The short extremely happy, history of The Streetchoir began a few Fridays ago at an Adams House mixer. Crowds at mixers are not generally known for their intelligence and concentration, but that Friday, as fact and fuure legend will bear out, 90 per cent of the crowd stopped dancing and stood around the platform to watch Streetchoir's galvanizing first public performance. The tidal wave of applause that followed their last set rivalled the electrical intensity of Michael Tschudin's powerful organ solos.

This, perhaps, is the only history that matters. But for the record, lead guitar John Hillman found harp-player Peter Ivers playing on a subway, and singer-bass player Gilbert Moses met Tschudin putting on plays in the NYU Drama Department. The previous friendship of Tschudin and Ivers brought the duos together, and the four auditioned for a drummer, luckily finding Jay Rubero. Ivers '68, a classics major who looks like a cross between Dennis the Menace and a Marvel superhero, proudly tells us that the new rock-and-roll group is based in Boston so he can finish college.

Aspiring lawyers at the Harkness mixer Saturday night deluged The Streetchoir with requests for Louie Louie and "something slower we can dance to," but for the most part the group only plays its own material, a hard blues-rock incorporating the best of Chicago and San Francisco, frequently extending toward what's best in modern jazz. When they do play someone else's songs (Mick Jagger's Empty Heart, for one), Ivers tends to throw his harp away and accompany the other four with a running chorus of "I hate this song!" yelled at the audience. "We're The Streetchoir," whispers former Renaissance man Tschudin into the microphone, "and we don't play anything you've ever heard before."

Streetchoir's material comes mostly from Gil Moses, the leader: once a playwright, his songs frequently conceal complex and sensitive lyrics beneath tense, often loud, always fascinating arrangements. Ranging from blues ballads to wistful humor, his songs hit a kind of rightness, a truth not often found in lyrics. In Endless Dialogue, Streetchoir's bitterest, best ballad, a verse runs:

They say the world is cruel but it's crueler than they know

If you can't make it

If you can't take it

They'll put you down

They know you'll drown

They'll watch you sink

Their eyes won't blink

They'll stare ahead

And smile instead

At the shadows of the dreams you wanted so.

About the group's best rock number, intriguingly titled Saptapper, Moses, says. "A saptapper is someone who latches on to you. And when it's a girl, well, you know what that can do...." and quotes his own lyric: