HE ISLifting heavy metal.RADIO STARA new music...

HE IS

Lifting heavy metal.

RADIO STAR

A new music movement is rising to the surface in Huntington Beach --

making waves across the country as local musician Marco Forcone

discovered he could record, edit and mix music using technology on par

with major studios.

“I want everything that comes out of here to be brilliant,” he said in

his garage studio at 1605 Huntington St., the touchstone for 1605

Records, Forcone’s music label.

The 31-year-old drummer and producer is riding high on the sound wave

surf, turning unknown bands -- mostly longtime friends -- into national

hits. “I’ve never recruited a band,” he said. “Everyone has always come

to me through friends.”

Or friends of friends of friends. All the bands have had a communal tie

to Forcone except the Kottonmouth Kings, young neighborhood punks who

loitered around 1605 for years until Forcone felt obligated to produce a

song for them, he said.

“I kept telling them to get out of here, you guys are bugging me,” he

said. “Finally, I caved in and co-wrote a fun, immature song for them.”

That song, “Bump,” is now #38 on the charts.

SOUL MEN SEARCHING

The Kottonmouth Kings are an exception, not the rule in his recording

studio, Forcone said.

“I look for passion, maturity,” he said. “I can tell immediately if

someone really loves what they’re doing or if they’re just doing it to be

cool.”

Although he produces mostly “heavy” bands, Forcone said he appreciates

all music genres and records techno, reggae and blues bands, among

others.

“Atmosphere is very important,” he said.

Working 12-hour days in his tiny, red-walled recording studio, Forcone

said he weathers a biosphere of emotional storms.

“I do whatever it takes to evoke emotion,” he said. “I don’t ever yell at

anybody unless a song calls for it.”

Forcone will go so far as to scream at musicians and kick their chairs

during a “heavy” recording session to tap into their aggression, he said.

“If the emotion isn’t pure, I know it and the audience knows it,” he

said. When he recently recorded an acoustic band, Forcone turned down the

lights and sat on the floor with the performing guitarist. “A major

recording studio is scary, and it tightens you up,” he said. “In my

studio, musicians must be serious, but I want them to feel comfortable.”

PICK UP STICKS

A drummer for the last two decades, Forcone joined the Orange County

music scene when he was 16, playing venues in Anaheim with the Leather

Wolf band during the 1980s heavy metal craze. Once hip hop took over the

music scene, “heavy metal lost its cool,” he said, but it remained his

passion.

Ten years later, hip hop is mainstream music, and is “just as cheesy and

bad as heavy metal was at the end of the 1980s,” he said. “It’s almost an

evolutionary process. Once something becomes huge and everyone is a part

of it, the underground music scene creates something different.”

Forcone’s band, Drown, has weathered its own evolution. After recording

their first album “Hold on to the Hallow,” in 1994 with Electra, the

label dropped the band, and the band’s lead bassist quit, he said. To top

things off, on July 4, 1995, a party at Forcone’s former apartment

morphed into the historic couch-burning riot that forever changed the way

the city celebrates its independence.

“I got a three-day notice from my landlord that I had to move out,” he

said. Drown’s lead singer, who calls himself simply “Lauren,” found the

house at 1605. “We were all looking for a place where we could create our

art,” he said. “When we moved in, it was cockroach-infested, but I didn’t

care. I just wanted a place to work.”

The band finished its fifth national concert tour to promote their second

CD, “Product of a Two Faced World” in May and is working on its next

album. The CD is dedicated “to our friends and fans who stayed down with

us through the hardest three years of our lives.”

NO STRINGS ATTACHED

Through it all, his mom, Molina Forcone, whose own father was a talented

musician, is his biggest support. “She comes to all my concerts,” he

said. “She’s this little Italian woman, and she’ll be yelling and

screaming in the front row with everyone else.”

Scott Pfaff, a 23-year-old 1605 groupie, who co-wrote the music for

“Bump,” said Forcone is unusually humble for someone so talented.

“I’ve known Forcone for three years and he’s never tried to make a buck,”

he said. “He makes enough to pay the rent and then gives everything else

back to his friends and the music scene. It’s really admirable. People

trust and respect him because he really cares that his bands fulfill

their potential.”

Nurturing young bands is just the beginning of Forcone’s contribution to

the music revolution.

“I’ll play drums with Drown until I physically can’t play anymore,”

Forcone said. “Then I’ll just keep producing bands. I’m so turned on to

what I want to do musically that nothing else matters.”