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Orange County band members on Friday rejected a consolation offer by the Australian Olympic committee, after more than a week of negotiations over a withdrawn invitation to perform in the 2000 Olympics opening ceremony. Roy Anthony, a San Diego band director who announced the decision Friday, said the offer from the Sydney Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games amounts to "someone taking away your Rolex watch and giving you a Casio and then saying, 'Be happy.'

Orange County band members on Friday rejected a consolation offer by the Australian Olympic committee, after more than a week of negotiations over a withdrawn invitation to perform in the 2000 Olympics opening ceremony. Roy Anthony, a San Diego band director who announced the decision Friday, said the offer from the Sydney Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games amounts to "someone taking away your Rolex watch and giving you a Casio and then saying, 'Be happy.'

George Thorogood's appeal rests firmly on the persona he constructed when he made his surprise breakthrough 15 years ago: the mock truculent Joe Everyman guitar hero playing everyone's bar-band favorites, epitomized by his own anthemic "Bad to the Bone." Thorogood has so resolutely stuck to his retro path since then that his pomp-filled, swirling purple-light entrance at the Universal Amphitheatre on Monday was a shock.

With visions of heavy metal concerts dancing in their heads, irate residents of the hillside neighborhoods around the Rose Bowl say they will press for a new citizens advisory commission to minimize the number of loud, high-attendance concerts at the 70-year-old stadium. Over the emotional objections of neighborhood leaders Tuesday, the City Council voted unanimously to give the go-ahead to an August concert featuring the rock bands Guns N' Roses and Metallica.

With visions of heavy metal concerts dancing in their heads, irate residents of the hillside neighborhoods around the Rose Bowl say they will press for a new citizens advisory commission to minimize the number of loud, high-attendance concerts at the 70-year-old stadium. Over the emotional objections of neighborhood leaders Tuesday, the City Council voted unanimously to give the go-ahead to an August concert featuring the rock bands Guns N' Roses and Metallica.

Musical Notes: Songwriter-singer George Michael, 27, has become the youngest recipient of the Golden Note Award given by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP). . . . Ottawa, Canada, has turned thumbs down on allowing popular heavy-metal rock bands Guns N' Roses and Metallica to play past an 11 p.m. curfew. . . .

All current hard-rock bands draw on an extremely limited set of influences, from the Yardbirds to Aerosmith and back again. Good bands synthesize a sound that while evocative of the prototypes is uniquely their own. Bad bands just cop the riffs. And since bad bands seem to sell more records these days than good bands, a lot of good bands--Guns N' Roses, for example--hide behind bad-band facades.

Gimme shelter, indeed. Everybody was ready with rain quips as the Rolling Stones' four-night stand came to a soggy, soggy end Sunday night at the umbrella-filled Coliseum: * "Why do you think they call it a wet suit ?" asked Living Colour lead singer Corey Glover, whose customary bright, skin-tight bodywear came in handy when the downpour started halfway through his band's opening set. (Surprise Colour highlight: A soaked, climactic, metallic "Johnny B.

It's no fish story. William (Salmon Billy) Ellison has a gift and a message for President Bush. Ellison, who caught the first salmon of the season in the Penobscot River in Maine, plans to continue a tradition of presenting it to the President--along with his own pitch for the environment. Ellison caught the 6-pound fish shortly after 5:30, just as the sun was rising over the Penobscot on the first day of the season. The tradition of delivering the first salmon to the White House was begun in 1912 by Maine fisherman Karl Anderson, who caught the first Penobscot salmon of that year and presented it to President William Howard Taft.

George Thorogood's appeal rests firmly on the persona he constructed when he made his surprise breakthrough 15 years ago: the mock truculent Joe Everyman guitar hero playing everyone's bar-band favorites, epitomized by his own anthemic "Bad to the Bone." Thorogood has so resolutely stuck to his retro path since then that his pomp-filled, swirling purple-light entrance at the Universal Amphitheatre on Monday was a shock.

With visions of heavy metal concerts dancing in their heads, irate residents of the hillside neighborhoods around the Rose Bowl say they will press for a new citizens advisory commission to minimize the number of loud, high-attendance concerts at the 70-year-old stadium. Over the emotional objections of neighborhood leaders Tuesday, the City Council voted unanimously to give the go-ahead to an August concert featuring the rock bands Guns N' Roses and Metallica.

Guns N' Roses canceled a concert tonight near Chicago after the rock group's sound equipment was destroyed during a melee Tuesday night following an abbreviated performance outside St. Louis. "It was a full-fledged riot," Carl Middleman, a reporter for St. Louis radio station KSHE-FM, said Wednesday. The disturbance erupted at the Riverport Amphitheater in Maryland Heights, Mo.