Locals Are Game, but Where Will They Play?

As 1993 arrived, the Orange County music scene showed signs of coming into full bloom at last.

Instead, it turned into a disastrous year for most local venues. The final, and worst blow--the early December closing of Bogart’s in Long Beach--leaves the grass-roots music scene foundering without a focal point.

As we approach a new year, O.C. rock is a scene of small, isolated splinters, with no solid, nationally regarded, professionally run venue where home-grown bands can develop and flower alongside intriguing imported talent.

Turning back the clock a year, the possibilities seemed more than promising.

The Rhythm Cafe in Santa Ana looked like a solid contender to break the Coach House’s longstanding monopoly as the county’s only all-purpose club for national pop attractions.

The Cafe, which opened late in 1992, was spacious, comfortable, and attractive, with a sound system and sight lines that at least equaled its competitor to the south.

It appeared to have what most previous challengers had lacked: an excellent layout and strong financial backing. At last, Orange County was no longer that pop-world oddity: a community of 2.5 million that could support only one major club.

Bogart’s was humming along. Its first Saturday night bill of ’93 was definitive of what the Long Beach club was about: for a modest ticket price, you could see a bill topped by Greta, one of L.A.’s most ballyhooed new bands, and rounded out by Drink Deep, Lidsville and Eli Riddle, three worthy Orange County/Long Beach bands.

The presence of so many interesting bands on a single bill was not extraordinary, but a routine occurrence at Bogart’s, the club that fostered the local scene and revealed its depth and fecundity in a way that the Coach House, with its far greater emphasis on high-priced national acts, was not prepared to do.

As the year began, bookers for the county’s two big outdoor venues, Irvine Meadows and the Pacific Amphitheatre, were involved in their annual tug of war to pull in the most attractive attractions.

In past years, that heated competition typically had resulted in a menu of at least 70 big-name concerts for O.C. fans to sample.

In ‘93, the prospects for major concert attractions were even better: the new Anaheim Arena would be opening at midyear, offering a sparkling new lure for some of the high-profile bands that previously had skipped Orange County because they toured during the winter or simply preferred to play indoors.

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But things quickly started to go wrong.

The Rhythm Cafe emphasized swank at a time when the Southern California economy was sinking (one’s hackles rose at the club’s insistence on reserving a large section of its lot for valet parking). It ran a high overhead, with attendant high prices, and it failed to wrest most of the prime attractions from the well-established Coach House.

What Orange County needed was a more modestly run but still major club that could be, at least for starters, a successful No. 2. The Rhythm Cafe’s philosophy seemed to be “No. 1 or Bust.” And by mid-March, it had indeed gone bust, as financial backer Curt Olson pulled the plug to stem losses.

By year’s end, the Cafe had opened its doors again for a few hard-rock shows run by outside promoters. Its original managing partner, Michael Feder, was hopeful of securing backing to give the club a second shot.

One could only root for him, hoping that this time he would lose the valets and come up with a plan to make the Cafe succeed even if it had to finish second.

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In May, the Ten Years’ War between Irvine Meadows and the Pacific Amphitheatre suddenly ended.

The Nederlander Organization, which ran the Pacific, announced that it had struck a deal with its landlord, the Orange County Fair, which would be buying out the 18,700-capacity venue’s lease for $12.5 million.

Nederlander ran the Pacific for the remainder of the ’93 season, but new noise restrictions imposed by the fair in deference to long-suffering neighbors, and the promoter’s lack of a long-term commitment to the venue, resulted in a meager schedule of just 13 shows.

Irvine Meadows seemed to be in a position to clean up at last. But its season fell into the doldrums, too. With some high-profile acts skipping Orange County in favor of the new Glen Helen Blockbuster Pavilion in San Bernardino County, Irvine mustered a schedule of just 28 dates.

Factor in an Anaheim Stadium show by Paul McCartney in April, and the O.C. outdoor season totaled just 42 concerts--little more than half of what local fans had been accustomed to since 1983, when the Pacific opened to challenge Irvine Meadows.

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The Anaheim Arena opened June 19 with a show by Barry Manilow. The building had a striking look, offered the potential for decent-to-good arena sound, and its design allowed even those in distant seats to feel as if they were in on the action.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t a lot of action to be in on. Just a couple of country shows, a Mariachi festival, a Christian pop event and a Billy Joel concert turned up by year’s end.

An advertised date by the controversial gang-oriented Los Angeles rappers, Dr. Dre and Snoop Doggy Dogg, had some concert industry observers wondering why the arena would court trouble that no Southland promoter wanted to touch.

It also made one marvel at the double-standards of local government: Anaheim city officials had raised an outcry and forced a de facto ban on hard-core rap at the privately owned Celebrity Theatre after a shooting incident outside the theater during a 1990 concert by Ice Cube.

But with a chance to make a buck on gangsta rap in the city-owned building, no hoots or hollers were heard from City Hall when a Denver-based promoter started selling tickets for the Dre/Dogg bill.

For better or worse, the tour was postponed indefinitely, leaving the arena still untested when it comes to dealing with younger, and potentially rowdier, concert audiences.

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A confluence of causes brought on Bogart’s demise.

Owner Richard Greco had known its time was limited because the mall in which the club was located was due to be sold and renovated. And profits were dwindling in the face of a poor economy.

Rather than struggle to relocate Bogart’s, or merely to keep it running as long as possible in its existing location, Greco decided to close the club and pursue the new career he already had begun in the construction business.

Mike Giangreco, a veteran Los Angeles club promoter, talked of buying Bogart’s name, equipment and liquor license and re-establishing it in a new location with the same adventurous and creatively enlightened philosophy of mixing good local talent with interesting out-of-the-mainstream touring acts.

But Greco’s liquor license is only good in Los Angeles County, and it remains a question whether a relocated Bogart’s will be close enough to Orange County (the old one was just a mile from the county line) to serve bands and fans on the O.C. scene.

Only the Coach House and the Crazy Horse Steak House in Santa Ana rolled on unperturbed.

The cozy Crazy Horse continued the once- or twice-a-week concerts that have made it one of country music’s prized nightclubs.

The Coach House, having shaken the Rhythm Cafe with dispatch, turned a solid profit despite the recession. (Owner Gary Folgner’s filing early in the year of a Chapter 11 financial reorganization had no impact on his club’s operations.) It did so while offering one of its best, most creatively booked schedules, one that kept older fans happy with the John Hiatts and Richard Thompsons who have been highlights of past years, but that also exploited the boom in alternative rock with successful shows by such bands as Belly, Barenaked Ladies and the Trash Can Sinatras.

The Coach House even put on its first rap concert, a show by Digable Planets, the acclaimed, jazz-flavored group from New York.

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Two singers with Orange County ties made good in the alternative-rock boom. Zack de la Rocha, who is from Irvine, was the firebrand fronting the controversial, politicized Rage Against the Machine. The band received strong notices for its performances on the Lollapalooza tour.

The Stone Temple Pilots, whose fuchsia-haired singer, Weiland, grew up in Huntington Beach, exploded into the Top 10 with a debut album that sold more than 2 million copies.

The two singers’ mass success did not a shred of good for Orange County’s standing in the eyes of the greater rock universe, which tends to view these parts as one large slice of suburban white bread, and to assume that no valid music could come from such a place.

Neither band had made--or attempted to make--an impression on the Orange County scene before achieving national success. Rage Against the Machine called Los Angeles home, while Stone Temple Pilots tried to claim a San Diego address--much to the chagrin of that city’s grass-roots rockers, who viewed STP as a bunch of commercially calculating carpetbaggers.

The Cadillac Tramps did manage to make a bit of headway in the world while wearing their O.C. heritage proudly. One of Pearl Jam’s members became a fan after catching a Seattle club gig by the hard-charging Tramps. The band soon found itself opening for Pearl Jam on two dates in Canada.

Water graduated from the grass-roots scene to a major-label deal with MCA, with a debut album due in 1994. But such O.C. acts as No Doubt, Slapbak, Vinnie James, Altered State, Xtra Large and D.D. Wood could attest that major-label status doesn’t guarantee a wide national hearing, even when the music merits it.

Social Distortion, the commercially successful standard-bearer of Orange County’s punk-rooted alternative-rock movement, spent the year woodshedding but emerged for a few local shows, including an opening-act slot at the Pacific Amphitheatre with their old touring partner, Neil Young.

Standard Fruit, Joyride, Eli Riddle, One Hit Wonder, Trouble Dolls, Bazooka, Naked Soul and the 3D Picnic off-shoots, Spindle and Lutefisk, impressed with strong releases, demos, or concerts.

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These kids are certainly all right, but I’d probably direct a music-seeking expedition from Mars to first check out some of the scene’s graying eminences for the strongest possible taste of indigenous O.C. pop.

Such fortysomething veterans as Chris Gaffney & the Cold Hard Facts, the Walter Trout Band (which signed its first U.S. deal after winning a blues-rock following in Europe), the James Harman Band, Richard Stekol, Beth Fitchet Wood and the Missiles of October could be heard holding forth regularly, making superb music for listeners in small local venues.

The grayest and most eminent local figure of all in 1993 was Dick Dale, who at the age of 56 made a recording comeback with his first album of new studio material since 1964.

Dale’s pioneering surf-guitar sound was the first noise the outer world ever heard from the Orange County rock scene back in the early ‘60s. “Tribal Thunder,” his aptly named comeback album, gave guitar-rock fans outside Southern California a bracing shot of the brash, ornery explosions of power and enlightened egotism that Dale’s local fans have long enjoyed.

The bands and individuals who form the cream of the Orange County music scene remain strong, resilient and plentiful.

As a New Year dawns, unfortunately, I can hardly say the same for the club-level support network that a local scene needs to truly flourish.

* In Friday’s Calendar: O.C. theater was disaster bordering on catastrophe, with hope flickering in the wings.