Music: New Rock on a Red-Hot Roll

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For home listening, the record industry has helped itself by developing a number of low-priced alternatives to $8.98 albums. The mini-LP ($4.49) contain-about five rather than ten songs, and introduces new groups like Scandal, who might have been bypassed on a full-price album. The 12-in. single ($3.49), an extended version of the standard 45-r.p.m. disc remixed with extra instrumental riffs for dancing, can sell as many as 200,000 units extra for every million-selling hit. Deejay John ("Jellybean") Benitez, 25, of Manhattan's Fun House, is so accomplished at remixing hits for club use that his version of Far from Over, the single from the just released Staying Alive sound track, has been made the official one by RSO Records. He stretches the song by moving segments of it around and expanding the tonal range so that there are more deep-bass and high-register sounds. The result is a more spacious and physical experience on the dance floor. Says Jellybean: "Before, it seemed like a record just got started, and before you could dance, it was over."

In New York last week, a seminar on the New Music drew 3,000 registrants, triple last year's attendance, when the sounds were still percolating in urban clubs. Along with performers sporting exploded haircuts, leather earrings and unisex makeup, the execs celebrated rock's sizzling summer with predictions about an even more lucrative fall. Said Organizer Tom Silverman of independent Tommy Boy Records: "People are all psyched up here. It's a changing of the guard. Instead of preaching, even the white-beards are listening." What they are hearing right now is bound to keep their toes, and their calculators, tapping to the beat.

—By J.D. Reed. Reported by Stephen Koepp/New York and Alessandra Stanley/Los Angeles