Lit Warms to Limelight

Lit’s breakthrough 1999 hit, “My Own Worst Enemy,” was about a guy who wakes up one morning after a binge to find his car on the lawn, his girl gone and no clue about what happened.

As the single turned into the most popular modern-rock radio song of that year, according to Billboard magazine, the Anaheim rock band’s four members started feeling as if they’d awakened to a strange new world without really knowing how it happened.

That commercial breakthrough hasn’t changed their lives drastically, partly because they got a firm grounding in reality through years in the rock ‘n’ roll trenches.

They’re better off financially now, but they still consider themselves vulnerable to the foibles they’ve always wrestled with.

“Now the car’s not in the frontyard anymore--it’s in the pool,” Lit guitarist and co-songwriter Jeremy Popoff, 29, says jokingly during a recent interview in Fullerton.

They’ve bought houses, instead of still living with their parents as they were just two years ago when “A Place in the Sun,” its major-label album debut, was released by RCA Records.

Their newfound fame hit home for 27-year-old singer A. Jay Popoff, who writes the group’s material with brother Jeremy, after “Miserable” gave the group its third hit from the “Sun” album.

He was in Las Vegas and ran into Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler. Popoff said Tyler recognized him and quoted part of the song’s clever lyrical refrain--”You make me complete / You make me completely miserable”--not just speaking it, but singing it back to Popoff.

Inasmuch as Aerosmith was one of several ‘70s and ‘80s hard-rock and metal bands that were heroes to the Popoffs, Lit bassist Kevin Baldes, 28, and drummer Allen Shellenberger, 31, the encounter with Tyler constituted a huge compliment.

Lit sounded a lot more like its head-banging role models--including Metallica, Iron Maiden and Stone Temple Pilots--on its first album, 1997’s “Tripping the Light Fantastic,” than it did on “A Place in the Sun.”

“Sun” revealed the group’s more melodic, hook-conscious pop-metal side, which helped “Sun” go on to sell 1.3 million copies in the U.S. according to SoundScan, compared with 35,000 to date for “Tripping.”

As the group hunkers down in the new year to work on the new album, which is due by this summer, Jeremy Popoff says, “The thing that both [previous] albums had in common is that most of the songs were about girls, cars and gambling, so the songs on this record will be about the same things. The big difference is that now we have better cars and more money to lose in Vegas.”

If they sound fairly happy with life, they are. They’re also jazzed about being chosen as the first act to play the new House of Blues in Anaheim when it opens to the public Friday.

Club officials hope the booking, along with a five-night stand by veteran O.C. punk band Social Distortion starting Jan. 23, will establish a strong local presence at their latest venue, part of the new Downtown Disney outdoor mall adjacent to Disneyland.

“I defy anyone who’s driven a car in Orange County [to say] they haven’t seen [Lit’s] posters on power boxes and telephone poles,” says House of Blues talent buyer John Pantle.

That’s one secret of success Lit learned first as fans and then aspiring rockers on the Southland hard-rock scene, a secret that boils down to three words: promotion, promotion, promotion.

“Orange County bands have always been great at getting the word out on foot,” Pantle adds. “Orange County has lots of places for bands to play and lots of record stores to get their records in even if they’re not signed.

“Lit combines the best of both efforts,” Pantle says. “They have a grass-roots mentality that allows them to connect with their audience, which now they can combine with the radio airplay and their record company’s ability to help them spread their message.”

Before the new album comes out, they plan to release a still-untitled video documentary of the band’s last two years, compiled from something like 200 hours of videotape shot mostly by the band members themselves.

Although the public’s taste in pop music seems to shift ever faster, the Lit boys aren’t worried that their 15 minutes of fame will have expired by the time the new album is ready.

“We want the next record to be just a big rock record,” says A. Jay Popoff. “All the offshoots, like rap-metal and the others, may come and go, but straight rock never really goes away.”

Adds Jeremy: “We’d rather have five records that go gold than one record that sells 5 million and then you disappear. We’re in this for the long haul. It’s a pretty [great] job. It sure beats delivering pizza.”

* Lit plays Friday at House of Blues, 1530 S. Disneyland Drive, Anaheim. With Handsome Devil, the Color Red. 8:30 p.m. $17.50. Also 8:30 p.m. Saturday with Burnin’ Groove, Dial 7. (714) 778-2583.

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DISNEY CLUB SCENE

At the new Downtown Disney, nightclubs, including House of Blues, are central to pedestrian esplanade. W7