ORIGINAL MUSIC IS FINDING ITS NICHES

Halfway into 1987, it is time again for a status report on the always volatile Orange County club scene. And for once, the news for local bands playing original music, and their fans, is encouraging.

Although the number of nightspots offering original music in the county is still far short of the multiplicity of such clubs in Los Angeles, there is a marked trend toward live original music in what have been Top-40 clubs.

“Certainly Top-40 bands aren’t very exciting to most people right now,” said Mike Dickson, owner of Los Angeles-based Harmony Artists management and booking agency. “A lot of clubs are looking for a more exciting type of entertainment than just Top 40.”

Locally, Top-40 stalwarts including Kiss Club (formerly Deja Vu, formerly Jaws, formerly . . . ) in Costa Mesa and Faces in Huntington Beach recently have begun booking original music, although neither is abandoning Top-40 music entirely. Most significantly, Kiss is beginning a concert series on Friday night instead of relegating original music to the usual Monday or Tuesday night and saving the weekends for Top 40.

Kiss is emphasizing original R&B; and dance acts such as Shalamar, Cheryl Lynn, Esther Williams and others on Wednesdays. Thursday is now blues night at Kiss with groups including the Mighty Flyers, Luke & the Locomotives and the Paladins (which will play Thursday).

“We are really moving in that direction,” said Ken Wesley, general manager of Kiss. “I even see the major labels picking up acts that they wouldn’t have looked at a year ago.”

The James Harman Band gets the coveted Friday night spot when the series begins July 10. Also booked are the Knack on July 17 and World’s Cutest Killers, led by former Go-Go’s member Kathy Valentine, on July 24. Public response, Wesley said, has been “getting stronger every week. Obviously people are telling their friends.”

At Faces, independent promoter Dan Jacobsen, one of the founders of the Long Beach Folk Festival, is organizing a weekly series of blues and roots shows for the club that has long specialized in copy bands.

The Paladins and blues harpist William Clarke performed in June, and the Tuesday series at the club continues this month with Johnny Dyer & Blues With a Feeling (July 7), Coco Montoya (July 14), Steve Samuels (July 21) and the George Griffin Blues Band (July 28).

As to whether such bookings will be able to lure roots music fans, who are generally reluctant to set foot in a Top-40 club, Jacobsen said, “It’s too early to tell--it will take a few more weeks. But there’s not much blues being done in Orange County, and I have a feeling it will definitely develop a market for it.”

James Harman is similarly optimistic about being given a Friday night at Kiss and suggests that it represents a breakthrough for roots music. “Maybe finally the crack in the wall that’s kept blues, R&B; and roots music out of these places has finally broken open. Maybe Robert Cray and the rest of us have made enough noise that people are finally going to pay attention. If that’s the case, I say hurray.”

Harman, who also performed at Faces earlier this year when club management first experimented with breaking out of the Top-40 mold, agreed with Jacobsen that the real challenge is convincing his following that it is OK to attend clubs such as Faces or Kiss.

“It’s a great big room, and it’s got a big dance floor. What do they want--possums hanging on the wall?” Harman said, joking about some fans’ desire for an authentic setting in which to hear roots music.

Elsewhere, the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano still dominates the market and so far in 1987 has presented a solid and varied menu of touring acts ranging from ‘60s rock stalwarts such as Donovan and Leon Russell to such up-to-the-minute new faces as Crowded House. The club also has put together several welcome, but offbeat pairings such as Thursday night’s show with Dave Alvin & the All-Nighters and actor-singer Harry Dean Stanton.

“Since we expanded size of stage (earlier this year), it is more feasible to work with two bands,” Coach House booking agent Ken Phebus said. “Hopefully, we’ll also be able to work with local talent more frequently.” The recent remodeling also increased the club’s seating capacity to around 400, putting it at the top end of the capacity range of Orange County clubs that seat between 200 and 400.

Phebus also said the likelihood of more Coach House shows with non-mainstream acts like the Smithereens and Timbuk 3 is improving as customers become more attuned to looking to the south county club for such acts.

“In the beginning, we took groups that were not household names, and we got stung a little,” Phebus said. “But now that we’ve been around awhile, we are better able to do that because it’s easier to get word out. Hopefully we can get the Orange County clientele to think a little off the mainstream and get them interested enough to see Harry Dean Stanton instead of just Kalapana.”

Until recently, aspiring Orange County music groups had only three places to play: Big John’s in Anaheim, Night Moves in Huntington Beach and Goodies in Fullerton.

The bad news, however, is that Goodies temporarily has halted its bookings of adventurous established Southland bands such as the Red Hot Chili Peppers, T.S.O.L., Peter Case and the Adolescents. But booking agent Aprile York said the club will resume similar bookings as soon as they line up a new independent promoter to replace Jack Richards, who had been organizing Goodies concerts in recent months.

Since Jim Palmer took over bookings at Big John’s earlier this year, that pool hall-cum-nightclub’s erratic schedule has taken on a modicum of continuity. But bookings of such promising Orange County groups as Blue Trapeze and Medicine Man are still limited to weekend nights.

Night Moves essentially has replaced the defunct Safari Sam’s and Spatz as the beach-area venue of choice and has played host to the likes of the Unforgiven, the Nick Pyzow Band, the Vandals, El Grupo Sexo, Jet Boy and Faster Pussycat.

Night Moves, however, gets less enthusiastic marks from musicians and fans than the highly regarded Safari Sam’s did.

Though musicians generally are happy with the treatment they get from booking agent Paul Sanders, many have complained about the club’s atmosphere and technical facilities.

“When I walk in, I always feel like there is going to be a fight,” said one musician who asked not to be identified. “I have trouble getting my people to come into the club. No one has come up to me and said, ‘Hey, this is a great place to see you.’ But I guess it’s a winner by default.”

A member of another popular local band, which has played virtually every club in Orange County, said, “Personally I think it’s a dive. It’s one of the hippest places to play, but only because there’s not much out there.”

Sanders said Night Moves will begin experimenting with a “late, late night” concept called “The Bat Cave,” which will feature recorded music of hard rock and “glam” bands from Aerosmith to Hanoi Rocks played after 2 a.m. on Fridays.

Although Night Moves bookings occasionally include hard rock and heavy metal groups, fans looking for an Orange County club devoted exclusively to headbanger music are restricted to Jezebel’s in Anaheim. Live music is offered Thursdays through Sundays, with local bands taking the stage Thursdays and name acts appearing on weekends.

This year, the club has featured Robin Trower, UFO, Nazareth and Black ‘n’ Blue, among others, and upcoming shows include Heaven on July 12 and Gary Moore on Aug. 4. Club operators also are venturing just outside the county to present a metal show with Anthrax, Metalchurch, Testament and three local bands on Sunday at the Old World Beer Gardens in Corona.

The Crazy Horse Steak House in Santa Ana remains the county’s premier country music venue and was even certified the best country nightclub in the country by the Academy of Country Music. The club’s schedule of three to four concerts a month with frequent visitors such as Helen Reddy, Johnny Lee and Mel McDaniel has been livened a little with recent performances by Jerry Lee Lewis, who hadn’t played the Crazy Horse in several years, and newcomers such as Randy Travis.

At the larger end of the club spectrum, one ambitious experiment has so far been less successful than organizers had hoped.

Earlier this year, operators of Confetti nightclub in Orange hooked up with Los Angeles concert promotion firm Avalon Attractions to establish Pretty Vacant night at Confetti. At 500-plus capacity, Pretty Vacant was designed as an Orange County answer to the 1,000-capacity Palace in Hollywood--a place where hot new American and British bands such as the Mission U.K., Erasure and Concrete Blonde could play their first Southland shows. But after the first six weeks, Pretty Vacant’s bookings have slowed to a trickle in July. Eddie & the Tide will headline next on July 30.

“The response has not been as good as we anticipated,” said Confetti general manager John Canova. “We’ve had great shows with X, and Erasure was fantastic. But the last couple of shows, with Fuzzbox and World’s Cutest Killers, didn’t draw very well.

“But we’re still rolling right along with it,” Canova said. “I want to diversify the type of entertainment we offer instead of limiting myself to just one market.”

Avalon booking agent Jim Guerinot said they are reexamining how to make Confetti a more viable club, including reassessing the format and the technical factors, as well as potential security problems. “In August I want to come back (with) another six shows in a row. My preference is just to keep running full steam ahead,” Guerinot said.

On an even larger scale, the Celebrity Theatre in Anaheim (previously the Freedman Forum) reopens today with Club Nouveau and the System. Preliminary bookings at the 2,500-seat theater-in-the-round lean toward middle-of-the-road acts such as Chuck Mangione (July 31) and Lou Rawls (Dec. 5) and oldies shows with Fats Domino and Jerry Lee Lewis (Aug. 21) to Fabian, Bobby Rydell and Chubby Checker (July 17).

A scheduled “Rap ‘87” concert on Saturday with Grandmaster Flash and Kool Moe Dee was canceled, Celebrity publicity director Otis Warren said, because “we didn’t like the day it was on . . . And in the area we are in (downtown Anaheim), we wanted to schedule shows to fit everyone.”

Looking at the variety of activity, Harmony Artists’ Mike Dickson summarized: “I still don’t see a wonderful scene, but I would hope now there is more opportunity for more original groups to perform in Orange County.”

LIVE ACTION: Tickets go on sale today for a heavy metal benefit show at Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre with Dio, Yngwie Malmsteen, Armored Saint and Black ‘n’ Blue. . . . Lou Grant and Patty Smyth’s Aug. 1 show at the Pacific Amphitheatre has been canceled because of scheduling difficulties. . . . Marshall Crenshaw will be at the Coach House on July 18. . . . Jerry Jeff Walker returns to the Crazy Horse Steak House on July 27.