Aiming Reloaded Bazooka

A lot has happened to Bazooka, the Orange County-bred improvisational rock band, in the 2 1/2 years since it last fired off a compact disc.

What had been a trio featuring a prolific saxophonist in the lead is now a four-piece band keyed by guitar and electric piano. In a case of subtraction through addition, the new, four-man Bazooka (which plays tonight at the Tiki Bar) takes a tighter, more to-the-point approach on its new release, “Poor Mr. Rockstar,” than the trio typically did.

With the departure first of saxophonist Tony Atherton, then bassist Bill Crawford, only drummer Vince Meghrouni remains from the Bazooka lineup that began in 1989 and issued three all-instrumental albums, plus a fourth backing a spoken-word performance by Long Beach rocker Jack Brewer.

Atherton cited personal friction within the group when he left in December 1994 (related story, F3). Crawford departed in ’95 after his ongoing screenwriting efforts paid off and he earned what Meghrouni describes as “a pile” by selling a script about UFOs to Disney.

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Meghrouni (pronounced muh-ROO-nee) took a sidestep of his own after the 1994 release of “Blowhole,” the last Bazooka trio album. He spent much of 1995 touring through some of America’s finer outdoor amphitheaters and hockey rinks as a member of a high-powered, freely jamming band led by Mike Watt, the respected ‘80s alt-rock veteran. Watt’s band headlined as a second-stage attraction on the Lollapalooza festival and opened for Primus on an arena tour.

Meghrouni says it wasn’t all wonderful--particularly trying to cope as an improvisatory band in vast arenas where the onstage acoustics made it impossible to follow what all the other players were doing. But, he added, “playing and touring with Watt was an education in professionalism and a vaudeville show-biz ethic [that Watt embodies], and just keeping your feet on the ground in the midst of all that comes with that.”

The experience hasn’t made Meghrouni the next hot, in-demand session and tour drummer--he says no offers have come in--but at least it netted him the bassist who rounds out Bazooka’s new lineup, plus the inspiration for the title of Bazooka’s new album.

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During the tour with Primus, Meghrouni overheard Watt’s longtime sound engineer, Steve Reed, jamming backstage on bass. Meghrouni told Reed that if Bazooka’s bassist ever quit, the gig was his for the taking. Soon after, Crawford abandoned the struggles of an all-instrumental rock band in the low-budget indie-label world for the blandishments of Hollywood.

The other newcomers, guitarist Jeremy Keller and piano player Don Carroll, were absorbed into Bazooka under the band’s long-standing policy of musical osmosis.

As a trio, Bazooka was always open to incorporating guest players into live shows. Keller had been sitting in for about five years, while Carroll’s connection went even further back--he went to Garden Grove High School with Meghrouni, and played with Meghrouni and Atherton in El Grupo Sexo, the colorful, stylistically diverse band that was a leader on the ‘80s Orange County alternative music scene. Keller and Carroll stepped in as full-fledged members within days of Atherton’s departure.

In place of Atherton’s wide-ranging saxophone explorations, Bazooka now features guitar work that often sticks to meaty rock riffs, and a piano that has its spacey meanderings but pays primary attention to accenting the funky groove that prevails on “Poor Mr. Rockstar.”

Meghrouni says an emphasis on emphatic, danceable rhythms is the connector between the old Bazooka and the new.

“Me and Bill and Tony used to have this expression, ‘Just serve the groove,’ ” said the drummer, who sports long, frizzy side-whiskers and a jazzman’s under-the-lip tuft of beard. In the new band, there remains “a desire to have a physical, visceral continuity where you feel the groove.”

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One of Bazooka’s intentions all along has been to take improvisational music, with its jazz and avant-garde connections, and demystify it for listeners devoted to rock. Humor is a big part of the process--the band continues to incorporate plenty of musical jokes, such as the ensemble whistling that harmonizes with Meghrouni’s lead flute work on “Echo Park.” There’s also an earthy, unpretentious attitude behind the playing that places the emphasis on fun, rather than avant-rock hipness.

Keller, 25, came up playing some skewed, noisy stuff in the UC Irvine-based band Cambridge Pipers, but these days, he says, he is most taken with the simplicity of Keith Richards.

Carroll, 36, is a PhD candidate in musicology at USC. He confesses that “I’m kind of a hack in certain keys, but I’ve found a way to do something that sounds good.

“With a rock background, I’ve developed a way that seems to fool musicians [who have an avant-garde bent],” Carroll said. “They think I’m playing ‘outside’ [a term for flights of strange innovation]. Some people get really theoretical and mental about it: ‘Now we’re “outside.” ’ To me it’s just fun. You can bang away.”

Meghrouni, 38, says he has worked to simplify his drumming and “do more with less.” Reed, 41, also has more elaborate music in his background: In the ‘70s, the Los Angeles resident played in Nightwatch, an all-black progressive-rock band that he says sounded like Yes and made an album for Warner Bros.

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One of Bazooka’s typically wry song titles, “Steve at the Kansas Concert,” is an inside joke about the bassist’s affection for Kansas, the critically derided, pompous ‘70s band. It’s something the other Bazooka members tend to tease him about.

“I don’t care what anybody says about it,” Reed declared. “It was a great concert and it inspired me personally.”

The biggest inside joke--the one on the album cover--is on Meghrouni, whose home in the Echo Park section of Los Angeles is the band’s rehearsal headquarters.

“I got back from the Watt tour and had my pockets full of money, because Mike paid us really well,” he recalled. “Then I got a parking ticket and I was whining about it. My girlfriend, Linda, said, ‘Poor Mr. Rock Star.’ ”

In fact, rock stardom isn’t on the agenda for a band that at the moment is struggling just to book a national tour while setting its most fond hopes on having enough success to quit day jobs in favor of full-time music-making.

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Meghrouni still entertains some of the hopes sparked on the Mike Watt tour, when he saw the response a high-powered, primarily instrumental and frequently improvisational attack could generate.

“What [bands] don’t do much these days is groove and improvise,” he said. “It’s perilous, because there’s a lot of noodling and indulgence. I saw the way people [in Watt’s audience] were reacting to what we were playing, and I thought people were ready to hear [musicians] connected to punk who were ready to get up and jam.”

* Bazooka, the Fire Ants and Peace Corp play tonight at the Tiki Bar, 1700 Placentia Ave., Costa Mesa. 9 p.m. $3. (714) 548-3533.