MARY McCANN, who booked from puff-metal station KUPD-FM after her employer couldn't come up with a suitable contract, is set to roll now with Mrs. Jumbo Inc., her locally based music agency. Ironically, one of McCann's first projects was to book LIME GREEN as the opening act for the PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS a week ago at Chuy's, a show that KUPD helped promote.

SOOTHSAYER, the band that's done some high-profile head-pounding on the local thud-metal scene lately, may soon be moshing on a major label. A highly placed guy in the label's promotion department, who asked that his name not be revealed, checked out and grooved to an old demo tape by the band last summer by way of FLOTSAM AND JETSAM manager ERIC BRAVERMAN.

The label bigwig is now waiting with bated breath for a new Soothsayer demo, which the band is in the process of recording, singer STEVE PARSONS reports.

Unattractive new-age artists should take note that sex appeal is on the up and up in the land of whoosh in 1989. Jiggle legend and ex-Hee Haw stalwart BARBI "Doll" BENTON has just released her first wind-chimey LP, the no-holds-barred Kinetic Voyage. Loopiness, always a strong point for the onetime Playboy Bunny, shows up in spades here. She's hired three percussionists who ethereally bash such knickknacks as a car spring and a four-foot-long string of butterfly cocoons.

Check out Lyle Lovett's new critical fave, Lyle Lovett and His Large Band, and you'll discover a group swelling with Phoenicians. Mr. Lucky's nightclub is particularly well represented. Billy Williams, who plays guitar at Mr. Lucky's, was one of the album's three producers. Matt Rollings, who contributes piano and organ, is a former Mr. Lucky's band member. Other Large Band members out of the Valley include Ray Herndon on electric guitar, Steve Marsh on saxophone and Richard Bennett on Danelectro six-string bass. Local chanteuse Francine Reed also smokes it up with Lyle on a duet called "What Do You Do/The Glory of Love."

Reptilian repetition: When Tucson's SIDEWINDERS recently signed with RCA Records, no one at the label realized that way back in the early Seventies, a band with the same name was slithering around. Not only that, no one apparently remembered either that in 1972, those same SIDEWINDERS also created an album for RCA.

"Isn't that bizarre?" admits Sidewinders II guitarist RICH HOPKINS, adding that he's known for at least two years of his band's namesake. In fact, not too long after Hopkins discovered he'd been thrown into a parallel musical universe, Rod Serling came calling. The Sidewinders were playing in Austin, Texas, one night when a friend told Hopkins that old Sidewinders band member ANDY PALEY was playing down the street with JONATHAN RICHMAN.

"I was frightened when he said it," Hopkins remembers.
Hopkins says he's aware of at least two other bands with the name Sidewinders. Not that he's particularly concerned. "[RCA president] BOB BUZIAK said, `If anybody gets in our way, we'll squash 'em.'"

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