Synthesizing a flock of songs

Young Chang

The hair’s calmer now.

No teasing, no fanfare with the bangs -- lead vocalist Mike Score even

wears caps.

But ask Score if A Flock of Seagulls’ change in musical style is at

all indicative of calmer ways, as is the band’s hair, and he’ll give you

a vehement “no.”

“If I wrote ‘I Ran’ for 20 years, I’d be the most boring songwriter in

the world,” he said of one of the ‘80s band’s signature tunes. “But a lot

do that, because they want to maintain a record deal and their fans.”

The Liverpool band has not, in fact, kept a steady record deal since

the ‘80s. Most of its fans are devotees of earlier hits and albums

following their first self-titled work, including “The Light at the End

of the World” from 1995, which fell short of birthing industry-sweeping

singles such as “I Ran.”

But A Flock of Seagulls has been creating music for the past two

decades, experimenting with whatever genre band members please and moving

in “18 different directions at once.”

The group will perform as part of Fashion Island’s Summer Concert

Series on Wednesday, with a program including an updated version of “I

Ran,” as well as such new songs as “She Don’t Care” and “Shine Like the

Sun.”

“Our style is much more free-form now,” said Score, who started the

band in 1979 when he was -- yes -- a hairdresser. “And we’re not linked

to image anymore. When we first started out, we were a strong-image

band.”

The Grammy-winning ‘80s group, remembered most for its wild hair and

electronic, synth-filled sounds in “Telecommunication” and “I Ran (So Far

Away),” is a different group today, with Score its only original member.

Named after Richard Bach’s “Jonathan Livingston Seagull”’ and the

lyrics of a Strangler’s song (Seagulls members went to a live concert

where the lead vocalist pointed right at them and sang “A flock of sea

gulls”), the group has moved away from the ‘80s New Wave beat and

experimented with everything from country to dance-club for a sound that

band member Joe Rodriguez calls “heavy progressive pop.”

“There is sort of a trademark Seagulls sound that is noticeable,”

Rodriguez said of the band’s newer music. “But you can tell that there’s

a lot of the new, a lot of our own individual personalities and chemistry

involved.”

Though influenced by such legends as the Beatles, Ultravox, David

Bowie and even Bing Crosby, the band’s musical digression began in the

‘80s, Score said, when music in general began to change.

“The record companies started to go, ‘Oh we want to push everything

toward this,”’ Score said. “Because a lot of the bands were very

individual . . . but I think that kind of music kind of became generic.”

That’s what Score, who enjoys staying home or riding his motorbike,

doesn’t miss about being hugely famous -- that he can control his life

and music.

“Now I have more time for my friends and myself and to do what I want

to do,” he said. “I kind of realized that, at one stage of my life, music

was everything to me.”

But what does he miss?

“Basically everything about being famous: the fact that records get

played, the fans, it’s really good for your ego,” Score admitted.

He still gets a kick out of playing the oldies, though he’s wavered

from loving “I Ran” to hating it to loving it again.

“But my main thing with the older songs is I like it when the fans get

into it again,” Score said. “Because then it proves to me, at the time

when I wrote that, I was at the peak. And every songwriter wants to touch

people with his music.”

FYI

What: A Flock of Seagulls

When: 6 p.m. Wednesday

Where: Fashion Island, 900 Newport Center Drive, Newport Beach Cost:

Free, with preferred seating available for $15

Call: (949) 721-2000