Orange County Unknowns Get Together for CD : Music: 10 of the 16 unsigned rock and pop performers showcased on the ‘CO-OP’ release will appear on stage tonight in Long Beach. They represent widely varied styles.

It has been said that each rock or pop band has the talent to write at least one good song. It has also been said that, when it comes to doing business, it’s a rare musician who has any talent at all.

“CO-OP,” a compact disc showcasing the work of 16 unsigned rock and pop performers--most of them from Orange County--pretty much bears out the first truism. Its main intent is to compensate for the second.

Ten of the “CO-OP” performers will play tonight at Bogart’s in Long Beach, in a special concert celebrating the disc’s release. Musically, these acts have little in common. But their situation within the music business is the same: Each has no record contract and no certain means of getting the attention of record companies and radio programmers.

The idea behind “CO-OP” is to improve each member’s chances of getting a fair hearing by pooling resources. Usually, bands cast their hooks into the music industry’s inhospitable ocean by sending unsolicited tapes to radio stations, record companies and music publications. Then they sit back and hope for a bite. “CO-OP,” in essence, makes the bait bigger, shinier, more attractive, harder to ignore and casts it in a wider arc than most aspiring bands could manage individually.

The CD, which is not available for purchase, is a well-packaged compilation in which each performer is represented by one or two songs. The album notes contain photos and thumbnail information on each act involved, as well as their address and phone number. Since October, “CO-OP” has been sent to about 500 college radio stations (college radio being the only outlet remaining in the United States where grass-roots bands not signed to a major label can get a hearing). Major labels also received copies, and so have some music publishing companies (who listen with an ear for songwriting ability, rather than performance talent) and music writers.

The force behind “CO-OP” is Exude, an Anaheim dance-rock band that has developed some business savvy during a 10-year career full of ups and downs, in which the band has confronted setbacks with scrappy persistence.

In 1987, Exude was about to send copies of a self-produced album, “Play With the Boys,” to radio stations around the country. Then it got a bright idea: Why not split the mailing costs with other unsigned bands looking to reach the same outlets? The first CO-OP project was simple enough--packages went out containing Exude’s album, as well as LPs by four other unsigned bands willing to share the cost.

According to Exude’s singer, Frank Rogala, that first CO-OP mailing had its problems. Some of the bands packaged their releases haphazardly, leaving out such basic information as a contact phone number.

Rogala said Exude got the idea for a cooperative CD in 1988, after it achieved its career high-water mark to date: inclusion on a Musician magazine CD compilation of the best unsigned bands in the country, as determined by such judges as Elvis Costello, Mark Knopfler, T-Bone Burnett and Mitchell Froom, who were commissioned by the magazine.

Starting in spring, 1989, Exude began advertising for interested unsigned bands to join it in another “CO-OP” release, this time with the packaging carefully thought out and some extra promotional push by the Jensen Crew, a public relations firm that has worked with Exude in recent years.

The cost of producing and mailing the CD was about $7,000, Rogala said. Each band paid $285 per song. When expenses overshot the original $5,000 budget, Exude kicked in an extra $2,000 to see the project through to completion, Rogala said. (Exude also enclosed a new full-length CD album of its own, “Testosterone Tapdance,” with the “CO-OP” mailing.)

Rogala said radio stations have been returning cards enclosed with the “CO-OP” CD, indicating that it has been getting some college airplay. The project has also gained Exude a nibble from one major label that was interested in its own entry on the “CO-OP” disc, “Get Your Meat.”

For others represented on the disc, at the very least “CO-OP” has provided a classy way to approach the record and radio industry.

“I’ve always been very weak at that,” said Beth Fitchet, whose song, “Repay,” is the finest of the 19 tracks on the disc. Fitchet and her husband, Steve Wood, are both alumni of Honk, an Orange County band that had a major label recording career in the 1970s.

“I’ve always concentrated on playing my music, and I’m terrible at marketing,” Fitchet said. “Both Steve and I really don’t know how to do that, and this was an opportunity to pay a little money and have somebody else be our promoter for us. Maybe somebody will perk up their ears and like it.”

The styles on “CO-OP” range from the adult-pop of Fitchet and Wood to pacifist protest rock from Salt, a Los Angeles band, to the snappy, sardonic punk-pop of Mission Viejo’s Poodles Must Die.

The show tonight at Bogart’s offers a chance to hear many of the songs and performers from the album. In order of appearance, Carol Martini, Salt, George Lawton, Ted Waterhouse, The Girls (Fitchet’s vocal group), John Walker and X-Factor will play short sets, followed by longer sets from Exude, the Tearjerkers and Them Lonesome Tracks.

The idea, Rogala said, is to lend the “CO-OP” project an enjoyable, public dimension, instead of having it remain strictly a business proposition directed at radio and the music industry. “I want to have something a little more casual, a little more fun,” he said. “If the industry people we’ve invited want to come, fine. But this is kind of a celebration.”

CO-OP’s CD release party takes place tonight at 8:30 at Bogart’s, 6288 E. Pacific Coast Highway, Long Beach, in the Marina Pacifica Mall. Tickets: $5. Information: (213) 594-8975.

SEND HIM FORGET-ME-NOTS: James Harman had a couple of unusual experiences last Friday at the Belly Up in Solana Beach--one enjoyable, one not so pleasant.

The not-so-pleasant moment came before the show, when Harman realized that, for the first time in 30 years of playing the blues, he had showed up for a gig without bringing his harmonica and the special 1940s-vintage microphone he uses on stage.

“Whenever I start down the driveway (on the way to a show), I stop, just to make sure my harp’s there,” Harman said Tuesday.

But this time, hurrying out of his house on the way to some pre-concert business meetings, “I left it covered up with paper work,” he said. “Thirty years, and it finally happened.”

Harman got through the show with borrowed equipment, then resolved to operate from now on with two sets of harmonicas and microphones--one to keep at home, and another to keep in his band’s equipment truck, in case he should forget again.

On a more pleasant note, Harman and Walter Trout, two of the finest blues-rock talents in Orange County, marked a reconciliation at the Belly Up after many years of awkward, stand-offish relations. Trout’s band opened for the James Harman Band, the first time the two players had shared a stage since some late-’70s jam sessions at a small club in Costa Mesa.

Trout recalled Tuesday that he relocated from New Jersey to Orange County in 1973 with the specific aim of overwhelming Harman with his guitar ability and winning a spot in the Icehouse Blues Band, Harman’s band at the time. But Harman was not impressed by Trout’s prolific, fast-flurrying style. Trout did not suffer the rejection lightly.

“We went through some times where we were sort of like enemies--there was bad blood between us,” Trout said.

Although Harman and Trout both live in Huntington Beach, they had not been in contact for more than 10 years. But a few weeks ago, Trout said, Harman called him up to congratulate him on the release of his first album, “Life in the Jungle.”

“I was really moved” by Harman’s kind words, Trout said. “I thought, ‘This is great, we can re-establish our friendship.’ I’ve always had nothing but respect for the guy. I’ve known him a long time, and that bad blood between us was childish. It’s good to be his friend again.”

Trout said that his album, released only in Scandinavia, has done well in Europe but that U.S. labels have been cool toward it because of a stylistic mix that veers among traditional blues, pop-flavored ballads and rock ‘n’ roll.

“The blues purist labels are staying away from it (because of the rock songs), and the other labels are staying away from it because there are blues on it,” Trout said. “It’s like Catch-22.”

Trout’s solution will be to develop a U.S. following with live shows. Next month he’ll play shows in New Orleans and along the East Coast, his first U.S. tour since he left John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers in spring, 1989. Then Trout will head to Europe for further touring.

Opening Saturday at the Coach House for his old boss, Mayall, Trout showed in a passionate, fiercely energetic set that he and his band should have no problem winning an audience on the road.

The Walter Trout Band will play at its home club, Perq’s in Huntington Beach, on Sunday, with weekend stands coming up at Perq’s Jan. 25-28 and Feb. 1-4 before it leaves on tour.

The James Harman Band will headline Jan. 27 at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano.

ODD COUPLE: Mark Feb. 9 and 10 on your calendar if you like interesting musical contrasts. Headlining at the Coach House on the 9th and at Bogart’s on the 10th is Dick Dale, the surf guitar king who recently reverted to playing in a raw, power-trio format after years of performing with horn-driven show bands.

Dale’s trio approach was nothing less than exhilarating in his recent appearance at the Orange County Music for the Needy benefit.

Opening both nights will be Jonathan Richman, a one-of-a-kind solo performer whose songs and showmanship are full of gentle whimsy. Richman asked to be included on the bills with Dale, according to Coach House booking agent Ken Phebus.

In a recent song called “Fender Stratocaster,” Richman sings the praises of the very instrument that Dale helped popularize during the surf rock craze of the early 1960s--so there are some grounds for mutuality here. What would Richman’s classic Bostonian rock rave-up, “Roadrunner,” sound like with Dale drenching it in reverberating waves of Southern California surf guitar? It would sure be fun to find out.