Favorites From Orange County, Beyond Fall Outside Charted Territory

In 1997, for better and worse, Orange County rock became unavoidable.

If you tuned to modern-rock taste maker KROQ-FM (106.7) or its chief competitor, Y-107, the question wasn’t whether an Orange County band would be heard, but how soon.

You did have to wonder if the song would have anything to say. In the past, only solid music from the O.C. alternative scene made an impact on the outside world. In ‘97, insubstantial songs, at best, by Reel Big Fish, Sugar Ray and Save Ferris became hits. For the first time, an observer of the scene had to worry that young bands would assume the rock ‘n’ roll game is just about style and energy--no need to reckon with life experience.

The year began with No Doubt’s “Tragic Kingdom” at No. 1 on the Billboard albums chart; by year’s end, the Anaheim band had run its SoundScan-monitored U.S. sales total past 7 million, passing the Offspring’s 1994 “Smash” (5.1 million sold) as O.C. rock’s best-selling album. No Doubt also played two nights at the Pond in late May, making it the first local band to headline in a large O.C. arena.

Sublime, a band that died with singer Brad Nowell in May 1996, became a remarkable posthumous success story as its ’96 release, “Sublime,” passed the 2.5-million mark, and renewed interest carried its ’92 debut CD, “40oz to Freedom,” past 800,000.

Depending on one’s point of view, the Offspring had either a substantial hit or a disappointing miss with “Ixnay on the Hombre,” its ’97 follow-up to “Smash.” Scoffers might say “Ixnay,” with sales of 855,000, was an opflay, especially after all the rancor and consternation surrounding the band’s big-bucks migration from the independent punk label Epitaph to a new home with the Sony conglomerate. But “Ixnay” is a fine piece of punk- based hard rock, and there are worse fates in pop music than seeing your comet sink yet still having a fan base of nearly a million record buyers.

Social Distortion, the leading holdover from the first wave of Orange County punk-rock, soldiered on gamely, maintaining a strong national profile, although its ambition of breaking through to gold and platinum status was blunted.

Korn, the psychodramatic metal band from Huntington Beach, maintained a large loyal following with “Life Is Peachy”--a successor to its breakthrough 1994 debut album, “Korn”--which didn’t expand the band’s creative reach.

Life was certainly peachy for Sugar Ray. Masquerading as a lightweight Sublime on the sunny, reggae-fied single “Fly,” this rap-metal wolf in pop-reggae sheep’s clothing sold 1.2 million copies of its album, “Floored.” The best that can be said of Sugar Ray’s frat-boy rock is that a certain robustness tempers the unrelenting dumbness.

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Reel Big Fish neared the 500,000 sales mark for “Turn the Radio Off,” a catchy but insubstantial album released in 1996; Save Ferris sold almost 150,000 copies of two EPs that were neither substantial nor very catchy. And legions of young rockers followed the two bands’ lead to satisfy the avid local appetite for bouncy ska-rock.

They would be better off emulating O.C.’s best (catchy and substantial) young ska-rock band, the Supertones. But the Supertones went largely ignored by the local mainstream because they play on the Christian rock circuit. Their album, “Supertones Strike Back,” is approaching 150,000 in sales, and the band had to turn away customers when it performed Sept. 27 for 5,000 at UC Irvine’s Bren Events Center.

Most of the best music I heard this year doesn’t register on the sales charts or even circulate via established labels. The accompanying lists of ’97 favorites, from musicians inside and outside Orange County, mostly fall within uncharted territory. I hope they guide readers to some happy musical exploring.