San Diego, Alternatively : They’re young, disaffected, and suddenly they have record contracts. Can a few post-punk bands turn San Diego into the next capitol of alternative rock?

A passenger on an airliner approaching San Diego’s Lindbergh Field might notice, as the plane skims unnervingly close to the rooftops along Kettner Avenue, a crowd clotting the entrance to a mud-colored storefront with a white electric sign announcing, evocatively, the Casbah.

Sandwiched between a radiator shop and an electrical substation, the Casbah is a thimble-sized nightclub decorated in Ironic Ranch House: brick-faced hearth, cheesy tiki-style hanging lamps and a bar dispensing Harp and Guinness in pint glasses. Directly across the street, the roar from the southbound lanes of the I-5 competes with the scream of 727s blasting off from Lindbergh.

Casbah patrons seldom hear either. That’s because the bar’s lilliputian stage is Ground Zero for a clutch of top-volume, guitar-wrangling and idiosyncratic local bands that have, without so much as one of their records making the national pop charts, wrested from Seattle the mantle of Coolest Alternative Rock City in America. Seemingly overnight, San Diego--Sea World San Diego, “America’s Finest City” San Diego, talent-drained-Padres San Diego--has been all but anointed, to its denizens’ astonishment and occasional disgust, the Next Big Thing.

The country’s sixth-largest city, San Diego has long languished in the cultural shadow cast by Los Angeles and San Francisco, a state of affairs that isn’t helped by a reputation for snoozing conservatism and the dominant presence of the military.

“The military takes up half the city,” says John Reis, a guitarist in Rocket From the Crypt and Drive Like Jehu, the preeminent local bands. “It’s boring. Maybe what we’re unconsciously doing is making it a fun place for us to be in.”

But if San Diego has never been mistaken for the East Village, the hipness scale finally seems to be tipping in its favor. Independent theaters have sprung up to challenge the hegemony led by the tradition-bound Old Globe Theatre. The La Jolla Playhouse, with Pete Townshend in temporary residence, launched a stage adaptation of the Who’s “Tommy,” which snagged a clutch of Tonys after its move to Broadway last April. And during the past decade, San Diego has established a local jazz and blues scene, a reggae scene, a coffeehouse scene, a just-below-ground rave scene--enough scenes, in fact, to fill three hours of nominations and surreally banal acceptance speeches at this summer’s third annual San Diego Music Awards. The Grammys-styled charity event briefly turned into a free-for-all when elements of the alternative-rock scene--that is, the Casbah scene--drunkenly questioned the hometown credentials of some of the winners.

It’s these fractious, punk-influenced bands, which play the Casbah, a club downtown called Bodie’s and at sporadic all-ages parties at venues as unlikely as the San Diego Women’s Club, that are giving the city a national buzz. But the musicians groan at the notion of a San Diego sound. While there is no obvious thread, like Seattle’s doomy, heavy-metalish grunge, a number of bands play hard-charging guitar-driven songs with melodic pop overtones. Subjects range from Fluf’s “Hecho del Diablo,” a broadside at Los Angeles, to Rocket From the Crypt’s “Hippy Dippy Do” about shopping-mall counterculturalists.

The music and the scene have lured L.A.’s major label A&R; reps, who, for the first time in memory, are pointing their BMWs south in hopes of reeling in a platinum trophy. So far, Rocket From the Crypt, Drive Like Jehu, Rust, Inch, Trumans Water and Lucy’s Fur Coat have signed with national labels. “It’s kind of amazing,” marvels Tim Mays, the Casbah’s 39-year-old co-owner and bemused winner, with former partner and local rock promoter Harlan Schiffman, of the music awards’ Lifetime Achievement citation. “They didn’t invite this Seattle comparison. There’s just a lot of good bands here. For whatever reason, they’re getting recognized.”

Now, according to Gary Hustwit, founder of the Rockpress Directory, a local musicians’ guide, and organizer of San Diego’s Independent Music Seminar convention, “Every jerk attorney and manager calls and says, ‘I want to come down and check it out. Who’s hot? Who should I sign?’ Every day I get a label call. It’s getting overblown.” Adds Chris Morris, a senior writer at Billboard: “There’s a ton of talent. I hope for their sake that people don’t think this is just a load of hype. Fortunately, most of the bands getting signed are quite excellent.”

Other observers are less sanguine. “I haven’t seen anything I’m totally blown away by--there’s a lot more fat on the bone and not as much meat as people think,” says an executive at a major record label, who nevertheless requested anonymity because “we’ve got to sign somebody out of there.”

So it is that some musicians on the scene, with only the most rudimentary musical skills, suddenly find themselves signed to contracts with multinational record companies. “We can all barely play our instruments,” laughs Lucy’s Fur Coat guitarist Tony Sanfilippo. “We don’t realize the position we’re in--that we just got signed, that we’re about to tour with a huge booking agent.”

The musicians make a show of dissing the hype and the parade of out-of-towners suddenly in their midst. “Everybody that comes down here wants this place to be like Seattle,” says Petey X, bassist in Rocket From the Crypt. “Seattle Scene! San Diego Scene!” he grumbles about the carpetbaggers from Los Angeles and beyond. “They’re so full of it. I don’t think anyone’s come down here and made any sense out of anyone.”

The major-label signings have done for San Diego what Heidi Fleiss did for Hollywood--turned an uninvited spotlight on what had largely been a private affair among friends. “Groups stick together; that’s what makes the scene here,” says Otis Barthoulameu, aka O, guitarist and singer for Fluf.

“It’s basically the musicians, people who write for local magazines, people who make T-shirts for the bands,” says Cristina Garcia, owner of Cafe Chabalaba, a coffeehouse frequented by scenesters. Lately, Garcia has noticed an increasing overlap with the city’s other pop-cultural klatches, including dance-club ravers and hard-core environmentalist/vegetarians. (Surfers tend to stick to the beachside bars and clubs.) “I see a few more Navy guys,” Garcia adds, “and you’ve got a gay rocker crowd that’s coming out.”

The fact that outsiders are examining the scene for cultural cues is, for some, an ominous turn. “The worst thing to come out of this is that it might be losing the whole sense of intimacy,” says John Reis, of Rocket From the Crypt, whose signing to Interscope Records in 1992, after a major-label bidding war, kicked off the current brouhaha. “San Diego’s been put on a pedestal for everyone to come down and see. For some bands, it’s like, ‘Tonight’s very important to us because so-and-so is in the audience.’ Or, ‘Tonight I don’t care what happens even if so-and-so is here because I hate the whole music industry.’ Either way, there’s a reaction. It’s not honest. It’s a change.”

A PLEASANT TWILIGHT BREEZE WHISTLES OVER AN AUDIENCE OF 1,200 gathered at the outdoor theater at Humphrey’s, a bayside resort hotel on Shelter Island, at this summer’s San Diego Music Awards. (Winners are crowned by popular vote from ballots published in the San Diego Reader.) Several dozen nominees in 24 categories--everything from Best Dixieland/Traditional/Swing to Best Alternative Rock--have been crammed onto a program apparently designed to slight no one’s musical persuasion. The crowd is, to say the least, diverse: Middle-aged couples in night-on-the-town silks and suits mix with alternative rock scenesters in T-shirts and campy formal wear.

In the days preceding the event, members of the latter had strenuously pointed out the irretrievable lameness of a local awards show, the delicious joke of being nominated alongside the likes of Dan Terry and the Horns of San Diego. Nevertheless, they have shown up, and many can be found milling around the bar at the back of the audience. Outsiders and ironists by temperament, they mix uneasily with mainstream San Diego’s evening of self-congratulation. Something is bound to give, and it does.

“These guys have a problem over here,” scolds “Rock ‘n’ Roll” Peg Pollard, a San Diego disc jockey, from the stage. It’s just been announced--to boos and catcalls of “Fakers!”--that the Stone Temple Pilots have won Album of the Year and a melee has erupted just in front of the stage. Somewhere beneath the jostling security guards and bystanders, Dave Jass, singer and guitarist in Uncle Joe’s Big Ol’ Driver, is probably regretting rushing the stage in a haze of beer and wounded local pride to announce, as he had twice earlier in the evening, that the just-named winners are not, in fact, true San Diego musicians.

The Stone Temple Pilots--a band that first performed in 1990 in Los Angeles under the name Mighty Joe Young--cut their teeth playing clubs in San Diego, according to the group’s record company bio, “away from the glitz of the Sunset Strip” before signing with Atlantic in 1992. But many San Diego musicians accuse the group of vastly overstating its S.D. connection to bask in the scene’s cool alternative glow. “I didn’t know who they were until they started claiming San Diego,” says Rocket’s Petey X. (A petition was even circulated to remove STP’s name from the nominees for the San Diego Music Awards.)

“The Stone Pilots did a show last night in Hawaii,” Pollard continues, plainly miffed, as Jass is hustled away and the audience marks time. “(STP’s) Dean (Deleo) really wanted to fly in for this award. But he couldn’t do it, man.”

“Dean says he knows he’s not from San Diego personally,” begins Josh Higgins, bass player for Honey Glaze, who, along with Pollard, is accepting the award on behalf of the Stone Temple Pilots.

Pollard interrupts, screeching, ‘Oh, he only lived here for eight years. It doesn’t count, right?”

“He says he doesn’t care where he’s from,” says Higgins, “he just thanks San Diego for supporting him.”

Meanwhile, at the back of the audience, Jass’ bandmate, guitarist Andrew McKeag, slouches against a wall. With him is his girlfriend, Kim, a recently graduated UCSD art major, dressed in sea-foam green. McKeag, his brown hair slicked back, wears a burgundy tuxedo jacket with black lapels, and a ruffled shirt. Together, they look like the King and Queen of the Alternative Prom.

“Oh, well, what can you do?” McKeag sighs, apropos of Jass’ thwarted jeremiad. He pauses. “Y’now, it’s a fine line between clever and stupid. We’re way past it, man. We’re, like, intoxicated and worthless. This is totally pointless. We showed up, we sat out there and drank beer for two hours, half a fifth of Jim Beam.”

A few yards away, standing behind the last row in the darkness, the Casbah’s Tim Mays, Tony Sanfilippo of Lucy’s Fur Coat and assorted Casbah-ites wait out the nominations for Group of the Year. Lucy’s, along with Rocket From the Crypt and Honey Glaze, are nominated. Lucy’s has already been shut out in two other categories. A canned drum roll rumbles over the P.A. “And the winner is . . . Big Mountain!” Sanfilippo turns to Mays in mock anguish and screams, “God damn it! We lost all three!”

Mays, looking bearish in a leather jacket, has apparently had enough. “Get your axes,” he calls to the milling, chattering musicians. “All jammers are welcome.” He swings a paw through the air, like John Wayne rounding up the doggies for the drive to the railhead, and bellows: “ Back to the Cas-bahhh! “

Later, back at the you-know-what, a nameless outfit pounds out tortured indie-rock. Dave Jass leans against the bar, dazed from the kick in the head he received during his ejection. Outside, some of the leading lights of San Diego’s music scene pace, slouch, smoke and talk. Every 10 minutes or so, the whine of an approaching jetliner makes their voices sound small and oddly vulnerable.

Jonnie Donhowe, bassist from Fluf, recounts his role in the stage-front massacre. “OK, we were really drunk and about to pass out and we go, ‘Ahhh, we’ll just carry Dave up ‘cause he lost.’ And the security guard is all, like, ‘ No way, ‘ and I’m like, ‘Yeah, right,’ and I put him down. And then everybody kind of just . . . rushed. We were just gonna make fun of STP ‘cause they’re not even from San Diego.”

“That was not the San Diego music scene,” declares Jonnie’s fiancee, Desiree.

Donhowe turns toward Rocket’s Petey X, who’s been sitting quietly on a cement retaining wall. “So, Pete, what are your views?”

“It was all f---ing politics,” he mutters.

“That’s why I went,” McKeag says.

“In a tuxedo shirt,” notes Desiree.

“I dressed for the occasion,” he shrugs. “I figured it was the least I could do.”

A jet floats by, its landing lights blazing.

“The van broke down out by Rosecrans,” someone says.

“Oh, great,” says Donhowe. “Dave gets beat up. The van breaks down. The equipment gets stolen . . . .

“Losers together, losers forever!” another voice calls out.

WERE IT NOT FOR A SIGNIFICANT SHIFT IN THE TALENT-ACQUISITION HABITS of the major record labels, most of San Diego’s bands probably would have played the Casbah in perpetuity. Where hometown hopefuls once had to decamp for Los Angeles or New York, record companies increasingly pluck bands from the various vigorous music scenes that now dot the country, of which San Diego is only the latest discovery. “In the ‘80s, bands would get started down here and move to L.A.,” says Rockpress publisher Gary Hustwit. “That was a requirement. Now, it isn’t cool to be an L.A. band.”

In the way that Seattle yielded Nirvana and Chicago launched up-and-comers Smashing Pumpkins, Urge Overkill and Liz Phair, so San Diego is expected to produce a golden goose or two of its own. At least that’s the plan. “It should be pointed out that none of these bands has been tested in the mass marketplace,” notes Billboard’s Morris. “Whether this will play when the records get out there is a matter of conjecture.”

San Diego’s bands are also the beneficiaries of a fundamental change in definition of, and audience for, rock music. The roots of this evolution lie in the punk-rock explosion of the late ‘70s, which mocked the blimpish hard-rock establishment by returning rock to its rawest, dumbest essentials. Although punk withered commercially in America because a coherent, large-scale youth culture never materialized around it, the tenets of the punk--a no frills attitude coupled with defiant self-reliance (later codified into the punk slang as D.I.Y., or Do It Yourself)--lived on. By the late ‘80s, a new generation set out to reclaim rock, merging the edginess of punk with its affinity for deconstructing rock without reference to style or era. Thus was born “alternative” rock--that is, rock made by and for the post-punk demimonde, largely outside the record-industry mainstream that now so covets it.

San Diego mirrors this progression. The foundation was laid by the city’s hard-core punk scene of the early ‘80s, which petered out mid-decade under a cloud of audience violence and police harassment. So fearsome was San Diego’s reputation that many touring bands refused to play there, robbing local musicians of contact with their heroes.

Things began to change in 1989, when Mays, with two partners, opened the Casbah. Harlan Schiffman began promoting shows at the club featuring out-of-town acts like Seattle’s Nirvana and Tad. “Getting national acts that we could go watch made you realize you could do it,” says Tony Sanfilippo. Soon, a new breed of local bands began to take shape on the Casbah’s stage. “At first we were short on local talent,” says Mays. “Then it just took off.”

A year later, Cargo Records, a Montreal-based independent record label and distributor, opened a San Diego branch and formed an offshoot label called Headhunter. Run by a genial Canadian expatriate named Kane, the label released records by Casbah mainstays like Rocket, Jehu and Olivelawn. The Headhunter releases and a growing buzz in the alternative grapevine attracted the attention of the majors, which began sending emissaries down the 405.

But in contrast to the Darwinian competitiveness that marks most local hot spots, a share-the-wealth mentality pervades San Diego, probably because the scene is still made up almost exclusively of musicians themselves, who often live, work and play together. “There is a kind of camaraderie in that most of the people who go to the shows are members of other bands,” says Gary Hustwit.

“San Diego is not cutthroat like other places,” says Jenny Price, an A&R; rep for Atlantic Records, “there’s more of a family atmosphere.”

For example, when Lucy’s Fur Coat was blessed with an open bar tab at the San Diego Music Awards courtesy of Relativity Records, the band graciously marinated whatever brethren happened by with untold free Heinekens. And when word got around that Uncle Joe’s equipment had been stolen, a benefit show was mustered at the Casbah that raised $500. “It’s neat to be of a community where people do that,” says Uncle Joe’s guitarist McKeag.

And the musicians are extremely protective of their community, as exemplified by the controversy over the Stone Temple Pilots, whose debut album, “ Core,” has sold 2 million copies.

“It just pisses people off, these bands that moved out of town because they wanted to get signed,” says Headhunter’s Kane. “Most of the bands that stayed down here really didn’t care about getting signed, which worked out in the long run. The Stone Temple Pilots suck anyway.”

But even indisputable locals who made the jump to the majors wrestle with ambivalence when discussing the scene. “Because I’ve already signed a contract with a large record label, that makes me sort of a hypocrite to even talk about it,” says Drive Like Jehu’s Rick Farr. “Once you’ve done that, you’re sort of, um, I don’t want to say you’ve ruined your credibility or anything. It’s just not the same thing. It’s weird.”

LOCAL MUSIC SCENES HAVE ALWAYS GIVEN THE YOUNG AND FOOTLOOSE a sense of community. It was, after all, at the stage-fronts of the Fillmore and Winterland, at the feet of Big Brother and the Dead, that the Haight-Ashbury crowd first found each other. A generation later, in San Diego as in Seattle, music is still a potent unifying force. But the stakes are higher. Forty percent of Americans in their 20s, the age group that defines the San Diego scene, were raised in broken families. For a generation reared in uncertainty amid diminished expectations, even a music scene is freighted with psychological implications.

“On par, maybe half of them come from broken homes,” observes Harlan Schiffman of the San Diego scenesters. “In a sense, they look to music and their fellow players as a surrogate family.” It’s not too far-fetched to see in the Casbah’s brick fireplace and living-room intimacy, a secure, friendly home, with Tim Mays as the cool, benevolent father-figure dispensing beer and encouragement. Nevertheless, says Schiffman, “I don’t think they’d like the psychological evaluation. That’s something they don’t what to confront.”

The bonding, if unconscious, is certainly pervasive. On the domestic front, Stimy, the singer for Inch, rooms with members of aMiniature; Drive Like Jehu’s Rick Farr baby-sits for Kane’s kids, and Lucy’s bandmates Tony Sanfilippo and Charlie Ware surf together several days a week. Meanwhile, Kane goes camping with members of Jehu, and John Reis, who worked at Headhunter writing promotional copy in his leaner days, makes a point of dropping by the Cargo offices regularly. “The Jehu and Rocket guys, one of them will stop up on any given day and hang out,” says Kane.

Still, for a scene so identified with the cutting edge, there seems to be a frank desire to get a hook into anything with a sense of history. There’s an aggressive nostalgia for ‘50s and ‘60s graphic-arts effluvia. (The cover of Fluf’s “Mangravy” album features ‘60s race cars and typographical dingbats adapted from old LPs.) “If you go to the past and make it your own, it’s the future,” says Garcia of Cafe Chabalaba. Why not just make something new? “If you think about it, all the good stuff is in the past,” she says. “We don’t have the time, the patience. So we grab onto the past and cherish it and fix it up.”

And for many on the scene, the present could use a little fixing up as well, at least as far as non-musical employment is concerned. Andrew McKeag, for one, has spent his young adulthood in a succession of mindless jobs--what he characterizes as “record-store stuff”--while he and the band practice and play shows at night. “I change dumb jobs every once in a while so I don’t go out of my skull,” he shrugs. Reminded that the image of the dead-end-job-hopping slacker is the great Generation X cliche, McKeag laughs. “I know. That’s what my dad was saying.”

On a hazy afternoon the day after the music awards, McKeag, a thoughtful 23-year-old who has lately been pondering the ramifications of his latest day job, which is selling bric-a-brac at a museum-quality head shop in Ocean Beach called the Black, pads around his place of business, looking wan. Pigeons have taken up permanent residence in the rafters, and tufts of feathers drift down occasionally, mingling with the Danzig and Soundgarden T-shirts, the display cases with “Never Inhaled” pins, the pornographic windup figures arrayed on the cash register. In the background, Leon Redbone sings, “If I had me a million dollars . . . .”

McKeag is helping a customer, a girl with purple hair and a T-shirt that reads “Candlestick Maker.” “Do you guys have any tea lights?” she asks. “Y’know, with little metal things on them?” McKeag politely sends her on her way. “Tea lights,” he shakes his head after she leaves.

McKeag was raised in Seattle and Portland. His parents split when he was young, and he says he learned at an early age to take care of himself. He dropped out of high school his senior year, drifted to San Diego and eventually hooked up with Uncle Joe’s bandmate Dave Jass.

Lately, McKeag says, “my dad is starting to familiarize himself with my age group, and starting to realize not only are the options a lot different than when he was this age, but there is a life beyond, sort of, society’s general expectations.”

His father, he adds, “just says, ‘Do it now.’ I mean, how many other chances am I gonna have to do this?” he asks, invoking his tenure in Uncle Joe’s. On the other hand, he adds, “I would like to get to the level where I could fix my motorcycle or maybe even have a car. But I never thought that this could ever be a viable way of life--I mean, I hoped , but I never really considered it.”

A shirtless customer with a pierced nipple materializes at the counter, asking about drumsticks. “We’ve got a lot of work to do,” McKeag laughs as he excuses himself. “I’m the first to admit it. I don’t think we need anything on a silver platter.”

IN THE YEARS TO COME, THE SAN DIEGO MUSICIANS MAY LOOK TO this past summer as a watershed, the season where the scene lost its innocence, the last call at the Casbah. By next summer, most of the bands that signed with the majors will have had their records released. Some will undoubtedly be dropped while others soldier on, spending more and more of their time on the road, away from the scene, away from the sidewalk in front of the mud-colored club with the blazing white electric sign and those big jets dropping down out of the sky.

“I think people just need to get together and go, ‘We all just want what’s best for each other; what really do we want to do?’ ” says John Reis. “Do we just want to say, ‘Hey, it’s not worth the exposure,’ or do we say, ‘Let’s bring as many people down here as possible and try to get all of our friends record deals.’ Everyone’s got to get together and decide. If this is something that people feel is changing San Diego for the worse and you want these people out of your life--the press, the music industry--then there’s a way everyone can get together and make that happen.”

But it’s a little late for San Diego’s alternative scene to consider pulling up the drawbridge. In the meantime, they’ll always have the Casbah.

Late one night, Reis’ bandmate, Rocket From the Crypt’s Petey X, sits on the sidewalk outside the club and spins a benediction, of sorts, for the alternative rock movement in America’s Finest City.

“There’s so many bands right now, you could take away eight or 10 of them and give them major-label deals and still keep a good scene going. Not that the bands that get signed won’t keep the scene going, because even the bands that get attention like Rust and Fluf and Lucy’s and Rocket and Jehu, they all still play here. Maybe not at the Casbah anymore, because it sells out in an hour. But they’ll still play here. This place rules for local bands. And I think it’ll stay strong for a long time. I don’t think it’s gonna be: San Diego--got big, got signed, and it’s gone. That’s not gonna happen. Not that fast.

“It’s cool right now,” he shrugs. “It’ll stay cool for a while.”