Oh, What a Difference an Amphitheater Makes : Irvine Meadows, which opened 10 years ago this week, has brought rewards to rock fans, but it and the Pacific also have helped shut out smaller acts.

It was 10 years ago this week that big-time rock ‘n’ roll became firmly entrenched in Orange County.

With the Charlie Daniels Band and David Lindley & El Rayo X doing the honors, Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre, the county’s first large venue built specifically for concerts, opened on Aug. 21, 1981.

The anniversary is passing without hoopla, at least for now.

“It kind of came and went,” said Robert Geddes, the managing partner of Irvine Meadows since it opened. “I woke up in the middle of the night (recently), and it occurred to me that the 10th anniversary of Irvine came and went.”

With the concert business suffering a severe summer drought across the nation, “I don’t think this is the kind of year that anybody wants to celebrate anything,” Geddes said. “I suspect we’ll do something a little belated at the end of the season, (marking) the 10th season rather than the actual date.”

Certainly, the advent of the 15,000-capacity Irvine Meadows, and, two years later, the 18,764-capacity Pacific Amphitheatre in Costa Mesa, has brought rewards for rock fans here. Together, the two venues have given pop fans 60 to 100 shows to choose from annually.

“It brought music on a grand scale to Orange County when there was none,” said Jim Guerinot, who started promoting grass-roots punk concerts in local clubs in the early ‘80s. Guerinot went on to work for Avalon Attractions, which books Irvine Meadows, and is now vice president of marketing and artist development at A&M; Records.

“I remember going to see shows at the Anaheim Convention Center, but you didn’t see a steady stream of shows,” Guerinot said. “All of a sudden, major bands were popping into Orange County on a regular basis. As a fan, it was fantastic. I could see shows without driving into L.A.”

But if “music on a grand scale” has thrived in the county, music on a small scale has sputtered.

When Irvine Meadows opened, Orange County had one club, the Golden Bear, where established touring acts called regularly. The county also had a vibrant local punk-rock scene centered on the Cuckoo’s Nest in Costa Mesa.

Today, there is still only one club booking national attractions full time: the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano. As for the local rock scene (excluding metal and hard rock specialty clubs whose pay-to-play policies render them unworthy of serious consideration), it continues to lead a fitful, between-the-cracks existence. The main beacon for local rockers for the past few years has been Bogart’s, across the county line in Long Beach.

The result is an uncommonly top-heavy pop scene. Established stars come to Orange County regularly to feast in a large, affluent market. But we get only a smattering of the smaller, intriguing up-and-comers who stop in Los Angeles. Meanwhile, indigenous bands head north or stay in their garages.

Have the amphitheaters, like a couple of towering Sequoias, crowded out the saplings?

Not according to Ken Phebus, concert director of the Coach House.

“The attention (the amphitheaters) bring can only improve the overall profile of pop music in Orange County,” Phebus said. “It gets people thinking about going to a show.”

But Phebus laments the inability of the Coach House to book some of those intriguing up-and-comers.

On that score, Guerinot said, location is hurting Orange County’s prospects. The object on a pop act’s first trip to the Southern California is not so much to sell concert tickets, Guerinot said, as to impress the right people in the media and in the band’s own record company. “You’ve got to sell them to the company first, the industry second, and the consumer third.”

A trip to Los Angeles takes care of the first two priorities; Orange County, with its wealth of consumers but dearth of radio stations and national print media, is more likely to be a stop on a second or third touring go-round. By then, a band with good prospects has raised its media profile and is ready to cash in on the county’s lucrative consumer market.

As for the local scene’s failure to thrive, one can point to the county’s ideal of placid suburban living, which has often come into conflict with rock clubs that, as rock clubs are apt to do, generate a degree of noise and rowdiness.

“(Rock) is uncontrolled, and (Orange County officials) want everything controlled,” said Sam Lanni, whose Huntington Beach club, Safari Sam’s died in the mid-’80s when city officials refused to renew its entertainment permit. “The big places have money. They can fight these problems. You can’t just walk in and pull the Pacific Amphitheatre’s entertainment permit. They’ll be in court the next day with a battery of attorneys, and there’s some kind of compromise worked out.”

With a 20,000-seat indoor arena in the works in Anaheim, the large-scale thinking introduced here 10 years ago (and welcomed by officialdom) remains in effect. One can only hope that imaginative pop entrepreneurs with smaller things in mind will surface as well--and that local officials will prove more amenable than they have in the past. Otherwise, the Orange County pop scene will continue to be a lopsided, top-heavy, incomplete thing.

Irvine Meadows’ Geddes may have forgotten the venue’s 10th anniversary because he has other concert-related business on his mind. Along with Irving Azoff, a record-industry magnate and fellow partner in Irvine Meadows, Geddes has started a company called Music Dome Ventures. Its objective is to dot the national landscape with identical 15,000-seat outdoor concert shells with retractable domes that would allow all-weather, year-round use.

Geddes and Azoff are seeking approval to build a dome in Tampa, Fla. Geddes said they are also exploring the possibility of a dome in Los Angeles County. The chief selling points, said Geddes, are a longer, more comfortable concert season than outdoor venues can afford, and sightlines, acoustics and staging facilities superior to indoor arenas built mainly for sports.

Having presented occasional local band showcases in the past, the Coach House is going to try to make them a more frequent fixture.

“I’d like to do at least two or three a month,” said Marc Solferino, who recently took over responsibility for booking local acts. Ticket prices would be kept in the $3 to $5 range, he said.

Solferino, who plays guitar in a San Clemente band, Loveless, said he was encouraged by the turnout for an Aug. 7 show by Standing Hawthorne, a South County band that drew 329 paying fans to the 380-capacity club.

Local reggae bands On Root and Mo Dn Irie will play at the Coach House Sept. 5, and the Haze and Bulbous will play a free show (with a 21 and over age limit) on Sept. 12.

Solferino is seeking tapes from local bands interested in playing at the club. “If they’re going to work to promote it and do their best and not flake out, I’m going to let them play.”