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CLEANING LADYS IN A BRUSH WITH VICTORY

If you are a regular MTV viewer, you might recall a recent edition of that channel`s ”Basement Tapes” competition that included a music video by Chicago`s Cleaning Ladys. Each ”Basement Tapes” show plays a handful of videos by bands not signed to major labels, and viewers phone in their choice for best clip, with tallies being read periodically as the votes come in.

On the evening of their particular competition, the Cleaning Ladys led the voting most of the way. Their video, ”She Won`t French Kiss”–which deals with a male tourist`s inability to engage a French woman in this form of osculation–is a snappy, smartly edited clip equal in entertainment value to many of the clips seen in MTV`s regular rotation. But when the evening`s final tally was announced, the Chicago boys had lost by a whisker to 4 Reasons Unknown, a band from Dallas that notched 33 percent of the votes to the Cleaning Ladys` 30 percent.

Cleaning Ladys lead singer and guitarist John Anderson–who says he didn`t watch the show because he was busy ”at one of our phone-in centers”– is somewhat reluctant today to talk about the loss.

”It`s something our lawyer has really precluded us from discussing,” he says. ”We have three separate investigations going on. The House, the Senate and the La Grange police are looking into it.”

Anderson, who works days at a video production firm called Post Effects, directed and edited the ”French Kiss” clip. He notes that the band found a rainbow arcing over the smoldering remnants of their MTV defeat: After their appearance on ”Basement Tapes,” the Cleaning Ladys received requests from some major record labels for demo tapes–an infrequent occurrence in a business where it is usually musicians who beg record companies to listen to a demo.

Buoyed by these requests, the Cleaning Ladys were scheduled to begin work a few days ago on a new video, ”Creatures From Outer Space,” in which lead singer Anderson begins to see extraterrestrials and tries to warn the other band members that Earth is being besieged.

”We`re being invaded, and the rest of the band is oblivious to it,”

Anderson says. ”The video is shot in what looks like a regular suburban room, where we supposedly live with our manager. The rest of the band is telling me to hold it together, saying, `C`mon, the record companies are on the line. Don`t say that you`re seeing creatures.` And I tell them I`m going to try to hold it together but the creatures are driving me crazy and please help me get rid of them.”

A synthesizer-dominated dance number, ”Creatures” points up the streak of humor that runs through much of the Cleaning Ladys` material. While the band is not a novelty act–and, in fact, performs straight-ahead rock `n` roll numbers–it does bring some lighthearted sensibilities to songs.

”A lot of our material does have some humor in it,” Anderson says.

”That seems to be the kind of stuff we often like to write. The humor has opened a lot of doors for us. Before we entered it in the `Basement Tapes`

competition, `French Kiss` got played in a lot of television markets it probably wouldn`t have cracked if it hadn`t been a humorous song.

”We`ve got three or four albums worth of solid material ready to go, and the options now are to record another single or to record an album. We recorded the last single with investors` money, and we could do the same this time, but we need an album to show somebody the depth we have.”

Onstage, the Cleaning Ladys adopt a kind of down-with-dirt motif. ”The stage is set up like someone`s cleaning cabinet,” Anderson says. ”The guitar amp has a cover that looks like the label from Scrunge, which is an industrial-strength cleaner. The bass amp has a Spic and Span cover. Sometimes we dress up the microphone cords in vacuum-cleaner hoses. Then we hang vacuum cleaners or giant buckets in the background.”

The band will bring its live show to television Sunday, appearing on

”Chicago Stuff” (10 p.m., WFLD-Ch. 32), a half-hour, Chicago-humor showcase that also will feature Rich ”Son of Svengoolie” Koz and Emo Philips.

A former film major at Northwestern University, Anderson started the Cleaning Ladys in 1978 with three other musicians after he had tried his hand at a solo country career. The misspelled band name, he says, follows the precedent set by the Beatles and the Monkees.

In the years it has been together, volunteers Anderson, the band has had some brushes with ”musical superstars”–among them Tiny Tim. After watching Tiny Tim perform at a local club, Anderson engaged him in conversation, and the Cleaning Ladys eventually wrote a song for him that was never recorded.

”I went to see him in `82 at a small place in Park Forest South,”

Anderson says. ”It was kind of sad because his voice wasn`t exactly what it had been. He had tried to make it legitimately in show business for so long. And then his fame had been such a fluke and so fleeting that he still had a taste for it and would have liked to come back as a legitimate singer.

”He told me a story about the time Dylan invited him up to his house in Woodstock. Tiny Tim has a fetish about showers–he takes five or six showers a day–so when he got to Dylan`s house, he went upstairs and took a shower.

”He said he came downstairs and got to talking with Dylan. He went on and on that day about how Dylan was the `60s Rudy Vallee, how Rudy Vallee and Dylan had so many similarities. Then he went into a medley–singing Dylan songs in Rudy Vallee`s style and singing Rudy Vallee songs in Dylan`s style. It went on for two or three minutes.

”When he got done, Dylan looked at him and said, `Go to bed.`

”So he took a shower, went to bed, and that`s the last he saw of Dylan.”