Smells Like a Hunt for the New Nirvana

Greta . . . Drive Like Jehu . . . Rocket From the Crypt . . . Candlebox . . . Green Apple Quickstep. . . .

Don’t feel bad if you haven’t heard of any of these bands--but a lot of record executives are going to feel plenty bad if you don’t hear a lot about them in 1993.

These are the some of the new alternative rock acts that record companies have been racing after with big bucks in hand in hopes of finding the next Nirvana or Pearl Jam.

Here’s a rundown:

* Greta, a Los Angeles-based group whose lead singer, Paul Plagens, was living on the streets just a few years ago, signed a six-album deal with Mercury last month after intense courting by half a dozen major labels. Total value of the deal: a reported $4 million. One wide-eyed fan calls the sound “a cross between U2 and the Beatles.” Others might, more modestly, describe it as a Beatlesque Pearl Jam.

* San Diego’s Drive Like Jehu and Rocket From the Crypt, two aggressive acts that share a key member, John Reis, are about to finalize a tandem deal for three albums each with Interscope Records.

* Seattle’s Candlebox and Green Apple Quickstep are the latest “finds” from the Northwest’s seemingly bottomless well of rock talent. Both are expected to sign big-bucks deals soon, with SBK and RCA the leaders in the Candlebox race. Green Apple Quickstep benefits from being managed by Kelly Curtis, who also guides the careers of Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains.

Why are companies still willing to throw millions after bands during these recessionary times?

Says Rosemary Carroll, the attorney who negotiated the Rocket/Jehu deal, “It’s the lemming instinct of A&R; people. Once you get one interested no one wants to be left out, so then you have two interested and then you have a lot interested, and you have a bidding war.”

But that’s a risky impulse.

Five L.A. bands that were the darlings of earlier bidding wars have been quietly dropped by their record companies after failing to connect with audiences, including Little Caesar and Junkyard (both by Geffen Records), Love/Hate (Columbia) and funk-rockers Momma Stud (Virgin). But at least those bands got to put out albums. Fisherman, an L.A. folk-rock group, has been dropped by Elektra before its Nashville recording project even made it to disc.