A LOOK AHEAD: Punk rockers will try to widen the breach in the “Orange Curtain” : Will Bands Follow in Offspring’s Footsteps?

Everybody thinks that people (in Orange County) are so conservative and ultra right-wing. It’s got the . . . stigma: ‘How can these people rock?’ But the fact is, these people are rocking, and they’re good. They just never get a break.

--David Crowley, band manager and music publicist, at the end of 1993.

In 1994, Orange County finally got a break.

Never mind John Birch, Robert Dornan, Richard Nixon, rich and oblivious beach kids and whatever other stereotypical images the wider world might have used to dismiss O.C.’s indigenous rock ‘n’ roll without actually having to listen to it. The music business understands the bottom line, and 3 million Offspring fans couldn’t be wrong.

As we enter 1995, rockers from Orange County have a better chance to be hot, or cool, or, best of all, heard, than they ever did before. The big question for the coming year is whether other performers can capitalize on the opening forged by Offspring’s punk-rock breakthrough.

“A lot of (local bands) are more motivated now,” says Linda Jemison, who, as owner of Linda’s Doll Hut in Anaheim, the local scene’s funkiest little rock ‘n’ roll joint, is a leading cultivator of Orange County’s musical grass roots. “It’s been an inspiration for them to work harder and appreciate Orange County a little more.”

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Jemison sees signs that traffic will move both ways through the crack in the Orange Curtain: “I’m getting a lot more L.A. bands wanting to play (the Doll Hut). We’re hearing from people, ‘We should play more in Orange County.’ ”

As the year dawns, the musical sledgehammer for widening the curtain-breach opened by Offspring appears to be in some strong, qualified hands.

The band Water, co-managed by the above-quoted David Crowley, is scheduled to release its debut album in March on MCA Records. The record, “Nipple,” includes several strong, melodic tracks that sound like good candidates for alternative radio and MTV play, with the potential to reach the same audience as such ’94 success stories as Live and Toad the Wet Sprocket. If Water rises, it will show the wider world that O.C. rock is not solely defined by Offspring-style melodic punk.

Social Distortion, Orange County’s strongest contender before Offspring sprang from obscurity, is due to release the fifth album of its career in ’95. After writing prolifically in 1994, leader Mike Ness is aiming high: “I don’t want this to be just another Social D. record. I want it to be the Social D. record,” he said in October.

Expected new punk-pop releases by One Hit Wonder and Joyride, two of the best bands I’ve heard in the genre, could bring further glory to O.C. in the coming year. The Muffs are due for a second album of raucous garage-rock on Warner Bros.

One new trend already flagged by Billboard magazine is a rise in popularity of rock music with a Jamaican ska flavor. If ska-rock does take off, two promising local practitioners--Anaheim’s No Doubt (which records for Interscope Records) and Long Beach’s Sublime--are in a position to ride the wave.

Also on Interscope is Claw Hammer, a wild, hot-wired guitar band whose manic energy could translate into surprise success. If so, it would bring more kudos to O.C., since front man Jon Wahl is a former Fullerton resident who learned his first licks from local punk hero Mike Palm of Agent Orange.

As for Agent Orange, Palm says he has completed several years of intermittent, self-financed recording and is ready to seek a deal for “Virtually Indestructible,” the band’s first studio album since 1987.

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Other old-line O.C. punkers due to make some noise in ’95 are the Vandals and the Crowd, who are readying new material for a Lethal Records release. The Joykiller, featuring T.S.O.L. alumni Jack Grisham and Ron Emory, is due to emerge on Epitaph, the L.A. label that Offspring helped make famous.

Offspring itself will be on the road through July. The band resumes touring this month with shows in Japan, New Zealand and Australia. Also on the itinerary are two separate European tours and two more U.S. jaunts. After two hit videos on MTV, Offspring manager Jim Guerinot reports that the clip for the song “Gotta Get Away,” due to begin airing in mid-January, will be the last from the “Smash” album.

“Enough’s enough; you don’t want to milk it,” said Guerinot, invoking the old show-biz wisdom that it’s better to leave ‘em wanting more than to overextend your welcome. The only “new” Offspring music we may encounter in ’95 is a possible reissue of the band’s out-of-print 1989 debut album, “The Offspring,” which sold no more than a few thousand copies when it was first released.

In country music, Orange County is already holding an unbeatable trump card: Jann Browne’s superb album, “Count Me In.” Originally released in 1994 on the Swiss label Red Moon, “Count Me In” is expected to have a domestic release in ’95 as the first offering from a new record company headed by Barbara Orbison, widow of Roy Orbison.

Another local country ace will be in play in ‘95: Chris Gaffney has signed a new deal with HighTone Records, which released his excellent but overlooked album, “Mi Vida Loca,” in 1992. This time, Gaffney’s friend Dave Alvin will be producing.

Gaffney reports that the Texas progressive-country hero, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, has agreed to sing on one track. Also coming in ’95 is a new Curb Records album from Boy Howdy, the Orange County/Los Angeles band that enjoyed success on the country charts in 1993-94.

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Good music seldom gets the exposure it deserves without a strong business infrastructure to support it. For the first time, Orange County is showing signs of developing the kind of support structure that might nurture offspring to follow Offspring.

The biggest new development to watch in 1995 will be the as-yet unnamed record company being launched in Laguna Beach by Guerinot, who manages Social Distortion as well as Offspring.

Guerinot (pronounced GEAR-in-oh ) grew up with the O.C. punk scene, starting in 1982 as a student promoter at Fullerton College. Now, at 35, he is viewed as one of the music business’s young stars.

After reaching high rank as senior vice president and general manager of A & M Records, where he helped shepherd the breakthroughs of Soundgarden and Sheryl Crow, the Fullerton-raised executive resigned last year to return to Orange County to start a label of his own.

Guerinot already has struck a deal with BMG, one of the major record conglomerates, to fund his label and distribute its output. He’ll have autonomy when it comes to signing bands, developing their careers and marketing and promoting their releases.

While Guerinot will fling a nationwide net in search of talent, the presence of a potentially high-profile label in Orange County bodes well for the local scene: not just for bands who will have a good chance to catch an O.C.-based magnate’s ear, but also for the overall ripple effect the label could create, giving the county cachet and an added sense of excitement as a place where interesting musical action is happening.

Guerinot, who will continue to run his management company, Rebel Waltz, says his record company will specialize in alternative rock. The acts he wants to sign “have to be absolute touring animals, bands that want to be on the road nonstop.”

Along with going for bands with immediate hit potential, he said, the label will have room for emerging bands, “acts that can sell 5,000 to 10,000 records and not lose my shirt. All the bands I’ve worked with, from Soundgarden to Social D. to Offspring, it’s on their third or fourth record” that they find success.

“Most major (labels) pay lip service to that patience game,” but Guerinot says his own game plan calls for actually practicing it: He plans to sign no more than six new artists a year, to ensure that he can give proper attention to developing each act on the roster.

Along with his company’s offices, Guerinot plans to build an in-house recording studio for his label’s use. No new acts have been signed yet, but plans call for reissuing Social Distortion’s early singles and two currently unavailable albums, “Mommy’s Little Monster” and “Prison Bound,” as well as the band’s semilegendary early ‘80s tour documentary video, “Another State of Mind.” Guerinot also is planning to reissue the Vandals’ back catalogue.

Another new Orange County label will get its start in 1995 by marketing old punk music: Neurotic Records, spearheaded by veteran La Habra record producer Jon St. James, will debut with a collection called “Old School Punk, West Coast (The Reagan Years).”

The 14-song compilation of early-’80s material will include tracks from the Adolescents, Agent Orange, T.S.O.L., D.I., Circle Jerks, Suicidal Tendencies and the Germs, among others.

St. James says Neurotic is a spinoff from his work with Thump Records, a Walnut-based label that has enjoyed success with its “Old School” series of hip-hop and funk reissues.

Neurotic, a Thump subsidiary, also will sign and develop new punk and alternative-rock talent, focusing mainly on the local scene. Working as the label’s in-house producer is Warren Fitzgerald, the 26-year-old Huntington Beach rocker who showed considerable studio expertise in producing Xtra Large’s 1992 album, “Now I Eat Them.”

Fitzgerald, who plays in the Vandals and produced their upcoming album, also continues to work as an adjunct member of Boingo. He reports that he and Boingo leader Danny Elfman have plans for a spinoff project later in ’95.

Doctor Dream, the Orange-based label that has been the most persistent champion of Orange County alternative music, enters its 10th year of operations.

“I think the sound of the label has changed,” said founder David Hayes. Its newer bands are “a little harder, and we’re not quite as schizophrenic, not quite as diversified, as in the past.” Upcoming releases include label debuts from Huntington Beach hard rockers Bitch Funky Sex Machine and O.C. thrash-metalists Aversion. The year should also see new releases from two old Doctor Dream faves, Swamp Zombies and Joyride.

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In 1994, the Orange County music scene failed to solve its most significant infrastructure problem: No successor arose to replace Bogart’s as a focal point for emerging alternative rock bands.

Jemison, of Linda’s Doll Hut, spent last year in a fruitless search for a location for a major new venue that would take over Bogart’s dual mission as a presenter of interesting alternative touring acts and a breeding ground for local talent. But she thinks the savvy she developed in scouting sites and dealing with government bureaucracies will pay off in ’95.

Concerned that bankrupt Orange County might levy new taxes on businesses, Jemison said she has expanded her search to nearby communities just across the line in L.A. County.

The grass-roots scene could get a boost from the Galaxy Concert Theatre, the new Santa Ana club that, like its sister San Juan Capistrano club, the Coach House, is geared mainly toward better-established touring attractions. Booker Ken Phebus wants to turn a room adjoining the Galaxy’s front lobby into a second stage for local bands and new touring acts that don’t yet have enough of a draw to headline on the main stage.

The Galaxy is still in its start-up phase, but Phebus said that once it is running smoothly he will try to implement the second-room idea, which would have to be approved by owner Gary Folgner. The room would seat about 120 people and revive the concept of the Bohemian Cafe, a fondly remembered feature of Bogart’s.

“I would like to do some local shows there, with a low cover or no cover, and develop talent,” Phebus said. “There’s a lot of talent that needs a place to play. Let them develop, and next time have them play the big room.”

Phebus, already the head booker for four clubs owned by Folgner, expects to be even busier in the coming year: He said Folgner plans to open a Fresno venue by summer and is looking to add Riverside and Sacramento sites to a chain of concert-and-dinner theaters that replicate the successful formula established at the Coach House nine years ago.

After a year of stillness, except for Orange County Fair attractions, the Pacific Amphitheatre will start making noise again in 1995. But not enough noise to disturb the neighbors, promises Sims Hinds, senior vice president of sales and development for the Costa Mesa venue’s new operator, Spectacor Management Group.

“Part of our challenge . . . is to create a new niche for the amphitheater and remove the animosity that has existed in the past,” Hinds said, referring to the noise complaints of homeowners who repeatedly sued the amphitheater before its landlord, the Orange County Fair, finally bought out the lease of the former operator, Nederlander Concerts, in 1993.

Spectacor hasn’t given up on the idea of using the venue’s huge lawn, which would require more amplification than if only the 8,500 fixed seats were used.

But Hinds sees no chance of it returning as the rock venue it was in the past.

“Instead of the AC/DCs and Guns N’ Roses of the world, you’ll see us going for the Bonnie Raitts, James Taylors, folk packages,” said Hinds.

” . . . A lot more pop, a lot more middle of the road.”

Hinds said Spectacor, a national company that manages 55 venues, including the Los Angeles Coliseum and Sports Arena, is not setting a target number of shows to be presented in the first year of its three-year (plus renewal options) contract.

“We’re going to be cautious,” he said. “We want to make sure everything we do the first year works, from a neighborhood standpoint, and from a profit-and-loss standpoint.”

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A leading question in the concert business for ’95 will be whether the $100 (and more) top ticket price broached at O.C. shows in 1994 by the Eagles, Barbra Streisand, Rod Stewart, Bette Midler and Janet Jackson turns out to be an aberration, or the norm for top touring acts.

“I would hope we can find some level of sanity in the ticket prices,” said Bob Geddes, managing partner of Irvine Meadows. “I think the consumers are going to send a message to a lot of artists that they are just not that important to see at that expense. They just can’t afford it.”

The Pond’s head booker, Ken Scher of Nederlander Concerts, thinks that top prices of $40 to $60 will be typical for hot pop acts. “I don’t think $100 will be common,” Scher said. “But generally, the higher ticket prices are here to stay.”

The Robert Plant/Jimmy Page tandem, R.E.M. and Van Halen are among the biggest names expected to tour in 1995, and all of them have a substantial base of younger fans who might have a hard time swinging $40 to $60 a ticket, let alone $100.

With Pearl Jam and other ‘90s bands proclaiming moderation in concert pricing not just as a virtue, but as a moral necessity, it will be interesting to see whether these old-line rockers’ allegiances will lie primarily with their fans, or with their bulging bank accounts.