Onto the Radar Screen

Chris O’Connor of the Primitive Radio Gods admits that Cinderella stories such as his “just don’t happen all that often.”

Like, almost never.

“It’s obviously a one-in-a-million thing,” he says.

But, hey, somebody’s got to win the lottery, right?

And in O’Connor’s mind, what’s happened to him is akin to striking oil in the backyard.

The singer-songwriter’s mesmerizing hit song, “Standing in a Broken Phone Booth With Money in My Hand,” has dominated alternative-rock radio this summer, with its raspy B.B. King sample (“I’ve been downhearted, babe”) sticking in the mind of anybody who has heard it.

And powered by “Phone Booth,” the Gods’ Columbia Records album, “Rocket” ranked among the nation’s Top 40 sellers last week after debuting at No. 60 last month on the Billboard Top 200.

Suddenly, the 31-year-old O’Connor has the music career he had always dreamed about but virtually gave up on five years ago, when he took a job as an air traffic controller at Los Angeles International Airport after his Santa Barbara-based band, the I-Rails, had broken up.

“It’s just bizarre,” O’Connor says by phone from Cleveland, where the band stopped recently on a tour that will bring it to Los Angeles for shows Sept. 17-18 at the Dragonfly. “My dream my whole life was to have an audience. It didn’t matter how big it was, but after the I-Rails broke up, I didn’t think I’d ever get a record deal.”

The I-Rails had bounced around Santa Barbara for four years, releasing four independent albums and playing three shows a night in local clubs but failing to land a major-label deal.

When the band splintered in 1991, O’Connor holed up by himself in a friend’s garage studio in Thousand Oaks and poured his frustration into the recording of “Rocket,” which then sat on a shelf for several years.

“I basically quit music,” says O’Connor, whose increasing weariness at dealing with music industry executives hastened his decision.

O’Connor retreated so far from the industry, he says, that after his car stereo speakers were stolen he didn’t even listen to music for about three years.

“I listened to sports radio,” he says. “I didn’t buy any music magazines. I didn’t write any songs.”

But two years ago, seeing nothing but radar screens in his future, O’Connor realized that the only thing he really knew or cared about was music.

He self-released “Rocket” had cost only about $1,000 to record but got no response.

Then, last summer, he found a few more copies while cleaning out his closet. Rolling the dice, he made one last-ditch mailing.

Voila!

A copy landed on the desk of Jonathan Daniel, a recently hired artists and repertoire executive at the music publishing division of Fiction Records.

“I’d been in a bunch of bands, so I decided I’m going to listen to all these unsolicited tapes because there’s probably something good in there,” Daniel says.

“Chris’ tape was sitting there with this really cryptic note attached. No, ‘Hi, Mr. A&R; guy. Please listen to my CD.’ Just that note. So that piqued my interest.”

So did the music, “Phone Booth” most of all.

“It’s got tons of atmosphere, which most pop songs don’t have,” Daniel says. “There’s just something about the mood of the song that just made me say, ‘This is great.’ Fortunately, the public thought the same thing.”

Daniel played the song for a friend, Columbia Records A&R; executive Benjie Gordon, who in turn played it for Kip Krones, then head of Sony Music U.K.

Krones (who has since left the company) decided on the spot to sign O’Connor.

“It was very weird,” O’Connor says. “After all I’d been through, I just wasn’t willing to put a band together and play for [music industry] people--and it turns out I didn’t have to.

“It’s just unheard of--a major label calls up and says they want to put your record out and they haven’t even seen what you look like. I could have been a 70-year-old fat bald dude with hair on my back, which would have been a marketing nightmare, obviously. So, mostly, this was beyond belief.”

Almost as amazing to O’Connor has been the staying power of “Phone Booth,” which first appeared last spring on the soundtrack for the Jim Carrey movie “The Cable Guy” and has only picked up steam in the months since. It has topped Billboard’s Modern Rock Tracks chart for the last six weeks.

“I was sick of the song five years ago,” O’Connor says, “and then I had to do a lot of work on it recently to get it ready to go, so I’ve definitely heard it enough.”

Its fans haven’t.

The success of “Phone Booth” has allowed O’Connor to give up his day job and rejoin former I-Rails bandmates Tim Lauterio and Jeff Sparks. With the recently added Luke McAuliffe, they embarked last month on the first Primitive Radio Gods tour.

“There was a certain lack of reality to everything that’s happened,” O’Connor says, “but now that we’re on the road and meeting people, it seems a lot more real. I’m getting into the groove of it.”

* The Primitive Radio Gods play Sept. 17-18 at the Dragonfly, 6510 Santa Monica Blvd., 9 p.m. $10. (213) 466-6111.