"The agent asks me, 'Who do they sound like?' I tell him they don't sound like anyone, and he says. 'They've got to sound like someone.' So what can I say?" The laments are those of Neal Grossman, manager of Guns & Butter, a Boston band whose first album will be released in early February on the Atlantic-Cotillion label.

As far as I can tell, he is right. The group's attempt to "bring jazz and classical influences to bear on rock music" (as their promo sheet puts it) has resulted in a music for which comparison is difficult. The album's combination of jazz and classical motifs in a rock format suggests a potential for schizophrenia, but clever blending has given the music continuity.

The pervasive use of violin in most of their music is effective, whether in duet with a flute carrying an easy, pretty melody, or in an introduction to a piece developing a theme strongly reminiscent of Bach.

Lead singer Jeff Lyons's voice is sharp, almost piercing, and at the same time very melodic. It has a distinctive quality, and coupled with the violin, gives a sense of continuity to their otherwise widely varying music.

Violinist Lenny Federer, who was trained in classical music wrote the album's first cut, "I Am," and says that he never really listened to rock music until a few months before he wrote it. The cut, which he says is his "rock-and-roll statement," frequently changes rhythm and key. "I Am," along with the other two cuts which Federer helped compose, have a Slavic feeling, which one of the band's musicians described as being similar to Dvorak.

"I'm a violinist who can write some music," said Federer, "while Rich is a composer who can play." Richard Ploss, who plays flute, saxophone and clarinet, had a hand in writing six of the nine songs which appear on the album. Now a junior studying composing and arranging at Berklee College of Music in Boston. Ploss has the most diverse training in music. His musical interests range from 13th-century chamber music and baroque to modern 12-tone composition and jazz. "I would like to be able to emulate all of them so I can use them in doing something different. It really is very necessary if you're trying to do anything innovative, if not completely new."

"The Wanderer," a flowing ballad with a haunting melody, like several of his other composition, shows the baroque influence. Ploss's "Lady Grey," however, is more in a jazz-blues vein.

While most of the album's cuts are so original in approach as to make classification impossible, there are two which resemble typical AM rock. "Look at the Day' is the type of music that a 14-year-old girl would like," Lyons said. "It's very optimistic." The bouncy bass and smooth melody contrast with the sombre, driving beat which is common to many of their other songs. It is very light music. The sentimental, though slightly saccharine "Our Album" is reminiscent of McCartney. Just the same, both "Look at the Day" and "Our Album" add a dimension to the record, and neither are bad listening.

Guns & Butter has its roots in the local band scene. Vocalist Jeff Lyons and bass guitarist Peter Cohen have been together in various Marblehead bands since they were 12, while Paul Cohen (guitar) and Peter Tucker (drums) have been with them since they were 14.

In the early years it was a typical group, playing "schlock rock--whatever happened to be popular at the time," in Lyons's words. "We would go to a Jethro Tull concert to see how he played a song so we could play it just the same way. If he changed the way he played it, we changed too. We figured, why not improve with him. There was no creativity."

The band was popular--as local bands go. They played at dances, and won a local "battle of the bands" for which they received an impressive plastic trophy.

In the winter of 1970, they took on Richard Ploss, then a freshman at Berklee. They adopted "Guns & Butter" as their collective name and began to work on creating music of their own.

"What the hell are we doing just ripping off our music from big name bands?' we asked ourselves," Lyons commented, recalling the time. The spring and early summer was a low point for the band. As they attempted to develop original work, their local following declined.

During the summer at why Lyons called "just about the lowest point," they met violinist Lenny Federer at the Stonehenge Rock Club in Ipswich, where they were practising. Although the members of the group were surprised when the violinist asked whether he could jam with them, the hour-and-a-half session turned out well. After they had jammed together several times. Federer asked if he could join the group. Still not without reservations about having a violin in a rock band, the group agreed.

Federer's musical background, in contrast to the rest of the group, had been strictly classical. He was born in Lithuania. His parents sent thim to music school to study violin at the age of five, and the continued to study music until he went to Israel six years later. After four years on a kibbutz, where he did not play, he emigrated to New York where he enrolled in Manhattan's High School of Music and Art. He again took up violin, and when he entered Boston University in 1965, he planned to major in music.