Flamingo Is Live, Kicking Seven Nights A Week

Club preview

The Flamingo, 4301 200th St. S.W., Lynnwood. Live music seven days a week. Tonight, Stoney Bone Child with Lazy Face and Primal Order. 744-1664. -------------------------------------------------------------------

The Flamingo Restaurant - it's that pink neon-trimmed building that shines so brightly by the west Lynnwood side of Interstate 5 - was once the Riviera Steakhouse. If you have any really clear recollections of the Riviera, you probably weren't a regular - especially on Sunday nights when the room featured heavy-metal music and a whole lot of head banging. Big hair, big noise. Not exactly your usual Lynnwood fare.

When the restaurant changed hands a couple of years ago, the live music got toned down and eventually eliminated, replaced by modern disco and lots of chrome and flashing lights.

The visual razzle-dazzle has remained, but now The Flamingo has brought back live music seven days a week. Mondays and Tuesdays belong to bands dealing in original music.

Tonight is a combination. Stoney Bone Child, a band that has been doing considerable front-of-the-week biz at The Flamingo with its new music, is headlining tonight in celebration of its new CD on the local label SMG Records. Unlike the industry bash held earlier this week at The Catwalk downtown, this party is open to the public.

According to band and label rep Bart Leland, things will get under way at 8:30 p.m. with a listening party for the new CD. Then Stoney Bone Child will take the stage for a live show.

"They'll just be doing whatever they want for as long as they want," says Leland, although he added that local acts Lazy Face and Primal Order will finish out the evening.

Stoney Bone Child is vocalist and guitarist Stephan Miller, lead guitarist Allan Meier, bassist Craig Merrill and drummer Kevin Hart. All four are from Lake Forest Park and went to school together. Meier and Miller started the band while still in school in January 1992, with Hart and Miller joining a short time later.

Last year they took their original songs into the local Chateaux recording studio and came out with the self-titled, 11-track recording produced by the studio's owner and operator, David Thompson. The music is a clean-but-crunchy hybrid of pop, rock and metal. The songs have lots of hooks and harmony, are sometimes almost orchestral in execution and are topped by Miller's high-reaching vocals.

Miller, who writes most of the lyrics, says he draws material from his everyday experiences, although he tries not to get too complex or internalized. "I don't want to sing what only I can understand," he says.

The record is due in stores tomorrow.