The DJ With the JD

"Right," Deanna says, as if he has understood exactly. She is the star. She is so much of a star she has predetermined how to stick it to the band, once the cash register sings.

"They're all terrified someone is going to steal their work," Escalante says later, of his audience. "And I say all the time, that could be the best thing to ever happen to them."

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A radio show about entertainment law sounds dreadful, even on an alternative rock station, but listen closer, and you hear America dreaming. The calls to "Barely Legal Radio" no longer come only from the L.A. area, where the general population is expected to be conversant in the basics of contracts, agents, managers. Fans of the show listen online ( http://www.indie1031.fm Fridays at 2 p.m. Eastern time) and they call from New Jersey and Texas and Washington state.

"The fact that we're in L.A., you know, I thought it might work okay," says Michael Steele, Indie 103's program director. "Never in my wildest dreams did I think it would work outside L.A., but after about three weeks there were calls from all over the country -- New Mexico, Arizona, Nebraska, Florida, and not just with 'How do I get my song played on the radio' kinds of questions, but really specific stuff."

A lifelong talk-radio junkie, Escalante started "Barely Legal Radio" last summer. He came to a meeting at the station to pitch some of the bands on his label and wound up persuading Steele to give him a talk show about law. The two-year-old station has quickly become the darling of anyone who tools about the streets about L.A. with a certain FM nostalgia for new wave, punk and whatever was cool in college -- back when, or right now. Steve Jones, a former Sex Pistol, has an enormously popular talk and music show each afternoon; punk's poet laureate, Henry Rollins, also does a regular show.

"Joe started out by saying 'My goal [for the show] is to get disbarred by the State of California,' " Steele says. "And I said, 'Well, good, then we're on the same page.' " (Escalante says he has so far not run into any official scolding from the bar association; Steele says some lawyers have called him and they were "semi-threatening, saying 'How can you put this on the air' because Joe sort of tells everyone all their dirty tricks.")

At first, Escalante thought he would be crueler on the air, more of the kind of jerk we expect in showbiz lawyers, who would let callers know just how much they don't stand a chance in Hollywood.

"I can be a mean guy," he says, but soon he heard "this desperation in every call I got. They didn't have anyone else to talk to. They didn't know any kind of connected people. . . . But you've got to give them the law, even though they're delusional."

Nevertheless the temptation is often great to give them a dose of hard truth with the free advice:

"I've said this on my show -- if you're 40 and you're just starting your rock career, it's over. Don't even. Don't kid yourself," Escalante says. "Apologize to everybody in your family, apologize to your wife or your husband, your kids, everybody who may go see you in a showcase, because it. Is. A. Fantasy. And then I get calls right away, from people who say, 'Oh, I don't believe that -- my friend's 40 and his band totally kicks ass and he just got a record deal,' and I stand by it. It's over for your friend. . . . Next call."

On his show, Escalante will pull entertainment items from the news and decipher them through a lawyer's eyes: How Kid Rock and that guy from Creed can seek injunctive relief to stop Internet distribution of a private sex video they allegedly appear in -- and what is the 13th Amendment anyhow? Let's learn!