Wanted: An Alternative to Ska

Think your band could be the next Nirvana?

KROQ wants you.

And so does every other alternative-rock radio station in the country.

“Any real guitar band out there, if I get their CD, it will go straight to the top of my listening stack,” says KROQ assistant programming director Gene Sandbloom.

What they don’t want is the next No Doubt or the Mighty Mighty Bosstones. The current rush of ska and pop-oriented acts provides programmers with a lot of catchy, fun songs that get instant reaction. But to the radio folks, these groups lack the depth that builds a solid audience the way the rockers did during alternative rock’s early ‘90s eruption.

“We had with Nirvana and Pearl Jam a huge streak of bands that followed, and then Green Day and Offspring and sound-alike bands after that,” says Sandbloom. “But since then, there hasn’t been a band that’s come along and unified the 17-year-olds who are moved by rock.”

Jeff Pollack, a leading national rock and alternative radio consultant, has seen fans who are interested in edgier sounds move away from outlets playing ska and pop.

“The alternative stations were the definitive stations in the market for several years,” he says. “As it is, [alternative stations] are leaving a large part of their musical programming open to attack by stations playing harder rock.”

Mark Williams, who signed the Smashing Pumpkins at Virgin Records and now is co-head of the DreamWorks-financed Outpost Records, has also wondered where all the rock bands have gone.

“Rock has sort of been a negative word for the last year or so because there’s been so much success with pop that people have shied away from it,” says Williams, who has an Indiana band called Days of the New that he hopes might fill the bill. “And we’re not getting as many rock tapes to consider as we used to.”

It’s not that there’s a total dearth of candidates. Foo Fighters, fronted by Nirvana’s Dave Grohl, is heading back up the charts with its second album, “The Colour and the Shape.” Sandbloom also points to Prodigy, Radiohead and Third Eye Blind as filling varying parts of the job in question.

“But we can’t find a single band with the power of a Nirvana to bring it all together,” he says. “We’ve existed on the last Smashing Pumpkins album for well over a year now.”

“I’m sure some record companies would say they have these acts, but the quality of rock bands available for alternative is just not what it was a few years ago,” says Pollack. “If someone says it is, send me a list.”

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BROTHER’S KEEPERS: The Bee Gees are going to fulfill a promise to their late brother Andy Gibb that he would become a part of the group someday. Using video clips a la Natalie Cole’s duets with her late father, the Nat King Cole, Bee Gees Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb will perform with Andy on his 1978 Top 10 hit “(Our Love) Don’t Throw It All Away” during their Nov. 14 concert at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. The concert, the group’s first U.S. show in more than five years and the only one planned for now, will also feature a guest appearance by Celine Dion on “Immortality,” a song written for her by Barry Gibb and featured on her upcoming album.

The older Gibb brothers had long promised Andy, who died in 1988, that when he grew up he would be made part of the group. But when he was ready in the early ‘80s, the Bee Gees were torn by various business and internal tensions and were working together only sporadically. Andy himself underwent drug rehabilitation in 1985 and later suffered financial problems. He was working on a comeback album in England when he died of a viral heart inflammation justfive days after his 30th birthday.

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WHAM BAM: The Giants may have beaten the Dodgers in the pennant race, but SoCal boosters will have a new opportunity to even the score with NoCal forces. The Bammie Awards, which have spotlighted the Bay Area music scene for 20 years, are going statewide.

The next Bammies, to be held in March at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco, will for the first time have non-Bay Area Californians eligible for voting by readers of Bam magazine, the awards’ sponsor. Expectations are that there will be a large Angeleno insurgence, with such L.A.-based artists as Beck, the Wallflowers and Fiona Apple among the likely nominees.

“Our audience and the music industry have pushed us to change, and there aren’t the number of platinum-selling groups coming from the Bay Area that there were five or 10 years ago,” says Bam publisher and editor-in-chief Dennis Erokan. “So it’s time to open it up to the entire state, which is what we’ve been writing about for 22 years any way.”

Erokan says he expects a Bay Area backlash. Derk Richardson, a music critic for the weekly San Francisco Bay Guardian and the Gate on-line service, largely supports the move--with some reservations.

“Technically, the idea of the Bay Area Music Awards ceased to mean anything several years ago, when people like Linda Ronstadt, Booker T. Jones and Clarence Clemons moved here and started winning over and over, so it makes sense to open it up,” he says.

“On the other hand, it’s a shame that there isn’t an event that’s a real reflection of the scene that produces as wide a variety of people as Charlie Hunter on the new jazz scene and such hip-hop deejays as Dr. Octagon. By going statewide, the chance for them being part of it becomes less.”