Clubs Keep Pop From Going Flat : 1992 THE YEAR IN REVIEW: O.C. Pop: The Ups and Downs of a Tumultuous Year.

Let’s begin this look back on the past year’s events in Orange County pop with two highly speculative peeks into the future.

The year is 1996, and Bill Clinton, saxophone in hand, is campaigning for reelection in Orange County. The main stop is Rhythm Cafe in Santa Ana, where Clinton hops on stage to blow a few R & B licks with the night’s headliner, James Brown.

In a subsequent press conference, Clinton praises Cafe entrepreneur Curt Olson, who plunged big bucks into the concert economy during the dark, recessionary days of 1992 and subsequently saw his investment pay off handsomely. Now the plush Santa Ana venue is one of the most acclaimed concert clubs in the land, the showpiece in a hot national chain of showplaces. The President has come here to bask in the glow of reflected success, claiming the growth of Rhythm Cafe and its off-shoots as evidence that Clintonomics deserves four more years.

Down in San Juan Capistrano, the Coach House is featuring dollar beer night and an obscure local bar band, free of charge.

Then again, the future could look something like this:

It’s New Year’s Eve, a year from today. The Coach House has Social Distortion back to ring in 1994, and the place is packed at $30 a ticket. For rock fans who want to go clubbing, there isn’t any other option. Rhythm Cafe closed shortly after its first anniversary show on Halloween, brought down by its ill-timed entry into a stubbornly wretched Southern California economy. Once more, the hope that Orange County could support more than one major, all-purpose club for pop music has proved to be an illusion. The Coach House remains the only show in town--as it has been since it inherited that title when the old Golden Bear folded in 1986.

In a year when other major pop venues in Orange County scaled back operations as they were rocked by recession, the top story was the opening of Rhythm Cafe and its operators’ bullish plans in the face of a bearish economy. On Halloween night, Olson, a wealthy developer of commercial real estate, opened the Santa Ana flagship operation and a sister club in San Diego. Olson has estimated his total investment at $2.5 million, including the cost of opening a third Rhythm Cafe in an as-yet undisclosed location early in 1993. Long-range plans call for dotting the national pop landscape with still more Rhythm Cafes.

In the coming year, it will be interesting to see how Rhythm Cafe’s newly kindled competition with the Coach House plays out. Will the spacious, comfortable, uncommonly well-appointed Rhythm Cafe wilt in less than a year, like such previous challengers as Hamptons (which occupied the same building) and Peppers Golden Bear? Or will it be able to compete with the highly regarded Coach House, thereby broadening the choices for Orange County concert-goers?

After two months, says Michael Feder, the Rhythm Cafe partner who oversees daily operations, the new club is “pretty much on target” in terms of projected concert attendance. The partners’ thinking, Feder said, was that “if we could sort of coast through (the down economy), if things turned up we’d be in terrific shape. I think that’s still true. When you consider we’re 2 months old, we’re seeing things happen we didn’t expect to see for six months.”

With shows by Los Lobos, Ron Wood, George Carlin and X (which plays tonight), and concerts next month by the Neville Brothers and B.B. King, Rhythm Cafe already has shown the ability to land higher-profile attractions that eluded the Coach House’s previous, unsuccessful challengers. On the other hand, not everything has worked: Sparse ticket sales prompted Rhythm Cafe to cancel shows by several acts that hadn’t previously established a fan base in Orange County. And the Coach House, with seven years of goodwill in the concert industry, continues to have a more active schedule of bookings.

As the competition continues, both clubs face a slack economy that limits the number of hot touring attractions. Managers on both sides say they already have embarked on a costly bidding war for talent that threatens to jack up ticket prices for the acts that are available--a potentially crippling development given the fact that many Orange County residents are watching their wallets. But if both clubs can survive and make money--a far more attractive scenario from a music fan’s point of view than the winner-take-all schemes imagined above--Orange County will have more nights like tonight, when the club competition has resulted in two fine choices: X at the Rhythm Cafe and Social Distortion at the Coach House.

Gary Folgner, the Coach House’s owner, saw the recession and not competition from the Rhythm Cafe as his chief enemy during 1992.

“It was like two different years. We had a fairly decent start, and then we began to see the (effects of a worsening) economy in August and September,” Folgner said. “One month kept getting worse then the next. If I were (Rhythm Cafe), I wouldn’t worry about (the Coach House), but about what’s going on in the marketplace. People are more cost-conscious. There’s not that many dollars out there for entertainment. We’re off probably 10% for the year, but 30% for the last six months.”

One sign of a recession year, Folgner said, was ticket-buyers’ reluctance to shell out for high-priced marquee names. Ray Charles’ annual three-night stand at the Coach House is usually an easy sell-out, but this time fans balked at paying nearly $40 a ticket and seats went begging. Glenn Frey and Lindsey Buckingham, two more big names you don’t normally expect to see in clubs, sold out their shows--but not with the ease Folgner had come to expect in similar instances. Consequently, the Coach House tried to book more local bands and touring alternative-rock acts--shows in which ticket prices could be kept to about $10.

The poor economy also took a toll on the county’s two big outdoor amphitheaters. The Pacific Amphitheatre staged 30 concerts, down from 35 in 1991, and reported an attendance drop of 30%, from 357,000 to 250,000. Irvine Meadows’ schedule tapered off from 43 shows in 1991 to 31 in ’92 (including five dates each year by the Pacific Symphony). Irvine reported a 26% drop in attendance for the year, from 440,000 to 325,000.

The Lollapalooza ’92 tour was the season’s hottest outdoor ticket, with three sold-out dates at Irvine Meadows. Ozzy Osbourne’s season-closing two-night stand in November was the Pacific’s big hit of the season. But such successes were rare.

The two venues’ problems were compounded by the decision of several big-name acts to play in stadiums rather than in amphitheaters. Genesis, the Cure and high-powered double-bills featuring Guns N’ Roses/Metallica and Elton John/Eric Clapton were booked into stadiums in Los Angeles County. Individually, each act could have done strong business at Irvine or the Pacific. U2 was the one stadium-hopping rock band that did come to O.C. Its Nov. 14 show at Anaheim Stadium closed the U.S. installment of the Irish band’s “Zoo TV” tour, drawing an announced crowd of 48,760 fans. It was the first rock concert at the stadium since 1987.

The hottest concert of the year, in terms of demand versus availability, was Billy Ray Cyrus’ June 16 stop at the Crazy Horse Steak House in Santa Ana. The 500 tickets for Cyrus’s two sets sold out within 35 minutes, and Fred Reiser, the club’s co-owner, said that the Crazy Horse received more than 5,500 calls from fans eager to witness the country stud’s achy-breaky hip-shake. Reiser figured he could have sold 10,000 tickets, if he’d had them to sell.

While the most prominent rock venues had their problems, 1992 brought some hopeful developments on the grass-roots scene.

Bogart’s in Long Beach remained the indispensable hub of the local alternative-music scene, with its splendid mix of touring headliners and local acts. Developing Orange County bands could get their first exposure in Bogart’s Wednesday night “Monte’s Garage” and Thursday “Gabe’s $1 Cover Night” promotions--both geared toward lesser-known bands--or in the club’s intimate second room, the Bohemian Cafe. Those that showed promise in these talent-incubators could graduate to opening slots for major bands. O.C. acts including the Cadillac Tramps, Xtra Large and Primitive Painters have attained headliner status in Bogart’s 300-capacity main room.

In addition to Bogart’s, the year brought a relative abundance of new playing opportunities for bands on what traditionally has been a venue-starved rock scene. Club 5902 opened in the summer and emerged as an attractive spot for local bands and occasional national acts to play. Cleaned up and remodeled, the Huntington Beach venue was a significantly better place to see a band than its previous incarnation, Night Moves. The tiny Doll Hut in Anaheim, a club as close to the grass-roots as you can hope to find, went through some turmoil among its owners that curtailed bookings over the summer. But the Doll Hut emerged by autumn with business difficulties sorted out and a full schedule of live original rock offerings restored. The larger, but similarly no-frills Newport Roadhouse in Costa Mesa continued to house New Klub on the Block, with its hard-edged alternative-rock offerings.

In Newport Beach, the Warehouse Restaurant began to spice what had been a steady schedule of cover bands with original rock and reggae attractions, including some touring Jamaican acts.

Listening to locally produced music while gulping locally brewed beer became a popular pastime at the Fullerton Hofbrau and the Heritage Brewing Co. in Dana Point. The Hofbrau jumped on the alternative-rock bandwagon, staging shows by local bands on weekend nights. The Heritage Brewing Co. continued its schedule of roots-oriented music, serving as a regular stop for such acts as the James Harman Band, Luke & the Locomotives and the Paladins, and rounding out a full schedule with reggae nights and occasional slots for local alternative rockers. “Our cover’s real low. Acts that most places charged $10 or $15 for, we were charging $5,” said Mark Liddell, who books the Heritage. “ ’92 was a really good year.”

Goodies, Fullerton’s bastion of pay-to-play hard rock, went out of business during the fall, leaving the Marquee in Westminster and Jezebel’s in Anaheim as the county’s main head-bangers’ ballrooms. Far more greatly missed will be the Anaheim Cultural Arts Center, the closing of which left the Living Tradition, a promising monthly series of traditional folk concerts, without a suitable home. The series’ promoters hope to resume in ‘93, using alternate digs, but the center’s closing was a blow. That left the warm and cozy Shade Tree Stringed Instruments in Laguna Niguel as the place to turn for fans of acoustic music and traditional folk.

Two of the finest, most accomplished bands in Orange County could be heard regularly in cozy, neighborhood barrooms far off the careerist glamour track that dominates the thinking of too many Southern California rockers. When not touring in Europe, where it has built a considerable following, the Walter Trout Band held forth just about every weekend at its longtime performing home, Perq’s in downtown Huntington Beach. And Chris Gaffney & the Cold Hard Facts continue as the regular Tuesday and Wednesday night attraction at the Canyon Inn in Yorba Linda.

Speaking of the glamour track, the Hard Rock Cafe chain opened a new restaurant in Newport Beach’s Fashion Island. Besides housing rock music memorabilia, the Hard Rock occasionally has housed actual rock music. It offered free concerts by such highly regarded acts as the Neville Brothers, the Rembrandts, the Jeff Healey Band and Live, which plays there tonight.

The Orange County Performing Arts Center completed another year untainted by music of the rock era, unless you want to count the circumscribed version of rock involved in a touring Broadway musical based on the life of Buddy Holly. With Saxophone Bill about to be sworn in as President, we’re apt to see rock in the White House before we see rock in the Segerstrom family’s Red House.

The county did witness its first major rap concert in many moons, a daylong hip-hop festival at Santa Ana Stadium headlined by Cypress Hill. The heat was on at the August concert--but it was heat radiating from a scorching sun, not the heat of violence. About 4,000 peaceful fans attended the show, the first hard-core rap concert in the county since December 1990, when a shooting incident outside the Celebrity Theatre ended that Anaheim venue’s run as a frequent venue for hard-core rap.

Social Distortion was Orange County’s best-selling rock band of 1992, touring steadily from March through November and getting prominent feature treatment in Rolling Stone as it sold about 300,000 copies of its fourth album, “Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell.” The album even attracted the attention of People magazine, which gave it a nod as one of the year’s best. Stryper, the county’s most successful rock band of the ‘80s, went through a down year as singer Michael Sweet left for a solo career. Xtra Large, No Doubt and Slapbak all issued major-label debut albums.

The year also saw the breakup of T.S.O.L. and Tender Fury, two historically linked mainstays of the local scene. Joe Wood and Jack Grisham, the bands’ respective leaders, announced plans to carry on with new solo projects. Other casualties of ’92 were the fine power-pop band 3D Picnic, whose leader, Don Burnet, joined Thelonious Monster, and the punk group Olivelawn, which re-emerged in a new incarnation as Fluf.

The year’s nicest surprise was the reunion of the Pontiac Brothers. In the ‘80s, the Fullerton band, with its Stones-meet-Replacements sound, made a zesty, if under-appreciated, contribution to college rock. In a one-shot return, just for old-time’s sake, the Pontiacs recorded “Fuzzy Little Piece of the World,” one of the year’s best albums from any quarter. Along with fine releases by Gaffney and Social Distortion, the Pontiacs’ effort provided an extremely strong troika of albums to top the 1992 list of locally generated pop.

The year saw the usual array of benefit concerts, one of the biggest being a show headlined by Social Distortion at the Hollywood Palladium to help defray the legal expenses of concert promoter Gary Tovar. Before running afoul of federal drug laws in a marijuana smuggling case in Arizona, Tovar, the former Huntington Beach resident who founded Goldenvoice Presents, had been instrumental in nurturing the Southern California punk and alternative-rock scene.

Ongoing charity was the goal of the Orange County Musicians Foundation, launched in ’92 to help musicians who lack health insurance meet emergency medical expenses. Greg Topper, the veteran nightclub bandleader who spearheaded the foundation, reported that it issued three grants totaling $1,755 in its start-up year.

The year’s saddest story was the death on Dec. 2 of Chaz Ramirez, a record producer and engineer who worked with a wide array of Orange County talent at his Casbah Studio in Fullerton. Ramirez, who died at 39 after an accidental fall, supervised album or demo sessions for some of the county’s best-known rock ‘n’ roll names, including Social Distortion, Stryper, the Adolescents and the Pontiac Brothers. He was known for his humor and generosity and for the enthusiasm he brought to helping raw beginners develop their talent. He’ll be greatly missed.

* THE YEAR’S BEST

Our pop critics list the choice albums and Orange County concerts. F2, F3