Night Moves Dancing Out of Its Hard-Edge Niche : Rock: Huntington Beach club will stop booking the punk-oriented acts it has for 5 years. Top 40 will be its new staple.

Night Moves is pulling the plug on the loud, edgy, punk-oriented rock that had been the club’s staple for five years.

The club will have a last fling with alternative rock music in shows tonight by Superficial Love (the name that the original members of T.S.O.L. now play under) and Saturday by Tender Fury.

After that, Night Moves, at 5902 Warner Ave., will close for three weeks of remodeling, then reopen under a new, still undecided, name. The new, primarily Top 40-oriented music format will exclude the abrasive, punk-style music that was Night Moves’ signature--or, according to some, its stigma.

John Russo said Tuesday that he and his mother, Eva, and other family members are taking over operation of Night Moves from Ezra Joseph. Joseph had run the club since 1984 and featured original rock since the summer of 1986. He said Wednesday that he will maintain a financial interest in the club, with Eva Russo as his partner but will no longer take an out-front role in running it.

Speaking at the club, where renovations have already begun, John Russo said it will become a combination sports bar and music nightclub. Plans call for installing 40 television screens to cater to early evening sports fans, and a new sound and light system for a later-arriving Top 40 music audience.

“It looks like a black hole now,” Russo said of the 295-capacity club, a dark, smoky cavern of a place with a set of bat wings as its logo. Russo said he plans to spend $90,000 to $100,000 on renovations.

“We’re going to get a good, Top 40 clientele in there--copy bands that play normal music, not that punk rock crap,” Russo said. “I’ve put in too much money to have (the club’s fixtures) broke again” by rowdy fans.

Russo said that the Sunday night blues jams currently featured at Night Moves will continue. He is also considering keeping the current Wednesday night attraction, a Grateful Dead-style band called Cubensis that draws a Deadhead following.

“I don’t like the flower child stuff (as a musical style), but (Cubensis) brings in a good crowd, and they’re very mellow, nice people,” Russo said.

Russo said that he is open to having original rock bands on a weekly basis but that punk and hard rock would be excluded.

“We haven’t been doing well with (punk and alternative rock) for over 1 1/2 years now,” Joseph said in a separate interview. “Between Bogart’s and the Coach House, there was no room for us to squeeze in and get the name acts.”

Joseph had tried several times in recent years to change Night Moves’ format, bringing in oldies acts at one point, then introducing blues jams and dance nights and changing the name briefly to Foul Play. He was motivated partly by pressure from Huntington Beach police, who kept Night Moves under steady scrutiny and at various junctures cited the club for alleged noise violations and overcrowding (Joseph, who disputed those charges, said police pressure has eased this year).

But punk was the only reliable moneymaker at Night Moves, according to Jay Sheridan, an outside promoter who booked many of the shows there.

“It’s a hard club (for booking other forms of rock) because it’s got that reputation hanging over its head,” Sheridan said. A skinhead contingent would occasionally frequent the club, he said.

“Once a club has that kind of reputation, it’s kind of hard to break the tradition,” he said. According to Sheridan, there was an attitude among some alternative rock fans that “ ‘I don’t want to take my girlfriend to Night Moves; it’s a punk club and we’ll be harassed.’ The only thing I could make work (economically) was garage or punk rock.”

With few shows by touring acts, Night Moves served as a platform for ground-floor rock bands to gain some live experience and begin building a following.

“For a while, we played there a lot,” said Jamie Reidling, drummer for the Cadillac Tramps, which is now one of the most popular bands on the Orange County scene. “It’s one of those clubs you try to get out of. When there’s only certain places you can play, you’ve got to take those.”

For fans of alternative rock, outlets left in Orange County include the Doll Hut, a tiny bar in Anaheim, and the Friday night New Klub on the Block at the Newport Roadhouse in Costa Mesa. Promoter Craig McGahey of NKOTB recently began an experiment with Sunday afternoon shows as well, and tonight he will promote a punk nostalgia show at Old World in Huntington Beach featuring Rik L Rik, the Crowd and the Simpletones.

“If the demand is there, we probably would do other shows” to pick up some of the slack left by Night Moves’ format switch, McGahey said. “I hope the (Old World) show works out, so we can do other shows there as well. As long as there’s no hassles and destruction, and its a fun thing. If it’s mellow, I’m sure we can do it.”

With the change at Night Moves, bands looking for a start on the Orange County grass-roots alternative rock scene will have to look even more toward Bogart’s, the Long Beach club just over the county line that has been the prime stage for local bands in recent years.

The club recently added to its local rock offerings by launching a Monday night series dubbed “Monte’s Garage.” The shows feature four bands each week, with Bazooka, Glue Factory, Sort of Quartet and Illustrious Theater Orchestra playing Monday.

“I’m trying to open it up for more local bands to get in,” said Tom Holland, the Bogart’s employee who is running the Monday night series (Holland goes by the name Monte Vista as front man of Lovingkindness, a local band that specializes in satirical sendups of pop hits). “We get so many demo tapes at Bogart’s” from local bands clamoring for a spot on the club’s schedule. Holland said that between Monte’s Garage and Bogart’s Bohemian Cafe, which features local bands in the club’s side room on Fridays and Saturdays, “that’s a lot of slots open for new bands to get a start.”