Bands to Battle for Festival Spotlight : Local groups will compete at Bogart’s for a chance to play in an annual Austin, Tex., concert showcasing alternative music.

Bogart’s, which has staged occasional local-band battles in the past, will start the new year with some more competitive rocking.

The latest contest is dubbed “Texas Tuneup,” after its grand prize: a trip to Austin, Tex., to appear in a concert showcase at the annual South By Southwest Music Festival.

The competition is co-sponsored by the festival and the Pacific News & Review, a local weekly. For the second straight year, the publication will be able to choose a band from its Orange County-Long Beach circulation area to appear in one of the many showcase concerts at the Texas alternative music festival, which is known as SXSW for short.

“The place is crawling with record company talent scouts. A lot of bands have gotten signed as a result of being there,” said Randy Matin, editor and publisher of the News & Review.

In return for serving as a co-sponsor of SXSW (which mainly involves helping to spread the word about it), the News & Review has the right to sponsor a local band’s appearance there, Matin said.

Last year, Matin himself hand-picked Johnny Monster & the Nightmares as the News & Review’s sponsored band. That was a quick decision, Matin said: He learned on short notice that being an SXSW sponsor entitled the publication to place a band on the festival’s showcase roster. Impressed by a heated show that the Monsters, a comical (some would say boorish) horror-spoof band, put on at the Meadowlark Country Club, Matin sent them packing to Austin.

This time, Matin said, a contest seemed the better way to go, “mainly to call attention to the whole situation. We’re looking to get more involved all the time in the Orange County-Long Beach (music) scene, and call whatever attention we can to it.”

Steve Zepeda, concert booker at Bogart’s in Long Beach, is putting the Texas Tuneup shows together and choosing the contestants. Round 1 will take place Jan. 4, with Lovingkindness, This Great Religion, Busface and Olive Lawn competing. So far, Zepeda said, he has chosen Naked Soul and Trip the Spring as two of the four bands that will compete in a second round on Feb. 8. The two winners will then face off later in February to decide who will play at SXSW, which takes place March 21-24. To help cover the trip’s expenses, the winner will receive a portion of the contest’s door proceeds.

“I tried to pick four very diverse bands, completely different from each other, and see what happens,” for each preliminary round, Zepeda said. “I tried to pick bands that are new, that haven’t been around a long time. They’ve done well here, people like them, they’ve shown some promise. I’m trying to give the new crop of bands here a break.”

Zepeda will recruit a panel of contest judges from the record industry, music publications or independent record stores. Two years ago, when Bogart’s and the Pacific News & Review co-sponsored a contest that sent a local band (National People’s Gang) to an alternative-music festival in Toronto, the winner was determined by fan balloting conducted through the newspaper. Zepeda said that he wanted the outcome decided by the bands’ stage performances, not their electioneering ability.

Dr. Dream Records will also be sending a contingent of its bands to play at SXSW, including two Orange County bands, Eggplant and Cadillac Tramps.

Other rockers interested in playing in a showcase concert at the festival can apply directly to SXSW organizers by sending a tape, LP or compact disc of its material, plus a press kit, photo and biographical information, and a $5 application fee. The entry deadline is Jan. 4. Send the materials to SXSW Music Festival, P.O. Box 4999, Austin, Tex. 78765. Information: (512) 477-7979.

FINAL FURY? Tender Fury’s concert Saturday at Night Moves may well have been its last. The state of the band has become more than a little confused, according to singer Jack Grisham.

“We don’t know what we’re going to do. It’s just a mess,” Grisham said, ticking off disagreements over touring, concert length and musical direction, among other uncertainties besetting Tender Fury.

Amid the turmoil, Grisham said, he and Tender Fury bassist Randy Bradbury have managed to write an album’s worth of new songs, and are scheduled to start recording next week. But Grisham said he isn’t sure whether guitarist Dan Root and drummer Hunt Sales (who played with Todd Rundgren and Iggy Pop in the 1970s and more recently appeared as a member of David Bowie’s Tin Machine) will be involved.

Grisham said he has grown weary of the band’s weekly round of local shows, and wants to take Tender Fury’s act on the road. He attributes poor sales of “Garden of Evil,” the band’s second and most recent album, to its failure to go on a national tour.

“Hunt is older. He’s not willing to pile in a van with six people and live like pigs for two months,” Grisham said. “If you don’t do that, there’s no way to get sales going. I’m totally grateful to Hunt, he’s really helped me out a lot. But we’ve had no plan.”

Grisham says Tender Fury has an offer to tour in Europe in March. “I know I’m going,” the former T.S.O.L. punk rocker said, although it is uncertain who will accompany him. The same goes for the next album: “I’m going to get these songs out. But it’s just (a matter of) figuring out who to do them with, and under what name.”

TURNING IT DOWN: Some old-line Orange County punk rockers have been turning up in untypical musical settings.

Social Distortion, known for its high-voltage electric sets, broke out the acoustic guitars Tuesday afternoon at the tiny Doll Hut in Anaheim, club owner John Mello reports. SD played an impromptu rehearsal/concert as a warm-up for its appearance Friday night at the “Acoustic Christmas” benefit show at the Universal Amphitheatre. The band, which routinely sells out its Orange County concerts, “played to an audience of two alcoholics, one beer distributor and a few bartenders,” Mello said. “We kept it pretty low-key.”

At Bogart’s Friday, brothers Rikk Agnew, Frank Agnew and Alfie Agnew played their first concert as a threesome. Dating back to 1980, when Rikk and Frank were in the original Adolescents, members of the Agnew clan had played together in various combinations of two, but never as a trio. The Bogart’s show, fronted by Rikk, featured Frank on second guitar and backing vocals and Alfie drumming. Bassist Brad Jackman rounded out the band. The sparsely attended show had its spirited moments as the Agnews ran through material from Rikk’s two solo albums, plus a few Adolescents oldies. The high point of filial togetherness came when Rikk engaged Frank in a good-natured shin-kicking match.

“See what happens with your siblings up here? You (mess) around too much. That’s why I never had ‘em before,” Rikk announced. “It’s like being at home.”

MORE, PLEASE? A turnout of slightly more than 50 paying customers may not sound auspicious by pop music standards, but it was enough to leave the promoters of a Sunday afternoon traditional folk concert at the Anaheim Cultural Arts Center optimistic about doing more shows.

“We were well-pleased with the turnout, and the people were well-pleased” with the concert by Maryland-based folk singer Ed Trickett, reported Carolyn Russell, one of the concert’s organizers. “We’ll be doing more.”

Russell presented monthly folk concerts at her home in Garden Grove for three years until city officials shut them down in 1987, claiming they violated city zoning laws. Since then, Orange County residents who want to hear touring traditional folk acts have had only one place to turn locally: the occasional concert series at Shade Tree Stringed Instruments in Laguna Niguel, which presents a mix of local and national talent. Otherwise, Orange County folkies have had to drive to Riverside, San Diego County or Los Angeles.

Russell said that it may take a month or two of preparations and negotiations over performing space before she can launch a hoped-for schedule of monthly concerts. One problem with the Cultural Arts Center is that it also houses other, perhaps noisier groups at the same time folk shows are going on. “Down the hall we had Tahitian dancers doing some rumbling stuff” while Trickett was trying to play, Russell said.