Pop Performers

Campaign rhetoric may be melody to some visitors' ears. But many tourists prefer the less hortatory sound of music from discotheques, rock bands and folk singers. These entertainments are as live as the convention floor and exhibit as much promise as the party platform. Moreover, the only vote they require is the sound of two hands clapping:

POP. The town's hottest club is the Bottom Line, in Greenwich Village (15 W. Fourth St.), where for a nominal admission ($5.50) some of rock's best talent is on view. During convention week, the management has booked a bunch of folkies--Eric Andersen, Livingston Taylor, Mary Travers, Tom Paxton --who will presumably regale visiting delegates with songs of chiding irony and social import. The Convention, a group of comic actors, will open each show with irreverent improvisations on the day's events at the Garden. Up in Central Park, the Schaefer Music Festival offers excellent, inexpensive ($ 1.50-$3) outdoor entertainment. B.B. King, justly renowned for his blues-guitar virtuosity, will appear on July 12. Toots and the Maytals will raise the roof on the 16th with their joyously scruffy reggae music from Jamaica, followed on the 17th by the Earl Scruggs Revue, which purveys a pleasing blend of down-home country and easygoing rock.

JAZZ. Mondays, at Michael's Pub (211 E. 55th St.), a group called the New Orleans Funeral and Ragtime Orchestra cuts loose, featuring, on clarinet, a sweetly swinging, nonjoking Woody Allen. Freddie Hubbard plays some hard-driving trumpet at the Schaefer Festival in Central Park on July 14. Buddy Rich may be caught at Storyville (41 E. 58th St.). Uptown, at the Carlyle Hotel (Madison Ave. and 76th St.), Bobby Short wraps standards and show tunes in well-cut velvet, and downtown, in the Village, the Charles Mingus group explores the furthest perimeters of jazz.

DISCOS. Even delegates from Slippery Rock have heard that the Hippopotamus (405 E. 62nd St.) is resoundingly declasse: too expensive ($12 minimum, $4 a drink), too loud, too ... well, last year. The new place to gawk and be groped is Regine's, in the Delmonico Hotel (Park Ave. and 59th St.), which is just as loud, pricy and up-to-the-second in chic. A cover charge of $10 (plus from $3 to $6 a drink) buys you the privilege of rubbernecking as the celebs make grand entrances on the long center staircase, boogying on the illuminated Plexiglas dance floor and maybe getting snooted by Regine herself.

Things are funkier elsewhere and appreciably cheaper: delegates can rub elbows and shake a leg with natives of outlying boroughs at the Tuxedo Ballroom (Third Ave. and 17th St.; $6 cover on weekends). At Barney Googles (225 E. 86th St.; $4 cover on weekend nights and free admission for women before 10 p.m.) you can hear both disco and highly spiced Latin music, called salsa. This blistering rhythm, Afro-Cuban in origin, is served up hottest at the Corso (205 E. 86th St.), where the dance floor gives you the chance for the sort of workout that could lead to an Olympic qualification.

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