Serving Up the Usual at an O.C. Bar

As freshly minted label-mates of the Rolling Stones, Janet Jackson and Smashing Pumpkins, and recently returned veterans of their first national tour, one supposed that the members of Common Sense might have drawn a line Friday night between their long, bar-band past and their hoped-for big-league future.

But the Halloween gig at the Coach House was another night of good-time, pop-reggae vibrations before the local bar faithful. There was no attempt to stretch for the drama and urgency that make for memorable reggae--just the usual sharp harmonies, catchy hooks, proficient playing and upbeat energy that have kept the band going in various incarnations for more than 10 years.

If anything, Common Sense’s recent career escalation hampered the show: Founder and front man Nick Hernandez, his voice already burry from a cold caught on tour, sounded increasingly tired as the 90-minute show went on.

Common Sense played most of “Psychedelic Surf Groove,” the 1996 small-label CD that Virgin Records recently reissued after signing the band.

Nothing new turned up that would hint at the spiritually infused or politically urgent sense of purpose handed down by Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Toots Hibbert and other Jamaican founders. This was proficient, lighthearted bar music, enough to keep the loyalists, many of them gaily costumed, up and jammin’, but not anything to grab a nation.

(Good, reggaefied covers of the Neville Brothers’ “Yellow Moon” and Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing” did suggest that Common Sense may be able to take the proven, hit-bound path of UB40 and Big Mountain by adding a scratch and bounce Jamaican rhythm to a popular oldie).

Let’s see if Common Sense can put on a more dynamic mask when it emerges next year with the new album that will determine whether it has a future beyond the bars.

*

Sunchild is another Orange County band with prospects, founded on a good arsenal of singers and players mining ‘70s classic-rock roots from below the Mason-Dixon line.

Its second-billed set didn’t live up to its promise at first, as a series of unfocused songs came off like second-rate Black Crowes, which is second-rate indeed. A too-faithful, too-familiar mid-set cover of Neil Young’s “Cinnamon Girl” at least got some energy going and brought some pop-rock pith to the fore.

Then Sunchild began to shine; everything else in a 55-minute set was coherent, sharply realized, well-structured but ambitiously stretching. One number overlaid a Van Morrison “Wild Night” rhythmic current with the guitar explorations of the Allman Brothers Band (evidently Sunchild’s chief inspiration).

The band balanced the hippie idealism expressed in “Giverman” with a movin’-on-through-troubles sense of resiliency that was the crux of other original songs. And a celebratory finale, a cover of the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” showed Sunchild (with enthusiastic help from members of Common Sense) tinkering with tempos and adding something of its own to a ‘60s rock landmark.

All six members made distinctive contributions, with Scott Owen’s husky lead vocals nicely supported by his brother Joel’s high harmonies, and bassist Tristan Tortorella stepping out with first-rate lead singing of his own.

The band’s founder, pro surfer Donavon Frankenreiter, kicked in some well-etched guitar leads and a homey, gruff lead vocal, and Matt Hamilton was the first among talented equals with sweet, warm, biting and fluid guitar work in the tradition of Dickey Betts and Eric Clapton. All this young ace lacked was the past-the-shoulders hair and facial growth that made the rest of the band look as if it had stepped off the cover of “The Allman Brothers Band at Fillmore East.”

*

Along with the soulful Barrelhouse and the eclectic Trip the Spring, Sunchild is part of a talented young crop of grass-roots O.C. bands looking past the usual local punk, ska and alterna-rock inspirations.

All have come up with promising music that could easily reach the substantial audience of H.O.R.D.E. tour devotees and Deadhead remnants who value hot, excursionary playing grounded in classic sources.