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Jon Williamson, leader of the glam-rock band Sibling Rivalry, takes a deep breath when he thinks about the days back home in Denver when people picked on him because of his appearance on stage.
Even most of the rock fans who saw him in clubs like the Party Place or Shotgun Willie's in nearby Colorado Springs thought all his pretty, shoulder-length blond hair and eye shadow was not in keeping with their idea of a male pop star. So, you can imagine what some of the people he encountered on the street thought about his rock 'n' rouge posture. There were numerous fights with local "cowboys"-and nights spent in jail.
"We had a lot of people who gave us trouble," Williamson reflects, sitting in his small apartment, just a siren's cry from Hollywood and Vine. And if the folks in Denver got on his case, Willamson hates to think what would have happened to him in the backwoods areas of the South. "I kinda fear those places," he says, shaking his head.
But Williamson, 24, feels at home in Los Angeles, where he moved two years ago. This city is a haven for the new glam and speed-metal wings of the heavy-metal movement that is gaining new recruits daily. An army of 100 or more fledgling bands plays regularly at such clubs as the Troubadour in West Hollywood, the Country Club in Reseda and Waters in San Pedro.
They are all hoping some day to join the ranks of the genre's stars, a galaxy of nationally known bands with such colorful names as Poison (glam-oriented) and Slayer (speed-directed), both of whom have songs showcased in "Less Than Zero," the film based on Bret Easton Ellis' best seller about spoiled Westside rich kids.
Lots of glam or speed-metal fans would probably get a chuckle out of the fact that their music is being used in a film about terminally rich preppies. The real audience for this music, these fans will proudly tell you, is more working class than business class-the modern-day headbangers.
The fact that film makers would sprinkle the "Less Than Zero" score with this kind of music-rather than more polite, dance-oriented acts like INXS that are actually cited in the book-suggests a growing...