The Tennessean from Nashville, Tennessee • Page 29

Wedndy, Auiust 23 1995 9 ftp THIS DAY IN MUSIC auouit at 3 1 993 Country music singer Alan Jackson and his wife Denise have a child, Alexandra Jane Jackson, the couple's second girl. Barney, Baby Bop and BJ will appear in five sing-along performances at the Grand Ole Opry to benefit Vanderbilt University Medical Center's children's hospital. The shows are 10 a.m. and noon on Sept. 1 6 and 1 3 and 5 p.m.

on Sept. 1 7. A limited number of tickets ($5) were still available at press time. Call Ticketpro at 291 -5000 or 1-800-834-5678. Barney Alan Jackson I aMaaaigaiiiiirWi m'iii ixaf in rBrariinMinrfffirssiaa THE TENNE8SEAN ss kids eimis snrrsnfo YOU OUGHTA KNOW SINGER ALANIS MORISSETTE BY Ml KM HUGHES Gannett News Sen ice For a while, Kirk Cameron's life seemed rather easy.

He had just finished Growing Pains, the kind of show that makes parents grin and makes actors rich. His Q-score a popularity measurement was sky-high. Also, he had just married a willowy beauty, Chelsea Noble. Now he would create a new comedy series gradually. "The wait was mostly on purpose," Cameron says.

"I really wanted to make sure that coming back, it would be a great show." Still, there's a limit "I had no idea it would take so long," he says. At 7:30 tonight, Kirk premieres on the WB network, including cable giant WGN. The show, which moves to Sundays on Sept. 10, is the first arrival of the season. It's also a key step in the network's makeover.

Still, it arrives the hard way, four years after Pains ended. After slowing down for two years, Cameron planned a pilot film for ABC. He hooked up with Bill Bickley and Michael Warren, a team (based at Warner Brothers) that does most of the gentle TGIF shows, Fridays on ABC. And then? "I was surprised when ABC didn't take it," Cameron says. "They changed their minds about what they wanted." Advertisers were telling networks one thing: Even with high ratings, kid-centered shows aren't valuable.

In the old days, families would watch them together; now, kids see them alone. With the exception of a few nights, the networks were't looking for comedies. "That's the direction that Michael and I have been going, pretty much all of our 25-year I i I I Z' I it I ur 0 "it i 7' i imr m. Kirk, starring Kirk Cameron, premieres tonight at 7:30 on cable's WGN. BY ANN! AYERS Gannett News Service Standing out from the pack isn't easy in pop music, where every trend produces a rash of copycats and a rush of fans.

But Alanis Morissette leads the girl gang crowding the charts and airwaves. Her aggressively self-expressive Jagged Little PiR is going up easy on Billboard's top-selling album chart: In just seven weeks, it has soared from No. 117 to No. 7. Its first hit, You Oughta Know, is omnipresent on radio and MTV, and her club dates are selling out weeks in advance.

She plays Nashville's 328 Performance Hall tonight. "Once you get the momentum going, it's hard to stop," she says. "We could be on the road for the next year," hitting Europe this fall, returning to the States "possibly before Christmas" and on to Australia in January. "I was asked to take Sinead's i (O'Connor) spot on Lollapalooza, but turned it down to do this." Take that, Courtney Love, Liz Phair, PJ Harvey. Move over, Melissa I Etheridge.

Morissette, just 21, is more accessible and mature than the first three, hipper and hotter than mass-rock Melissa. The fury and expletives (deleted for radio and video) of You Oughta Know are S.O.P. in the trendy alter- native-music pack. "I've had difficul-l ties with radio DJs," she acknowledges, "who seem to focus on the sexual innuendo." What sets her apart: her unique voice and the uncommon honesty of her admittedly autobiographical songs. At turns sarcastic, sympathet- ic, ironic and wise, she rings real.

That's the opposite of what she left behind in her native Canada. Having written songs since age 9, she became a professional songwriter; in the early '90s she made two dance-, music albums, winning a Juno (Canada's Grammy) as most promising female artist. But she felt like a pop-factory fake. "I didn't fight because I didn't know differently," she says. "I thought I was learning the way to operate in this business.

It was a major-label corporate environment, careers," Bickley says. The solution had a bit of corporate synergy: Warner Brothers likes making light comedies; it also owns WB, which was directionless. So WB made an instant shift. This fall, all eight WB shows will be comedies, half aimed squarely at families. "It's very compatible with a lot of things that Warner Brothers does," says network chief Jamie Kellner.

Kirk has a quick way of eliminating the grownups: Both parents were killed in a car accident, years ago. Just as our hero gets to New York, his aunt hands him the three younger siblings. "He loves to go out and have fun," Cameron says. "The world is in front of him Then all these responsibilities plop right in front of him." A similar plot was used by two series last year, one returning. "I'm not familiar with Party of Five," Bickley claimed.

If you believe that, then you'll buy Cameron's view that this is "a very hip, cool show." It isn't, but it is pleasant. Here are likable, attractive people. They're led by Cameron and by Noble, who plays the unattainable med student next door. Those nice people get some OK lines. Only Taylor Fry, as an acerbic 13-year-old, gets more.

Kirk is sweet and sometimes amusing. TV used to be like that Alanis Morissette's newest CD Jagged Little Pillte on Madonna's label, Maverick. Cettinn tf-i Alanis Morissette performs at 8 p.m. today at 328 Performance Hall, 328 Fourth Ave. S.

Tickets are $10 at the door. For more information call 259-3288. was also ready for a change. "We both really started with a clean slate," she says. "We arranged and wrote and recorded it all at once," mostly on the first take.

After shopping her songs to six labels where she "wasn't connecting with people," Morissette found a match that accommodated her vow not to censor herself: Maverick, run by Madonna, for whom doing the same has been both asset and liability. "The label with artist as CEO is ideal for me," says Morissette. "They're very artist-driven." Savvy enough to catch the music-industry wave, Morissette is also determined to control her own ride: "The whole coming of alternative (music) whatever the heck that means to me it means you can write what you want to write." with non-artistic people giving their opinion on how I should be." So she moved to Los Angeles a year and a half ago. "There was a potency I wanted to tap into. The city was built around art to begin with, and I sought a small dreg of that." When she made Pill, "I wasn't signed, and we weren't worried about who we were writing it for or whether it was gonna make it." Producer Glen Ballard, a pop vet known for slick hits by stars like Michael Jackson and Paula Abdul, i ft -i i i Ii j.

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