Age-appropriate entertainment

It’s Tuesday, a school night, but the mostly teenage crowd at Fullerton all-ages club the Alley can’t be bothered with such petty annoyances. Not when there’s a batch of good punk and punk-leaning bands to see.

Besides, some are here with their approving parents (one kid is sporting what looks like his old man’s well-worn CBGB tee). These are parents old enough to remember a quarter-century ago, when Orange County punk shows like this one would have been tightly monitored by the cops, if not shut down entirely. Back when punk was being branded with adjectives like “dangerous” and “threatening” -- back before the music got so safe.

That, though, is a topic for another time. Safety, it seems, is a very good thing for the adults.

“It’s great when parents leave their kids here and pick them up at the end of the show,” says James Barnum, who has been booking the bands and running the Alley’s nightly operations since the club’s July opening. “They know they’ll be OK here. We’re not hoodlums. We provide an outlet for the youth of our community. But a lot of parents stay and hang out too.”

On this evening, bands play 25-minute sets; with seven bands slotted in four hours, there’s a lot of music to pack in.

About half the crowd -- the Alley’s capacity is 550; there are around 200 here tonight -- are preferring to mingle with friends on the Alley’s extra-large outdoor patio. Boys chat up girls working the bands’ merchandise tables.

Small cliques form near the alcohol-free bar, where candy and energy drinks are the menu’s strongest intoxicants.

But open one of the swinging glass doors at the patio’s edge and head into the main room -- that’s where the real scene is. Inside a large space that years ago housed a Smart & Final, there’s now an O.C. hard-core band called Final Chapter. The group’s lead singer is splitting his time between standing at the lip of the stage and playing to the crowd, then retreating to the rear and balancing himself on an amp, screaming into his mike throughout. The happy horde that’s gathered round -- mostly friends of the band, it seems -- eats it up.

And Barnum loves that they love it.

“I’m bringing people here for one reason -- the music, that’s it,” he says. “I really want the Alley to be a place where kids can be expressive and be themselves. A lot of these kids who come here are the kind that may not perform well in a classroom, but on a stage, they perform well doing their art.”

“It’s a real family atmosphere,” says David Nash, 19, of Anaheim Hills, who, like many Alley regulars, is in a band of his own. Nash is actually tending the bar, something Barnum asked him to do because he was coming to so many shows. “It’s a good place to meet people, the kind who’d rather see bands than go to a football game. The kids who come out here are nice, and everybody has a good time. Plus, if you’re in a band, it’s a great place for networking with other bands.”

This is actually the second go-round for Barnum’s club. He ran the Backalley at this same locale from 1997 until 2001, booking mostly weekend shows (some which wound up being more historic than others, like the night when then-unknowns Hoobastank and Hybrid Theory -- later to become Linkin Park -- shared a bill). The owner eventually opted to lease the room to someone who operated it as a banquet hall, but when the space became available again in July, Barnum moved back in, shortening the name and upgrading everything from the sound system to the band load-in / load-out areas.

SINCE then, things have been hopping. The Voodoo Glow Skulls’ show was a big hit, as were the Matches and Go Betty Go gigs. Barnum says he’s been getting a lot of calls from bands wanting to play the Alley, and he thinks that by next summer he’ll be able to hold eight or nine events a week (a dance club, Club Alley Cat, made its debut Nov. 18, though it’s strictly for those 18 and younger).

“The O.C. music scene has grown a lot stronger in the four years since I was working the Backalley,” says Barnum, who credits this to the steady schedule of shows at the Anaheim House of Blues and taste-making Anaheim all-ages club Chain Reaction, a must-play venue not only for young local bands, but also for many national touring bands.

“And the city’s been great too. Fullerton is an arts-driven, youth-oriented city with five colleges in the area. There are 25 bars and restaurants in the downtown walking area. Four years ago when I left, there were only three or four. Now I’ll get 250 kids showing up on a Tuesday night when I used to only be able to do that on a weekend.”

*

Rich Kane can be reached at weekend@latimes.com.

*

The Alley

Where: 139 W. Amerige Ave., Fullerton

When: Most nights of the week, starting at 7 or 8 p.m.

Price: Covers vary, usually $8 to $10; all ages.

Info: www.thealleyclub.com; (714) 738-6934