Florida Today from Cocoa, Florida • Page 73

IN CONCERT SEAFOOD BUFFET 0 Every Friday Night PJVL Stuffed Crabs Seafood Stir Fry Broiled Grouper Blackened Sea Trout Wild Rice Sumptuous Dessert Table Pasta 'N Potato New England Clam Chowder Fried Scallops Snow Crab Legs Peel Eat Shrimps Assorted Salads Chefs Fresh Baked Bread Station 11 Children $6.95 'T jim I i 1 i i 'J 4 1 J- If-- 1 1. RAMADA OCEANFRONT RESORT 1035 A1A Reservations 777-7200 SATELLITE BEACH Ext. 1 1 5 or 1 1 7 Tffi iX TO 11 ON THE BEACH SATURDAY WITHpS William Hames, Records LIVE MUSIC 2-6 PM $2.00 Bahama Mamas Extreme's first Top 10 single, 'More than has gone gold, selling more than 500,000 copies. Extreme rides Funk-O-Metal machine 4 BANDS $5.00 ALL AGES! 728-4311 cHomi of ilii Hadama citama re lMm things and you can be 50 and still go through some of these things." The record chronicles Francis' struggles with issues such as money, power, love and sex, but it is not a concept record per se. Each track can stand on its own without losing any of the whole album's meaning.

That was intended, albeit by accident, according to singer Gary Cherone. "We were putting these songs together and I realized that all I had to do was put this in chronological order and I could make sense out of it," Cherone said. Cherone said that the story of Francis is an open-ended one. "Obviously, there's either a happy ending or a sad ending, and in Francis' case, it's a continuation nothing ever stops," he said. "He doesn't complete anything." Even though the record's subtitle is "A Funked-Up Fairy Tale," it is pretty true to life, Bettencourt says.

"It's a fantasy in the sense where it's a fictional character, but I think it's got a bit of everybody in the band in that character." Long before "Pornograffitti" started making a dent on the charts, guitar magazines were applauding Bettencourt's playing. He's an innovative and talented guitarist, but all of his fireworks play second fiddle to the most important part of a track the groove. "The song does not survive on a solo it survives on where it starts," he said, "which (is) usually a groove of the song and the drummer. That is the most important thing, because if you can lock people into a groove, you know you have it all." Bettencourt is also a pianist, and said he goes to the piano "to express misery and depression." "Whenever I feel that way, I don't want to pick up a guitar," he said. "I'd just rather sit down on i 'i 1 b.n piano and just be very mellow.

There are a lot of times I feel like that, for whatever reasons, and that's usually what calls me more than anything." Cherone writes Extreme's lyrics, and he loves to play with words. Sexual puns, double entendre and all sorts of lines that can be read several ways if you pay attention are sprinkled liberally throughout the record. He calls the king of "shock rock" a major influence on his writing. "Alice Cooper inspired me (as to) how you can say as many things as you want with different words," Cherone said. 'There's a lot of people who don't use their imagination and are more vulgar." Bettencourt and Cherone, along with bassist Pat Badger and drummer Paul Geary, are adamant about keeping their live performances and their records separate and independent from each other.

"We tkh a record for people because we know people are going to be sitting in their living room and listening to it," Bettencourt said. "When we play live, we don't think about the studio we do with what we have and everything that we don't have, we replace it with our i performance." The guitarist has a good-natured warning for all those planning to catch the band on tour opening for David Lee Roth. "If we're opening and people are there to see the headlining act, whether they're gonna like us or hate us, we're gonna get their attention that's what I'm definitely positive of," he said. "They're gonna remember the band one way or another." Extreme opens tor Cinderella and David Lee Roth at 8 tonight at the Orlando Arena, 200 W. Amelia i St, Orlando.

Tickets are $18.50. Call i i FRIDAY June Ml By Kira L. Billik Associated Press Guitarist Nuno Bettencourt of Extreme designates "Get the Funk Out," a track from the band's second album, "Extreme II: Pornograffitti," as the Boston quartet's "theme song." And for good reason. Its chorus goes, "If you don't like what you see here, get the funk out." It is a comment to their audience, Bettencourt said, to keep an open mind when it comes to Extreme's irresistible blend of blazing guitars and soaring four-part harmonies mixed with everything from horns to piano to rap. But it is not the band's theme song that is sitting pretty in the upper echelons of Billboard's Top 10.

Instead, it is the sweet, pure acoustic ballad "More Than Words," whose message is that the words "I love you" are becoming meaningless. "People just think you go out and you're supposed to fall in love and a lot of the time, it isn't real," said Bettencourt in a telephone interview. "People use it so easily and so lightly that they think you can say that and fix everything, or you can say that and everything's OK. "Sometimes you have to do more and you have to show it there's other ways to say, 'I love he said. Both "Get the Funk Out" and "More Than Words" fit into the record's loose concept "Pornograffitti" as a whole is about the life and times of a boy named Francis, who grows up in a violent, pornographic society.

Francis appears on the album cover as a child, but, as Bettencourt said, he's "got this five o'clock shadow happening. "We wanted him to be ageless," Bettencourt said, "because you can be 13, 14 years old and experience Ka 4 -J 4 mi Br If i TGIFPagel VI LI'.