POP MUSIC REVIEW : O.C. Rockers Cross County Line to Play

Although many things may come easier for youths within Orange County’s relatively affluent embrace, that advantage seems to reverse itself when they pick up a guitar. With a local political climate that hasn’t been friendly to original music clubs, there is practically no place for groups to play. Bogart’s, the only full-time venue that consistently presents original O.C.-raised music, is safely over the county line in Long Beach.

The forced insularity of the local scene is no musician’s dream, but it has sometimes forged bands with distinctive visions. A strong case in point was the show Friday at Bogart’s with Don’t Mean Maybe, Eggplant and Bazooka.

Although the show marked the release of Don’t Mean Maybe’s debut “Live Sample” album, the trio already has been dismissed by some as being Minutemen’s second-hands. Their convoluted rhythms and fierce attack Friday did beg some comparison, but the trio cut its own sure path through and beyond the Minutemen’s sprawling influence.

Still a bit unformed lyrically, guitarist Mark Andrea, drummer Jeff Fairbanks and bassist John Hawthorne pumped a rampaging sense of life into the skitter-rhythmed “Live Sample,” “Happy Beans”--an exuberant celebration of coffee--and even a version of Zep’s “Houses of the Holy,” that was made to sound like an outtake from Captain Beefheart’s “Clear Spot.”

Throughout, Hawthorne and Fairbanks careened through torturous rhythmic changes, as Andrea tackled intricately convoluted lines on his psychedelically painted Telecaster. Their influences may have showed overmuch in places--the vocal harmonies on “A Man” sounded even more like the Meat Puppets than their cover of the Puppets’ “Listen to the Rain”--but far more often the band distinguished itself by finding its own way through a barely charted musical wilderness.

Eggplant was only scarcely less engaging. The quartet displayed not so great an ensemble spark, but boasted some well-crafted, pleasingly quirky songwriting and Jon Melkerson’s cliche-free guitar excursions.

Both Melkerson and fellow guitarist Jeff Beals have a distinctive way with a tune. Featured in the set were Beals’ “Rolling Stones,” a sardonic look at copycat rockers, and Melkerson’s “Confidant,” a touchingly simple song about insecurity. Although only a handful of their other songs were as memorable, they were consistently fetching musically, particularly on the opening instrumental passages of “Bears” and on a cover of Tom Verlaine’s “Breakin’ in My Heart.”

Both groups were hard-pressed to match the on-stage fire of openers Bazooka. Featuring ex-El Grupo Sexo saxmen Tony Atherton and Vince Meghrouni (who has switched to playing drums ridiculously well) and bassist Bill Crawford, the recently formed instrumental trio played a raging, revelatory set that fused post-bop and post-punk musics.

Unlike some rock-based players who cop the jazz attitude without working up the accompanying chops, these three are musical monsters. The riotous rhythmic propulsion they gave to Art Pepper’s “Red Car” may be far from what Pepper ever intended, but it still swung like mad, and displayed a musical passion that could scare many a fusion band into retirement.

Their own compositions ran even wilder, including the Middle-Eastern-influenced “Taboobi” (which featured Atherton blowing both tenor and alto saxes simultaneously, in a nod to Roland Kirk) and the rocking “In Defense of Phallic Power Totems.” Bazooka will appear next at Long Beach’s Beneath Broadway on April 14, and shouldn’t be missed.