Getting the Goods Together

Having let bygones be bygones long ago, an obscure but significant Costa Mesa band called the Goods will revisit bygone days with a reunion show Thursday at Club Mesa.

Embedded in the history of the Goods, which left off more than five years ago, are preliminary chapters in the stories of two platinum-selling bands and tangential connections to a bunch of other unrewarded but excellent Orange County bands of the early 1990s.

Platinum face No. 1 is Mark McGrath of Sugar Ray, who briefly fronted Electric Cool-Aide, the late-’80s band that evolved into the Goods. McGrath spent his tenure with Electric Cool-Aide mimicking the band’s previous singer, the wild and crazy Darren McNamee, whom McGrath cites as a key influence on his own wild and crazy antics fronting Sugar Ray.

Platinum face No. 2 is singer-guitarist Tony Scalzo, whose departure for Austin, Texas, in 1993 along with drummer Jamie Reidling spelled the end of the Goods. Scalzo landed in Fastball, the Austin trio that hit big last year with “The Way,” a Grammy-nominated song Scalzo wrote and sang.

The return of slender, scruffy-bearded Scalzo to Orange County to visit his folks in Tustin is the occasion for the reunion show with Reidling, bassist Nick Sjobeck and guitarist Nate Shaw.

If they get their way, the Goods will enjoy a new life as a Scalzo side-project when Scalzo isn’t busy with Fastball. But that depends on whether Hollywood Records, Fastball’s label, smiles on the proposal.

“It’s a good idea as long as we can pull it off without anyone [at the record company] getting bummed,” Scalzo said Monday. “I don’t see why it would hurt. It’s more straight-ahead rock ‘n’ roll than what Fastball does.

“It would be a natural thing,” Scalzo said, “and [mean] more promotion for their big, Top 10 act”--namely Fastball, whose success owes to one hit song that Scalzo takes with the ironic grain of a longtime scuffler in the world of grass-roots rock ‘n’ roll.

Electric Cool-Aide was Scalzo’s first singing gig; he came in after McGrath, who although adept at replicating the parts sung by his hero, McNamee, proved too green to come up with melodies of his own when the band wrote songs.

“It didn’t work out, because [McGrath] could do all Darren’s parts perfect, but when you showed [McGrath] a new song, he didn’t know what to do,” Sjobeck recalled. McGrath, who was then still in his teens, wholeheartedly agrees with that assessment.

In the final chapter of Electric Cool-Aide, Scalzo stepped in and got his first experience fronting a band. The band broke up at the end of 1989, as Sjobeck headed to Seattle to try his hand on the hot grunge scene (he landed in Blood Circus, which recorded for Seattle’s seminal Sub Pop label), and Reidling graduated to Cadillac Tramps, the hottest O.C. grass-roots band of the era. Scalzo kept playing, including sideman hitches in two other strong O.C. bands, Naked Soul and Tender Fury.

In 1991, Sjobeck returned to Costa Mesa. Reidling quit Cadillac Tramps, Scalzo was brought back into the fold, and the Goods were born.

By 1993 (with Shaw, another Electric Cool-Aide alum, playing in the band part time while fronting another Costa Mesa band, the Women), the Goods had developed a good local draw with their catchy rock songs and were getting a close look from scouts at Warner Bros. Records.

The band recorded demos for Warner, and--although no deal was immediately forthcoming--the label continued to view the band as a prospect, Sjobeck said.

At that point, Reidling and Scalzo quit and moved to Austin for a novel reason: They wanted to see what it was like to actually make some decent money playing rock ‘n’ roll.

As Scalzo tells it, a contact at Light Storm, a start-up label headed by film director James Cameron, thought the two Goods would be a good fit backing Beaver Nelson, an Austin-based singer-songwriter signed to Light Storm.

“I thought maybe I could finally make some money doing this,” Scalzo said. “When the Goods would do gigs, $85 was a windfall.”

Recalled Reidling: “The record company wined and dined me, and it was nice to have that happen.”

His bandmates’ bid for the quick cash dashed Sjobeck’s hopes of persevering and landing with Warner Bros.

“I was really bummed out, and I was pretty mad for a little bit, but I forgave them,” he said. “I still wanted to see them succeed.”

Before long, Sjobeck was visiting his friends in Austin, where they hooked up for the last Goods gig in 1994. The Beaver Nelson project never came to fruition--Scalzo said Cameron got too busy making “Titanic” to bother with a record company.

Reidling came back to Costa Mesa, where he and Sjobeck started a new band, Dodge Dart, that continues to be their main musical vehicle. Scalzo stayed in Austin and hooked up with Fastball, which used a couple of his Goods-vintage songs on its 1996 debut album, “Make Your Mama Proud.”

Fastball has touring lined up in February and March, Scalzo said, so it’s not certain when the Goods will be able to convene again for shows or--if Hollywood Records permits--recording sessions.

If the band can’t get permission to record new songs, Sjobeck said, it may try to put out an album of early ‘90s recordings, but that’s a distant second choice. Scalzo considers certain songs he writes these days more suited to the Goods than to Fastball.

The show at Club Mesa will consist of older Goods songs and a smattering of Dodge Dart numbers. There won’t be any Fastball songs, except for the ones first done by the Goods. As for “The Way,” Scalzo apparently agrees with the Offspring that you gotta keep ‘em separated.

“We tried to con [Scalzo] into [performing] it,” Sjobeck said, “but he doesn’t want to go for that.”

* The Goods, the Neal Armstrong Band and the John Kline Conspiracy play Thursday at Club Mesa, 843 W. 19th St., Costa Mesa. 9:30 p.m., $6. (949) 642-8448.