Pop Reviews : Joyride Roars Down Two-Way Road

A book on how to become a rock star in the 1990s would be incomplete without a few helpful chapters about cultivating the right assortment of frowns and scowls and dread-filled howls.

Get on stage and act as if you were channeling every bad experience that ever befell you. Roar as if you were spitting up every insult you ever had to swallow. Summon hidden rage. Show ‘em some stomach bile. Quiet, intimate moments are OK, but only if they can be taken as glimpses into a psyche about to crack.

It worked for Kurt Cobain, whose depression proved all too real and all too deep. It has worked for Eddie Vedder, Chris Cornell, Trent Reznor, Layne Staley, Billy Corgan and others who adhere fervently to the displeasure principle.

But in Orange County, un-hip burg that it is, even the best home-grown rockers just don’t seem to get it.

What were the members of Joyride doing, exchanging all manner of spontaneous smiles and looks of mutual enjoyment Saturday night at Fullerton’s Club 369? If alienation is in, how can they possibly get anywhere with displays of fellowship and good feeling? Joyride even had fans flocking down front to dance (not slam) and smile back at them.

As for the second-billed band, One Hit Wonder, front man Dan Root probably cost himself any chance of becoming a ‘90s rock star by leaping to the microphone at the start, yelling, “Let’s have fun!” and proceeding to spend the next 40 minutes bounding about, tossing out humorous commentary, and treating his guitar more like a favorite toy than an implement for translating rage into noise.

Root acted like some kind of natural-born entertainer. But this is the ‘90s, Danny boy, and if it’s entertaining, it can’t be rocking.

Putting sarcasm aside, it’s time we looked to another set of ‘90s--the 1790s--to regain some perspective, some balance in our vision of what art, including rock ‘n’ roll, should be. This year is the 200th anniversary of the completion of William Blake’s poetic diptych, “Songs of Innocence” and “Songs of Experience.”

To my mind, those poems--which Blake meant to be sung--mark the spiritual birth of rock ‘n’ roll, lacking only blues progressions and back beats. Blake had a romantic spirit--he was, in fact, the father of the romantic spirit. He was a visionary and a rebellious firebrand, an extreme individualist who railed against corrupt power and calcified artistic authority. His work, like rock, was suffused with an enthusiastic, liberating sexuality.

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With “Innocence” and “Experience,” the greatest sets of lyrics in the English language (Bob Dylan, by comparison, might as well be scribbling for Hallmark), Blake insisted that one mind set would not do. Cut yourself off from joy and comfort, from the innocent notion that we can dwell in the light of goodness, and you end with a vision that is shriveled and juiceless. But deny that life is also rife with bleakness, cruelty, injustice and pain, and you ignore the simple reality that experience demands you acknowledge.

The artist, Blake argued, must encompass both Innocence and Experience, the two contrary conditions of the human soul.

I don’t know whether Joyride’s two singer-songwriters, Steve Soto and Greg Antista, have read much Blake, but the band’s music is a glorious swirl of contrary elements. Almost every song conveys both the rich pleasure we can take from life, and the burdens of failure and frustration that we have to bear.

At Club 369, Soto sang of suicidal lovers (“I Was Just Thinking About You”), of a wallflower’s prom-night humiliation (“Heaven Sighed”) and of a man who habitually flees intimacy (“Running Away”). Antista’s songs included “Daydreaming on the Frontline,” a desperate account of life lived in the cross hairs that could apply to Bosnia or to gang-ridden streets of Southern California.

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Joyride clearly isn’t ignoring experience or posing easy answers. But each song was in some fashion lifted up by a vision that life is more than its bleakest realities.

The gruff-voiced Antista has a gift for using humor as a bulwark against despair. As dejected as he might sound in “Month of Mondays,” the song of a guy whose life simply isn’t working out, another emotional strand is woven into the song’s fabric. As he laughs to crowd out tears, we sense that the wounded soul singing the lament has the resiliency to hang in there and keep on pushing. The surging, single-minded momentum of Sandy Hansen’s drumbeat, and the pealing, bittersweet commentary of Mike McKnight’s lead guitar riffs drove home those admirable complexities.

Soto does justice to the pain in his lyrics with a voice that can muster raw bursts of anguish. But he also salves wounds with a massive application of sympathy and heart expressed in clear, pure-pop tones.

Another source of Joyride’s winning duality is its combination of melodic lift and careening, punk-inspired delivery. Everything the band played Saturday night had melodies and vocal harmonies that in themselves seemed like affirmations, rewarding the listener as nothing but a catchy, evocative melody can (the same is true for virtually everything on the band’s two Doctor Dream albums, “Johnny Bravo” and “Another Month of Mondays”). But with a drummer who crashes ahead, threatening to spin out of control at every turn, and a lead guitarist who favors noisy, razor-edged tones, Joyride lived up to its name. Its songs became thrilling, if somewhat heedless flings.

Joyride leaned a bit too heavily, however, on racing tempos. More variety overall, and a tad more control in certain songs, would be in order. It is a big league band and should be playing the 70-minute sets expected of big-leaguers instead of the 45 or 50 minutes that are the mark of a local band.

There was no good reason to omit Antista’s memorable ballad, “Sleep a Little Longer,” or his witty but heartbreaking lament, “Lonely Shepherd’s Club,” the best Orange County rock song ever to devote a verse to local icon John Wayne.

Meanwhile, the evening’s nicest surprise was Root’s newfound authority as a showman fronting One Hit Wonder. When the band started in 1992, the former Tender Fury guitarist was new to singing and relied on partner Robbie Allen for load-sharing and moral support. Allen split last fall to join Rob Rule, which is about to release its Mercury Records debut album. Far from foundering without his old sidekick, Root has blossomed.

His performance expressed delight in rocking while also mocking the pretensions and cliches of rock heroism. Root was animated in every way. He was chatty enough to let fly irreverent barbs about Richard Nixon, Kurt Cobain and his own band mates. He was playful enough to invent a silly new mock-guitar-hero move that involved hammering the top of his instrument as if it were a spike, and getting a chord sequence out of the maneuver by keeping his left hand on the fret board.

The music--much of it written since Allen’s departure--was a raucous combination of anxiety, defiance and humor. Bassist Randy Bradbury and drummer Christopher Webb form one of the hardest-hitting rhythm sections around, and Bradbury has stepped forward as a capable backing singer, cushioning Root’s go-for-it bark. In a mostly stormy set, One Hit Wonder inserted a fetching pop-rocker called “I Can Break Your Heart” that even Joyride would be proud to own.

The band, which is scheduled to issue a debut EP this summer on the Sony/Rock World label, opens for the Cadillac Tramps on Friday at the Foothill in Long Beach, and plays Sunday afternoon at Beach Fest in Long Beach’s Shoreline Park. Joyride plays Beach Fest on Saturday).

The Club 369 bill also featured a strong under card. Lidsville played crunchy, heavy stuff, but did it crisply and with a sense of dynamics in its better material. Singer Doc Johnson has the Vedder-like chesty roar down pat--too pat. If he can find a higher register, or some different vocal approaches to explore, the band might expand its sound and its emotional reach.

For now, Lidsville does heavy-crunch well, but that alone won’t bring those Blakean contrarieties within its grasp.

Opening band Burnin’ Groove has tightened its sound and seems ready to build upon such appealing elements as catchy, punk-rock sing-along choruses, cleanly etched lead guitar work and whiskey-voiced singer Daren Carlson’s synthesis of George Thorogood’s raunch-blues mannerisms with Mike Ness’s punker attitude.

With its slicked-back ‘50s look and blues-punk sources, Burnin’ Groove rides in Cadillac Tramps’ tire tracks, but the band has a chance to make an impact of its own with such solid, high-octane songs as “Misery and Pain” and “Anybody See.”

The four bands played to an enthusiastic crowd of about 300 fans, and benefited from a good rented sound system provided by promoter Jim Knight. With its excellent sight lines, decent ventilation and ample (for a small club) capacity of 369, Club 369 has a better setup than Bogart’s or any of the would-be successor clubs that have sprung up since Bogart’s closed in December.

Owner Gregory Howell says he plans to continue relying on outside promoters rather than creating a steady, in-house booking operation. Without that, it is unlikely Club 369 will be able to assume the hub status Bogart’s enjoyed as a haven for good touring bands and local talent alike. But at least the potential is there.