter for the credit-card industry, estimates that the average debt on a credit card increases to $1,000 from $600 because of Christmas spending. ABOUT 10 PERCENT, according to merchants and debt counselors, get into serious financial trouble. They fall behind in their Cuts Album In Nashville By SANDY NEESE When lovely Annette Funi-cello was in Nashville last week recording her first country album at Hot Licks Studio, she stayed far too busy to do any sightseeing.

"It's my first time ever in Nashville," said the former Mouseketeer and "Teen Queen" of the 1950's-60's beach movies. "I've just been from the studio to the hotel and back! That's the way it usually is when I travel." The petite black-haired beauty did see the Grand Ole Opry House when she taped a Nashville Network show one night and was as impressed as she could be when she stood on the section pf the stage that came from the old Ryman Auditorium. She was also as excited as any ordinary tourist over her luck at meeting Roy Acuff. "They opened the door to his dressing room and said he wouldn't mind if I looked around. So I looked at all the pictures on his wall, and I turned around and there he was! He introduced himself, and that was just thrilling." THE IDEA FOR Funicello's country album was spawned after the success of her recent single, The Promised Land, which she wrote as a tribute to her parents.

"It made some noise," she says. "The flip side was written by an old, dear friend of mine who wrote a lot of the beach songs for me. The record got kinda two-sided play, so here I am in Nashville." Although the single was cut in L.A., the ex-beach bunny is glad she opted to come to Music City to record the album. "The musicians here are the finest, absolutely the finest. And the sound, for some reason, is better here.

I'm not putting down L.A. people, because that's my hometown, but they the musicians really get involved here. I think that's the difference. It's more of a family kind of thing, which I'm used to because of my Walt Disney background. You know, being brought up with 'The Mickey Mouse Club' and 24 Mouseketeers, I've only known family when I worked.

That's the way I prefer to do it." Funicello, now a 41 year-old mother of three, was only 12 that she auditioned for Disney. "Now, you have to remember, Scorchers Annette Funicello Ex-Mouseketeer records first country LP here on the Disney set, for she remained under contract to Disney after "The Mickey Mouse Club" went off the air. "We were like brothers and sisters," she says of her fellow Mouseketeers. "We didn't need anybody else. We had a private tutor who took me through junior and senior high school.

Looking back now, yeah, I missed a junior prom, a senior prom, but I didn't miss those things at the time. You don't miss what you never had." Funicello's first crushes included Frankie Avalon (with whom she later starred in a series of teen-age beach movies), Paul Anka and Fabian Forte. i met Frankie first, then our thing just turned into a great friendship. Then I met Paul, and our relationship became something really special. I thought I'd like to marry him when I turned 18.

Some of his hits, like Put Your Head on My Shoulder, were kinda written for us," she confesses with a grin. "But you have to realize that I wasn't really dating at the time. My mom and dad used to take us places and pick us up. So it's not like my daughter dating. Mine was a completely different set of circumstances." BY THE TIME Funicello and Avalon were frolicking in the sand as everybody's favor1 ite adolescent couple, Avalon was married and the father of several children.

"The first beach picture was in 1963 and I got married in 1965. It was long before that that we dated. They the beach films were fun to do, and I think that's why they turned out the way they did. They weren't what you call 'message You didn't have to think; you could just enjoy." Funicello had a string of pop hits in 1959 and 1960, notably, Tall Paul, First Name Initial and Dio Mio. The Beach Boys sang backup on one of her cuts.

"They did something called The Monkey's Uncle with me. They wrote it. That was before they were really hot, and you know who my favorite guy was? The drummer, Dennis Wilson. I fell in love with him. He was darling.

I was so saddened by his death." Nowadays, Funicello's main interest is her three children. "I love to talk about my children. My daughter Gina, she's the oldest at 18, she's in college. My first son is Jack, we call him Jackie, and he'll be 14 next month. My baby, my little baby boy is nine (Turn to page C-3) Hot Party It was a celebration of rock roll, yet there was something distinctly Nashville about the night.

"They tried to force us to record in L.A. They wanted to give us a British record producer. But we refused," The Scorchers report. "We're N3sh-villians and proud of it. So we're bringing it all back home." Photo by Lorry Dixon the first major record deal for a pened to be done at a place very similar to the Hollywood Bowl.

We were putting on this huge production of 'Swan Lake' and I was the Swan Queen. Mr. Disney, unannounced, was sitting in the audience that night. Nobody even dreamed he was there! "He saw me dance, called my teacher and said, 'We'd like to see that dark-haired little girl at the studio on Monday. We'd like her to sing and dance for "So I went over there and Label-Signing With -Staff photo by Nancy Rhoda did a tap and a toe, and was called back three times.

Then he said, 'Can you I said, 'No, I'm sorry, I But he said, 'Well, try. Surely there's something you can do for us. So I sang Davy Crockett, and I was so bad." BAD OR NOT, she was chosen as the 24th and last -Mouseketeer out of the approximately 10,000 children who auditioned, and she stayed with the show for its three-year run. Most of her adolescent years were spent. of ribs and chicken.

He'd hired classic-voiced honky-tonker Ray Brand to take the crowd on a musical journey back to the roots. Boys in leather pants with one little gold earring and girls in mini skirts with bright lipstick were treated to the "real McCoy" as Brand gave them the sounds of Merle Haggard and George Jones. wails as the Scorchers celebrate I'm not from a show business family. My dad's an auto mechanic the best in the business, and my mom is a home-maker, the most beautiful person you'd ever want to meet. Both of them are.

But I had been taking dancing lessons since I was five years old, and dancing seven days a week, by my choice. 1 just couldn't get enough of it. "AT THE END of every dancing year, the dance teacher put on a recital. Ours hap Celebrate slammed into his kit, and bassist Jeff Johnson leaned over and laid into a heartbeat rhythm. Jason jolted into action like he'd been stuck by a cattle prod; and the four merry-makers began whirling all over the stage.

They flailed and twitched and made marvelous musical noise. JASON THE Nashville Scorchers emphasized the tunes on their Fertor mini-LP, recently remixed and reissued by record industry giant EMI which also added the band's modern music treatment of the Dylan oldie Absolutely Sweet Marie to the disc. That number was featured in the Scorchers set, since it is the band's first major label single and the subject of its music video that debuts on MTV this week. The crowd, as they say, went nuts. During Money Talks, the young fans threw quarters at the raving rockers.

The band is showcasing more rock treatments of country oldies than it used to. Candy Kisses, Lost Highway and Really Don't Want To Know never sounded so desperate or raucous as they did Saturday night. VISUALLY, the foursome were delightful. Jason threw himself about like a hyperkinetic kid. Baggs and Johnson bashed away with glee.

Hodges, his trademark cigarette dangling from his leering lips, was a perfectly lovable rock roll character. His long styled forelock zigged when he zagged. And his lead guitar work was rent or mortgage payments and have their utilities shut off and their cars repossessed. Young couples just starting families often find themselves in this position, according to Jean E. Bischmann, supervisor of family financial counseling of United Charities of Chicago.

"Because of high housing costs, many couples cannot afford to splurge on anything, even Christmas," she said. "If they are buying a car, they often are spending at least 20 percent of their disposable income on installment credit and if they riln up bills at Christmastime, they can get into serious financial difficulty." Those who have little or no savings and become unemployed or ill during the new year also find themselves in trouble. Typical of this group are Wayne and Kathy, a Bronx, N.Y., couple in their mid-30s who spent $1,000 on Christmas gifts for their two children in 1982 and then found themselves courting bankruptcy when Wayne lost his job in February 1983 because of a company merger. "It was a nightmare," said Kathy. "We couldn't even meet the minimum payments on the credit cards or our usual expenses because even before we went on the Christmas shopping spree, we owed about six months in salary to 14 creditors.

Fortunately, my mother bailed us out." THE HOLIDAYS also tend to intensify the problems of compulsive spenders like Joyce, a 24-year-old Manhattan secretary. She had paid off about $2,000 in department store charges from January through October 1983. During the five-week Christmas shopping period, she spent over $1,500 for presents for her fami- (Turn to page C-3) simply spectacular. They drove the crowd wild, then all piled into an old Chevy to cruise to an after-the-showcase celebration at Tootsie's Orchid Lounge, the vintage Lower Broadway bar that was a music Mecca in days of yore. There, the rockers' co-manager Eli Ball had laid out a spread i 1 Josoo, left, howls and Warner, right, Nashville new rock act By ROBERT K.

OERMANN Revellers bounced at the ExitIn like runaway pogo sticks, merrily threw money at the stage, shouted and sang along, then danced to honky-tonk tunes at Tootsie's until the wee hours. Rumpled debutantes partied "with beer-bellied rednecks; 'smartly-dressed Music Row executives slurped barbecue and beer with zany-coiffed new wave kids. Saturday night Music City eel-. ebrated the first signing of a Nashville modern rock act with a major record label. JACK EMERSON'S scrappy little Praxis Records here has achieved the seemingly impossible feat of getting national attention for Nashville's thriving new wavemodern music scene by placing Jason The Nashville Scorchers on EMIAmerica in L.A.

Three years ago, few on Music Row would have put a dime's worth of faith in either Jason or Jack. This weekend the young- sters celebrated their victory for local rock in style. Praxis Records' other talented Basic Static opened the energetic evening at 1 the ExitIn, the historic locus of modern Music City rock. The Scorchers then took 'he stage to strains of a lugubrious rearrangement of Buck Owens To aether Again at the finale of which Jason Ringenbcrg crowed a greeting to his fans. With that, guitarist Warner Hodges gave a joyous chin-high kick, drummer Perry Baggs.