16 Bands Will Be On ‘Board’ for Daylong Fest in May

In what could be the biggest concert ever built primarily around talent from the local punk and alternative rock scene, 16 bands will play a daylong outdoor concert May 6 at the UC Irvine Athletic Field.

The festival, dubbed “Board in Orange County,” is topped by Social Distortion, Face to Face, No Doubt and Sublime. Tickets, $15, go on sale Saturday at 10 a.m. through Ticketmaster.

“We’ve never done anything that big” in Orange County, said Paul Tollett, a partner in promoter Goldenvoice. “A lot of these bands are big now, and they all happen to be available at the same time. We thought it would be fun to put a big show together.”

The festival will also have a skate- and snow-boarding theme, with professional exhibits on view from noon to 10 p.m.

Nine bands in the all-California lineup are primarily identified with the local rock scene, while the rest hail from Los Angeles, San Diego, Victorville and Berkeley.

The full lineup: Social Distortion (O.C.), Face to Face (Victorville), No Doubt (O.C.), Sublime (Long Beach), Guttermouth (O.C.), the Vandals (O.C.), the Joykiller (O.C./Long Beach), Fluf (San Diego/O.C.), Dance Hall Crashers (Berkeley), Unwritten Law (San Diego), Excel (L.A.), Dime Store Hoods (San Pedro), the Grabbers (O.C.), FYP (South Bay), Lidsville (O.C.) and Further (L.A.). Information: (714) 740-2000 (Ticketmaster).

Reloaded Bazooka:

Bazooka, the wry, hard-hitting, improvisational-rock instrumental trio, will be firing some different ammo when it returns to the local live circuit.

Saxophonist Tony Atherton, the band’s featured soloist, left in December and has moved to San Francisco, leaving drummer Vince Meghrouni and bassist Bill Crawford to regroup with new players.

“He just walked in (to a rehearsal), said he didn’t like the way we were relating to each other and quit the band,” Meghrouni said. “I thought it was kind of odd, because I felt we were all pretty much getting along. We’d been friends a dozen years, I’d say. We’d had band fracases, but that isn’t too unusual.”

From San Francisco, Atherton said, “It’s strictly personal issues. I think those guys are great musicians and fellows as well. I just felt, because of personal issues on my end, it was compromising my ability to participate fully.” Atherton has not started a new band but is doing musical “woodshedding” while working at a day job.

Replacing him are guitarist Jeremy Keller, who played with Meghrouni in Cambridge Pipers, and keyboards player Don Carroll, who played with the three Bazooka founders in El Grupo Sexo.

Meghrouni said that SST Records, which put out Bazooka’s two studio albums, has scheduled a summer release of live material recorded by the original trio. The reloaded Bazooka probably won’t do any touring outside of California for a while, Meghrouni said, because of commitments.

“We have a few new tunes, but we’re still doing the old material, because we like it,” he said. “We took the melodies and (assigned them to) different instruments, and we fleshed out the harmonies a little more. . . . We miss hanging around with Tony and playing with Tony, because he’s our brother, but we like playing the tunes with these (new) guys, too.”

Bazooka does not have any shows scheduled. Meghrouni and Atherton can be heard performing on two tracks from “Ball-Hog or Tugboat?,” the new album by Minutemen/Firehose alumnus Mike Watt; Watt plays a free concert Thursday at 1 p.m. at the University Center Pub at Cal State Fullerton. (714) 773-2468.

Sweet substitute: Dina Douglass hasn’t played too many shows since the breakup about a year ago of her band, Too Many Joes. But she’s trying to remedy that by launching a new one, Sugarcoat.

Douglass fronted Too Many Joes through the late ‘80s and early ‘90s as it developed into a local favorite among fans of jangly, 10,000 Maniacs-style rock. Then, more than a year ago, the Long Beach-based Douglass says, the band collapsed.

“It wasn’t my decision. Everybody else was tired of it. I got depressed and didn’t play for a long time. I wanted the band to get back together, and nobody else did.”

Now Douglass, who always was accompanied in Too Many Joes by a female member who would sing harmonies, is the lone vocalist in a band with three male accomplices from San Pedro--guitarist Pete Sebastian, bassist Miggs Dilemma and drummer Jerry Trebotic.

Since September, Sugarcoat has played two shows in San Pedro, and March 20 it shares a bill with Giant Ant Farm at the Blue Cafe, 210 Promenade, Long Beach.

“It’s louder. It’s different,” she said. “I’m really happy to be playing again.”

For information on the March 20 show, call (310) 984-8349 (recording) or (310) 983-7111 (Blue Cafe).