When you think of pop music, you think of things trendy. And when you think of things trendy, chances are you think of California.

After all, everyone's aware of the attention-grabbing bands that seem to flow endlessly from Los Angeles and San Francisco. But Sacramento, the state capital, probably never even crosses your mind as the new Music Mecca of the West. But suddenly this sleepy bedroom community is standing up and starting to make some noise of its own.

Somehow, and no one seems to understand just how, Sacramento has become the home of a burgeoning rock scene. And it's beginning to draw national and international attention. "The only way I can explain it," says a perplexed Mike Roe, the charismatic lead vocalist for the 77s, a band that's just returned from a tour of the UK, "is that this cow-town excuse for a city is a giant vortex that mysteriously sucks people in...especially musicians"

Those words may not be the choice of the Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, but they do offer a pretty good description of what's going on in this fast-growing hillside city of just over 270,000. Seven or eight years ago, the music scene there was virtually nonexistent. Now, however, Sacramento is home to nine bands signed to major recording or publishing deals.

Much of the credit for this sudden boom in the city's circuit falls the way of Charlie Peacock, the seminal musician/composer who has been at the forefront of music in Sacramento since the mid-seventies. "Back when I started here," Peacock says, "you really had two options if you wanted to play music here and still make a living. You could be Top 40 or heavy metal."

That's before Peacock born Charles Ashworth in 1956 in nearby Yuba City, started filling the airwaves in and around Harry's Bar with his punchy brand of eclectic pop/jazz/rock. "The crowds were pretty small when I started. I played mostly the off nights. But, curiously, people started turning out. It was a lot of fun.

"We were described at one time or another as jazz, new wave, rock 'n' roll, funk, and country. Someone even said we were a cross between The Archies and Manhattan Transfer. Truth is, we are a mixture of all of those. You can hear all those elements in our older stuff."

Peacock feels that his success in breaking the Top 40 stranglehold opened the way for other "new music" and alternative acts. "I think that, more than anything," Peacock says of those pioneering days, "we proved that we could play free-form, casual music and still eat. That hopefully encouraged more artists to get out there and play their own material." The Charlie Peacock Group went through 12 incarnations through the years and gave birth to several of the bands that now top Sacramento's scene.

Bourgeois Tagg, formed three years ago by former Peacock Group keyboardist/vocalist Brent Bourgeois, is leading the Sacramento pack down the road to the big time. Their slick "mod-pop" sound, walking the balance between Duran Duran and Mr. Mister, captured the watchful eye of Britain's Island Records

Looking to make its presence more known stateside, the label (which sports other signees such as U2 and Frankie Goes to Hollywood) searched the whole US for a band to add to its roster. "We're the first American band they've signed," says Bourgeois, noting that the group's debut album was released in early March. It's an ornate pop offering laden with every possible production embellishment. "You should have heard it before we finished it," Bourgeois says "We took half of the stuff off of it."

Vector, led by Stevbe Griffith and one-time Peacock guitarist Jim Abegg, has opened for major bands touring the Bay Area. The pop-rock band saw "I Can't Help Falling in Love," a cut from their debut A&M album, released to Top 40 radio in late February.

Their sound is an odd cross between the power "guitar-wave" of the "new" INXS and the electronic pulses and polyrhythms of Missing Persons. That sound gives them their own little niche in the Sacramento scene as they draw from all of the others to form a sound of their own, a sound that best typifies the city's brand of modernistic pop-rock.

"We have a diverse lineup," says Griffith, the band's chief creative force. "And right now I think that we're putting together credible material. Jim and I have been playing together for a few years. And Bruce Spencer, our drummer, just turned 20, so he's into a lot of the current influences-Prince, Phil Collins, etc. That gives us an interesting balance."

That balance filters out elements of several different types of modern pop and gives Vector what Spencer calls "a cosmopolitan sound"-and it's put the band on the verge of mass exposure. A video clip for another track, "Surrender," entered light rotation on MTV back in November while the song itself found some airplay on rock stations coast to coast.