Leaving the Door Ajar : When Opportunity Comes Knocking, Ambivalent Mr. Mirainga Is Likely to Be at the Bar

Aesop’s fable tells us that the grasshopper fiddled and made merry all summer but came to rue it when the weather changed. The moral is plain, but what’s unclear is whether the music was jammin’ while summer lasted.

It’s summertime right now for Mr. Mirainga, an Orange County band of unabashed, self-professed slackers and rock ‘n’ roll reprobates who clearly take no heed of Aesop’s morals but who might well be interested in slurping down a few grasshoppers at the bar.

The band’s co-founders, bassist Greg (Hedge) Jones, singer-percussionist Craig (Potz) Poturalski and guitarist Steve (Stevoreno) Gunderman, say they formed nearly five years ago for no other reason than to hang out and bang out some songs, with low-stress fun and ample free drink as their hoped-for rewards.

Mirainga didn’t tour. Mirainga didn’t look for a record deal. Mirainga didn’t particularly care that hardly anybody came to its shows.

And now, Mirainga (pronounced muh-RAIN-gay) downplays its sudden and improbable transformation into a band that does tour, does have a record deal and does indeed have a song, “Burnin’ Rubber,” that is getting played on MTV and aired on modern-rock radio stations across the land.

To hear the shaven-headed men of Mr. Mirainga tell it (this is a band whose members, if you overlooked their baggy pants and dirty sneakers, could pass for three bald Hare Krishnas and one close-cropped U.S. Marine), they remain, despite opportunity’s knock, the same old screw-ups with limited horizons, low expectations and no interest in reforming into sturdy professionals.

Here’s the affably crusty Hedge (everybody calls him by this childhood nickname), on how Mr. Mirainga relates to the goal of climbing career ladders:

“We’re not a headlining band. It’s a lot easier to play a drunk, sloppy set when you’re not the headliner. If you’re the headliner, people expect you to play a long show. We don’t like playing more than a half-hour. You look across at the bar and think, ‘I’d rather be on the bar stool drinking than up here playing.’ ”

Oh, Hedge will allow, Mirainga has had its transitory bursts of get-up-and-go. In fact, after the October release of its debut EP, “[Expletive] the Scene,” Mirainga got up and went on tour for two months, opening for the bands 311 and 1000 Mona Lisas.

“We thought, ‘We’re gonna be a real band,’ that all this touring would make us tight,” Hedge said of Mirainga’s pre-tour bout of budding professionalism. “No. It all went to [expletive].”

Nevertheless, with its first full-length album, “Mr. Mirainga,” just releasedby Way Cool Music, a new, Sunset Beach-based affiliate of MCA Records, the band’s immediate plans call for more heavy touring.

They may look and talk like slackers, but Mirainga, perhaps despite itself, still somewhat resembles a band that is going to give success a shot.

It’s a shot that, given the quality of the band’s two recordings, is well worth taking. Between six-packs, Mr. Mirainga somehow managed to write and record persuasive and varied music that combines punk rawness with a savvy sense of melody and song architecture.

Anyone who attempts thematic analysis of the band’s music does so at his or her own risk.

“Don’t even think our songs mean anything. Don’t even go there,” warns Gunderman, a quizzical, myopic-looking fellow with a bald head, round spectacles and pursed mouth.

At 21, he’s the youngest and most intense member of an otherwise low-key band that ranges in age up to Hedge’s 29 years.

“Educated people are always trying to read meanings into our lyrics,” Gunderman added in a sharp tone of disdain. “If you try to read a message behind any of our songs, you’re wrong.”

Eventually, as they sat chatting recently in a corner of Linda’s Doll Hut in Anaheim, the band members did allow that some of the lyrics do have a fragmentary, unpremeditated connection to bits of actual experience.

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Some songs take swipes at conservative social elites; others blithely relate outrageous fantasies that risk being taken the wrong way.

“Fat and Round” depicts TV-addicts so bored that they literally lose their heads. The lust-filled “Baglady,” Hedge insists, is not meant to mock street people, as some might assume, but to demonstrate a pure kind of desire unburdened by considerations of age, caste and hygiene.

Hearing this sincere explanation of why it’s significant that the song’s protagonist has fallen for a homeless crone, Gunderman rose from his seat next to the pinball machine. He wiped an imaginary tear from under Hedge’s left eye, the one not encased in a reddish-purple shiner incurred during an on-tour tussle with a drunken concert-goer who thought, mistakenly, that the similarly drunken Hedge was hitting on his girlfriend.

“The lyrics just kind of happen,” Hedge explains. “You don’t put much thought into it. When it’s over, someone can put some theory behind it. It’s not like we think about what we do. Maybe we should.”

Not thinking too much about what they’re doing has gotten them this far.

Mirainga began when Hedge, a veteran of the O.C. punk bands Doggy Style and D.I., decided he needed a change of scenery and moved to Mesa, Ariz., in 1990. Soon he had met Poturalski through their (now-ex) girlfriends and Gunderman through the musician-wanted ads. The three started a band, and, as long as they were naming it after a Caribbean dance, the merengue, they decided to incorporate some Latin rhythms.

“When we started, we were all going to take dance lessons and dress up in skirts,” Gunderman said, “but we were too lazy.”

One of Poturalski’s drums did get outfitted with a Hawaiian grass skirt, and he also made wooden cutouts shaped like palm trees as stage decor--inspired by Jimmy Buffett, whose tequila-fogged “Margaritaville” mythos is cited as a key lifestyle role model by the calm, soft-spoken Poturalski.

Mr. Mirainga soon relocated to Orange County--Hedge not wanting to face an Arizona summer, while also recognizing the benefits of moving in, rent-free, to his parents’ home in Placentia.

Here, the band embarked on the local club circuit and, following an odd chain of events (Story, F46), landed its deal with Way Cool/MCA and recorded its EP and album.

Now, says band manager J.P. Bouquette, “whether they like it or not, they’re turning into a professional band. They know how to get on stage and play now. Before, they liked to screw around, and now they know they’ve got to be professional for 35 minutes of their life.”

At a recent show at the Dragonfly in Hollywood, Mr. Mirainga got on stage and, for just a bit more than 35 minutes, delivered a raw but cohesive set, although Hedge and Poturalski proclaimed repeatedly from the stage that the band was having one of its sloppy-drunk nights.

When it was over, Hedge made a beeline to the bar, got himself a vodka and cranberry juice, and began tallying all the mistakes he’d made during the set. He sounded for all the world like a closet perfectionist hiding out in the baggy shorts of a slacker.

“Sometimes it gets a little stressful” when the band starts thinking of being tight and sharp, then comes up short, Hedge said. “That’s when I hate it. The next day [after a sloppy show], it’ll hit me, [and I have to tell myself], ‘Don’t start stressing.’

“If we took ourselves more seriously and concentrated on being a professional live band, we’d probably sound better, but it wouldn’t be fun anymore,” Hedge said. “There’s a lot of professional bands out there.” And Mr. Mirainga doesn’t intend to sacrifice its idea of low-pressure fun trying to be one of them.

“We’ll see what happens,” Hedge said. “We’re not expecting [anything]. It would be very satisfying to continue in punk bars and make enough money to pay the rent and eat and drink and be merry. I’d like to tour, record, have a house and a fridge full of beer. If we could pull that off, it would be cool.”

* Mr. Mirainga plays Jan. 24 at Club 369 in Fullerton, with X-Members, Knock Out and Brown Lobster Tank. 9 p.m. $5. (714) 572-1781. Also Jan. 25 at the Roxy in West Hollywood, with Ednaswap and Super 8. 8:30 p.m. $10. (310) 276-2222.