KNOT’s Landing at Roxy : Teen-agers play at a revered Sunset Boulevard club after winning a countywide battle of the bands, and the record industry starts to notice.

The band was 45 minutes late for its warm-up.

Concert promoter Mike Maize tapped his fingers impatiently and said: “It’s not like them. They’re usually more punctual.”

He wasn’t talking about some prima donna rock ‘n’ roll band. He wasn’t even talking about a band with much of a track record. He was talking about four high school kids from the San Fernando Valley and their debut performance on the Sunset Strip.

The four teen-agers in the band KNOT eventually waltzed into the Roxy, seemingly very cool on the eve of the biggest night of their very short musical careers. When asked why they were late for the rehearsal, they pointed at each other accusingly.

The band has been together less than a year and already has developed its style of music, which members call “three-ring mosh”--somewhere between the strange funk sound of Primus and the traditional heavy metal of Black Sabbath.

KNOT consists of singer Jason Peck, 17, and his friend since childhood, Justin Farar, 17, both of whom will be seniors at Calabasas High School; Darren Staley, 15, the bass player, who will be a junior at Highland Hall in Northridge, and guitarist Dan Bartlett, 18, who just graduated from Taft High in Woodland Hills and will soon be studying music and oceanography at Pierce College.

They’ve already developed a following, and record industry types are beginning to take notice. KNOT beat out 30 high school bands from Los Angeles County in June to win a spot performing at the Roxy, one of Hollywood’s hottest rock clubs.

One of the judges, Benet Garcia, a former Capitol Records talent scout now working for American Enterprises Inc., said: “The band the KNOT really showed raw talent and potential for national recognition. For their age, their musical energy was extraordinary.”

“Originally, we had to cut this band from the contest because the show was running too long,” said Bruce Burman of RockVision Concert Productions, which selected the finalists from taped performances for the Battle of the High School Bands.

“We were devastated that we were cut from the contest because we had a feeling that it was going to be our big break,” said Farar, the band’s self-appointed manager.

But because of the Los Angeles riots the contest was moved from Culver City to the Electric Ballroom in North Hollywood, where promoters were allowed to extend the time of the concert. KNOT was allowed to perform, and it won the contest--beating out a heavily favored rival high school punk band from the San Gabriel Valley.

So, on July 11, the four young musicians arrived late and rehearsed one song for their opening show. It would normally cost the band $1,100 for a Saturday night showcase performance at the Roxy. They’re playing on the same stage that has featured some of the biggest names in rock.

“This is a high school band that not too long ago was playing in their garage and at small parties that’s now playing at the No. 1 concert hall in the country. It’s a chance of a lifetime for them,” said Stewart Day, media relations specialist for RockVision. “It’s a nice way to launch a band, but they will be regarded by the audience like any other band.”

Day may be overstating the Roxy’s importance a bit, but the club has helped launch the careers of such rock luminaries as Billy Joel, the Pointer Sisters, Chuck Berry and Bruce Springsteen.

Before the four went on, they relaxed in a dressing room, a wood-paneled room with mirrors on every wall and a beat-up sofa. No one seemed the least bit jittery.

“The idea is to have fun out there,” said the frizzy-haired Staley, wearing a “Clockwork Orange” T-shirt and pants with one leg cut short and the other long.

“The idea is to go crazy,” added Bartlett, with an unshaven face, jeans riddled with holes, and hair past his shoulders.

“We want to take this as far as we can go with it,” said Farar, who started playing with Peck about three years ago, just after his first lesson on the drums. KNOT was formed within the past year.

“And we expect that to be far,” added Peck, the puckish, self-assured lead singer whose short-cropped hair was bunched in five ponytail tufts that stood on end. “We were once real bad. We’ve improved a lot.”

The four band members came up with the name together in a brainstorming session, much the same way another Fab Four came up with the name of Beatles. They chose KNOT, although Farar and Bartlett had their doubts, but then Staley came up with an abbreviation for the name--Kapo’s New Order Terrorists, named for a prisoner who turned against his fellow prisoners.

“The point is to fight violence with violence,” Staley said.

And the underlying message of their original songs is: “Don’t depend on other people to solve your problems, solve them yourself, whether it’s personal problems, school, whatever,” Peck said.

The contest was judged by record producers, some independent and some from such companies as Capitol Records, and the event was sponsored by a Burbank-based teen-oriented magazine, The Noise, which is distributed at 60 high schools in Los Angeles County. The magazine’s editor-in-chief, Norbert Sparrow, said KNOT has an “intelligently structured kind of music which the kids love to slam to.”

The music comes from the combination of four very diverse tastes in music, Peck said. He likes the heavy punk tunes of Bad Religion and the alternative funk of Mr. Bungle, while the guitarist likes the traditional heavy riffs of AC/DC. The bass player likes gothic rock of The Cure and the jazz of Pat Metheny and the drummer enjoys jazz, Faith No More and the original heavy metal band, Black Sabbath.

“I guess we come off as intelligent because we know how to put our four different styles of music--blues, punk, metal and folk--together into a new sound,” Peck said.

For their big debut on the 40-foot Roxy stage they played to an audience of about 300, which was about half the size of the crowd they played for during the contest. The Roxy crowd was receptive. Young men ran in circles and bashed into each other much like carnival bumper cars without the cars. Teen-age girls watched from the sidelines, often running out of the way of falling slam dancers.

The crowd screamed at Peck’s staccato singing and his series of fascinating lines: “The bedbugs hit a home run and knocked me out of bed” and “I thought about Laura Palmer, and it’s just not fair, why did she die?” and “I use Mr. Clean” and “Fly like ET to the moon.”

Dressed in shorts and a red West Slope Chevron gas station shirt, Peck leaped down to the floor and joined the crowd of young men running in a swirling circle that closed into a mass of sweaty bodies bashing into each other.

KNOT’s songs are all collaborations. They’re about government stooges and eating bugs and “looking inside an Andy Gump” toilet.

Peck, who is a theater student in high school, talked about some songs on stage before he sang them. “Necro-Bestiality,” he said, is about spreading rumors, something that is a part of life in high school. Another song, “Patterned Pictures,” is about monotony in life.

Bathed in a red light, Peck then pointed a finger at the crowd and talked about the next song, “Parental Guidance Suggested,” which he said is “about the auspices of family control.”

As if on cue, a group of the band’s parents walked in and took a booth in the back. Band members’ parents are, for the most part, supportive of the band’s mushrooming success. But do the parents like it?

“Our parents have heard us play, but it’s very different live,” said Bartlett, who has played the guitar for seven years.

“They like the music because it’s us, but if it was someone else’s band they probably would think the music kind of bites,” Farar said.

His father, investment banker Sim Farar, said he’s watched the crowds grow. “It started off as small groups in a few little clubs in the Valley, and now this, it’s frightening,” said the elder Farar, who remembers his son and Peck dreaming of this kind of success since the second grade. “It’s great, but my son isn’t going on tour, he is going to college.”

The four teen-agers have heard false pie-in-the-sky promises from promoters for demo tapes and other club dates and are already jaded about their chances, having been steered wrong by different managers. They say they go to no one except each other for advice.

They don’t seem to need much advice. After a rollicking encore, the band left the stage and an enamored female asked Staley for his autograph, which he gave. Then she asked for his phone number, which he also gave. “He’s so cute, but he’s a great musician, too,” said 19-year-old Santa Monica College student Shih-lin Wu, who asked for the autograph. She stammered when she heard he was only 15. “Uh, wow, um, I’m not sure what I’m going to do.”

Staley said he already has a girlfriend but was impressed to meet his first fan who wasn’t a relative. Out in the parking lot, his parents came back to congratulate them.

“I’ve heard them practice at home, and it’s really an event to watch. They have such great energy,” said Staley’s mother, Barbara. “But I’m worried that if I tell them, ‘You know, I like that,’ then they’ll feel like they have to change it.”

The bassist’s father, James Staley, an actor who plays Mr. Rosebrock in the TV show “Coach,” said: “We’re open-minded to the music. We don’t try to impose our musical tastes because they’re developing on their own so much. But playing here, wow, that was an experience whether they continue on or not.”

At the Roxy show, KNOT preceded the Russian folk band Limpopo and the popular Blackboard Jungle, but it will not be their last on the Sunset Strip. Already, another well-known local band, Samba Hell, asked KNOT to open for them Aug. 19 at the Whisky a Go Go just down the block.

“This band is going far,” predicted promoter Burman, who heard them give an entertaining radio interview on Power 106-FM after their win last month. “They look natural up there. You can tell they really want it.”

After the Roxy debut, KNOT was unceremoniously scooted out the side door and members were forced to return their first backstage security passes. They loaded up their equipment in a Range Rover and were back in the Valley by 10 p.m.

Where and When

What: KNOT.

Location: Whisky a Go Go, 8901 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood.

Hours: 11 p.m. Aug. 19.

Price: $10.

Call: (310) 652-4202.