THE BAND PLAYED ON EARLY ZAPPA RECRUITS KEEP MUSIC IN LIVES.

Byline: Bettie Rencoret Senior columnist

LANCASTER - Back in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Antelope Valley had bands like The Blackouts, The Omens and Terry and the Pirates.

Among the young musicians was an Antelope Valley High School student named Frank Zappa, later famous as a rock guitarist, composer and leader of the group The Mothers of Invention.

Zappa's local groups included The Omens, whose members - Johnny Franklin, brothers Fred and Wally Salazar, and brothers Pete and Fred Lovio - got together recently to talk about ``the good old days'' and Zappa, who died at age 52 in 1993.

``He didn't forget his friends,'' said Pete Lovio, a retired Los Angeles County worker who still gives music lessons. ``He wrote a lot of his own music and some for the movies. After he wrote the soundtrack for a movie called 'Run Home Slow,' he took some of the money and bought a small recording studio. Then he got all us Omens together and made our first recording.''

Franklin, who retired in 1995 after 13 years of aircraft work with Rockwell International, could claim the most time spent playing with Zappa as he moved up the ladder to success.

Franklin played first with The Blackouts, then The Omens, then - in order - Cisco's Bits of Rhythm, Jimmy Reingold Largoes, the Village Inn House Band and finally, as back-up guitarist, for the Johnny Morrisette Band. His instruments included the saxophone, guitar and electric bass.

Franklin lives in Littlerock now, but in those days he was a resident of Sun Village, which in the late 1950s was predominantly African-American. Zappa recorded a song about the community where he regularly played as a teenager, ``Village of the Sun.''

``We're all a little bit of the local history,'' Franklin said. ``We're talking about almost half a century ago. Frank used to play a lot in the old Village Inn.''

Franklin recalled some of the ``Village of the Sun'' lyrics: ``I don't know how the people stand it (the wind), but I guess they do, cause they're all still there, even Johnny Franklin, too, in the Village of the Sun.''

Franklin added: ``What makes me so proud is that there were a lot of little problems here, and 'Village of the Sun' had special meaning. In those days, in this area, the racial, economic and social diversity was not as well accepted as it is now.''

Part of the The Omens' stage act was a routine called ``the bug dance'' - tossing an imaginary insect around to each other as they played.

``What it was: We'd want to jazz up the action, you know, keep the performance from getting too cut and dried. You had to have a gimmick,'' said Fred Salazar, who now works for the Southern California Edison Co. ``We could almost see that bug, and we'd sometimes get so carried away we'd fall over the edge of the bandstand.''

The Omens wanted to stand out, so they dressed uniformly in long-sleeve white shirts with black vests, black pants and black jackets.

``We really loved those jackets. I still had mine until recently,'' said Pete Lovio.

The Omens all were in a band class at Antelope Valley High School.

``Most of us couldn't afford to buy our own instruments, so we joined the band, because we could borrow whatever instrument we wanted to play, and it was ours for the whole time we stayed in the class,'' Fred Lovio said.

They always had at least eight instruments on stage and in addition to Zappa, Franklin, the Lovios and the Salazars, the group included Jim Sherwood, Pat Prue, Terry Wimberly and Don Van Vliet - with maybe a few other people on standby.

Van Vliet did vocals as part of Zappa's bands at least through 1964, then went on to make a name for himself in rock music as Captain Beefheart.

Pete Lovio, now a Santa Clarita Valley resident, played tenor sax with The Omens and has never ceased to play, though not lately with an organized band.

``I teach children and young people the elements of the blues and to play the guitar, bass, keyboard, sax, trumpet and blues harmonica,'' he said. ``I also work with my grandson's blues band. I still have several instruments, and I play all the time. As another diversion, I'm a ham radio operator.''

Both Salazar brothers still live in the Antelope Valley - Fred in Lancaster and Wally in Palmdale.

The Salazars worked in the composing room of a now defunct Lancaster newspaper, the Ledger-Gazette, circa 1959. Fred Salazar worked in composition for 17 years before going to work for Edison in 1976. He's now been an electrician for more than 25 years.

Wally Salazar stuffed papers for the Ledger-Gazette from 1958 to 1960, then did a four-year hitch in the U.S. Air Force and was stationed some of the time at Edwards Air Force Base. When he was released from active duty he stayed on at Edwards as a civilian employee and retired in 1997 after 35 years.

``We might have been just kids, but we all loved music and took it seriously. We gave our all every time we played,'' said Fred Salazar. ``We had a lot of fun, but we had values, too. We haven't lost any of them as adults, and we're proud of that.''

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Photo:

Members of one of Frank Zappa's early bands, The Omens, still get together sometimes in the Antelope Valley. From left are Pete Lovio, Fred Salazar, Johnny Franklin and Wally Salazar.

Bettie Rencoret/Special to the Daily News